One month after another January 31, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor.add a comment
Source : The NewYorker
I have been getting a cartoon in my mail every Sunday evening from the New Yorker. This one is the best in a long time. So apt. Actually, the January/February seems rather coincidental. To me, this would be true with any two consecutive months written on them 
.
Here are more. This one is good. Even this one. Yeah, this one too. Here is THE best one.
CNN-IBN – setting the (lower) bound for Indian journalism January 31, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, media, rant.add a comment
CNN IBN’s Raksha Shetty on Suneil Shetty :
Actor Suniel Shetty, also a successful hotelier, attributes his survival in the film industry almost purely to his Bunt background and the disciplined work ethic that comes with it.
“I used to work in my father’s hotel for about 18 hours a day, in the kitchen, doing the accounts etc. So when I came to the film industry it was much easier. It has made me strong here in this industry,” he says.
I have an objection with most of what is written above but primarily with the use of “almost purely”.
Now lets imagine what actually happened. Shilpa Shetty won n all and reporter Raksha Shetty decided that it was a good opportunity to write about the Bunt community. She asked the actor about his background and how it helped him. What could Mr. Shetty say ? He is a celebrity after all and he can’t hurt people’s sentiments nor anger them by saying “No, my community didn’t matter. My father is a hard task master and if I didnt work as hard as he did, he would whip my arse”. He can’t even say – “No comments.” So he said something that that would not piss off anyone and would please his fellow community members. ( including the reporter ). Pareto optimum solution as they say !
Whether what Suniel said is true or whether he said so merely not to piss off anyone, such an exchange is not of any value in a national channel’s website. If you want to highlight the achievements of the Bunt community, it makes more sense to come up with some numbers, sound statistics like Per capita, % with Bachelors degree, number of businesses owned relative to population rather than getting sound bytes from people whose only job is giving them out.
The last sentence from the article takes the cake though :
Call it values or a sheer survival instinct, from the dreaded underworld gangster Sharad Shetty to Aishwarya Rai to this correspondent, the small population isn’t stopping the Bunt community from forging ahead.
Excuse me Ms. Raksha Shetty, you obviously look forward to your children’s success and would love to see them “forge ahead in life” – is the Mumbai underworld a prospective career for them then ? Or was that a tongue-in-cheek remark ?
State ‘conspiracy’ against education January 30, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, politics.add a comment
Thinking about the previous post and the comments from Abhinav, I just thought about all those unrecognized private schools in India. What worries me is that government forces unrecognized schools to close down. There is no need to do that – all that is required is to make sure that people don’t enroll their children into these schools thinking they are recognized. To avoid this :
- Make it mandatory that they inform everyone that they are not recognized.
- One may argue why will the schools do this. So, in addition to the above, let the government release a list of recognized schools in every locality every 4 months.
Recognized schools matter if the student is planning to pursue higher studies. But for now, there are millions who would be happy to get low, good quality education even upto class XII. That itself can open up so many jobs. That way those who want to have education ( perhaps at a lower price ) will go anyway. Moreover, colleges may conduct entrance examinations and if a child from an unrecognized school is really smart, he will make it anyway. May the college have no rules that in addition to having a good rank, the child must be from a recognized school – the fact that she/he has cleared a exam administered by the college itself means she/he is upto the mark.
In addition to the purely utilitarian reasons above, forcing schools to close down
a) is against the right of the individual to expression.
b) deprives many of education, who need it but can’t pay for good private schools or the government schools are far way.
c) puts the teachers who are just happy with their (lower) pay and (lack of) status that comes with teaching at a unrecognized schoo out of jobs.
Who does closing schools help – only the education department inspectors who can make money by taking bribes to recognize schools or from one school to keep a rival school unrecognized !! This is yet another classic example of how the government bureaucracy ( even if inadvertently) conspires to keep millions uneducated.
Update: In the comments section Abhinav alleges that the politicians intentionally ensure that uneducated remain so. Perhaps to a certain extent but something else may be more likely. I would assert that a) there appears to be more indifference rather than direct opposition on the part of the politicians i.e. they do not really care, while they may not go all out to ensure widespread illiteracy and b) in collusion with the bureaucracy, the government brings in excessive regulations in the name of ensuring quality.
My school, their schools January 29, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, india, littlerockers, reminisces-2000.add a comment
A really touching post ( with photographs ) about the state of the government schools and some unrecognized schools in India. Just take a look at those pictures and come back to see the pictures of the school I went to – here, here & here.
No, I come from a middle-class background – nevertheless, my schooling I understand was nearly top class – not perhaps like those Ooty/Dehradun schools, but pretty much value adding.
As Bill Gates says in this fascinating interview with Charlie Rose, birth is the biggest lottery you can get. Its quite another thing that lot of countries have reached a stage where institutions, opportunities and personal freedoms come together to ensure that the vicious cycle of poverty doesn’t set in. We in India will hopefully get there in a while.
Profound sentences today January 29, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in life, politics, sport, weird.add a comment
Profound for the embedded warning therein :
It took some time for us to see the situation as it really had been. I didn’t know what was at the root of Anna’s rebellion, and perhaps I’ll never know. But I do recognize that we failed in how we were only able to see the part of her that was reacting to us, not the child who was growing up much too quickly and was still terribly afraid. I could not admit until much later that no matter how understanding I claimed to be, I had behaved as though Anna were my surrogate, her behavior a reflection of my parenting skills, her beliefs a mirror of my ideals, her goals a product of my ambition.
I may have said that I wished to set her free, but it was always my agenda that I hoped she would follow, my efforts as a father she would eventually acknowledge and admire. I had avoided repeating the mistakes of my father, but I had made different ones.
Profound for the ‘wow’ness it inspires, in me at the least .
Perhaps the difference that most fundamentally separates true liberals and libertarians from others is that, to one degree or another, true liberals and libertarians are, unlike non-liberals and libertarians, dutiful sons and daughters of the Scottish Enlightenment. And one of the great lessons of that remarkable intellectual movement is the refinement of the understanding that state and society are not the same thing. Society is not created by the state, and the state’s activities not only do not define those of society but often diminish society’s activities.
Profound for the absurdly funny nature of the exchange
Anuradha SenGupta: Hershelle Gibbs’s comments about the Pakistanis which could have been racist; Dean Jones’ inadvertent, off-the-cuff remark which is again not very pleasant—do you think we are being too politically correct, all of us. I mean what’s wrong if I say ‘You bloody Aussie’ once in a while, is that okay to say?
Greg Chappell: Absolutely, it’s not true, you can say that.
Profound for how wrong things can go, inspite of best intentions
Robinson left England more than a year ago to trace the ancient Tea Caravan trail with a group of Tibetans from the Chinese mainland to Lhasa in Tibet. He began his journey with a pair of horses through the oxygen-sapped, often icy terrain, his family said. He strayed into Indian territory when one of his horses fell ill and another became pregnant.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police spotted the bedraggled Robinson — physically-drained and hungry — with his horses near Mana in October last year and took him into custody.
Assorted links January 28, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in assorted, movies, politics, rant.add a comment
Quick links :
1. Having been a regular donor at AID/ASHA, this is worrying.
Thats the communist manifesto from Mr. Pandey.
In the name of infrastructure development more highways are being built so that automobile and petroleum companies can profit out of them. Do the benefits percolate down? Maybe not. These roads can’t be used by more than the 5 per cent of the population who travel in four-wheelers. Instead of strengthening the public transportation system, the thrust is on increasing private vehicles. Quality education and healthcare services are only available to those who can afford them. The rules of the game favour the rich and privileged and goes against the poor.What is most threatening about this kind of development is that it is not our governments and people’s representatives who are taking decisions regarding our lives. We are being dictated to by the international monetary agencies, multinational corporations and sometimes directly by the US. This implies that we remain a democracy only in name.The parliamentary process of decision-making has been sabotaged by vested economic interests.
2. World Leaders in their younger days. From Marginal revolution.
3. Nayyar is gone, the last man standing from the greats of yesteryear Hindi cinema.
4. After it all, Shilpa wins. Congratulations to her and she deserves it. Although I cant bear to read countless interviews, reports for a while to come. So I shouldn’t. Well, the British Public voted her to victory isn’t it. So what now of all the allegations against “racist Britain” – a country of 60 million racist people isn’t it ! Duh.
5. In some societies, primarily the eastern and middle-eastern, if you are in bad shape, its always someone else (that is held) responsible. Its never because of your own lack of qualification, incompetence or lack of initiative – its always the other person, or the weather, or bad luck. Why talk of political accountability when there is no individual accountability. Read this for just another example of the same.
The Sachar Committee says the total area under wakf properties in India is about six lakh acres and its book value is Rs 6,000 crore. However, the market value of these lands is much higher. For example, the current value of wakf properties in Delhi alone is estimated to be in excess of Rs 6000 crore and that of wakf properties in the country could be a staggering Rs 1,20,000 crore. If properly managed, these properties could give an annual return of anywhere between Rs 12,000 and Rs 24,000 crore (approximately $2.5 to five billion). This is more than enough to meet the basic health and educational needs of poor Muslims but wakf properties are mismanaged and, therefore, do not give this kind of return. But the Sachar Committee does not see this as the failure of the Muslim community to prudently manage its internal affairs. The committee thinks that “blaming others” is part of its terms of reference and so blames the Union Government, the State Governments, local bodies and every body else including the Department of Archaeology.
Ofcourse, one good thing about this “other guy is responsible” attitude is that average depression rates are probably lower in countries in the east compared to the west. An almost essential component of getting depressed is the feeling of being hurt ego, of having played a part in one’s own downfall.
6. In times of war, one doesn’t expect moral conduct from the adversary inspite of the Geneva convention and such. I remember being shocked several years ago when I heard that rapes are widely seen ( and accepted ) as the collateral damage of war. [ How many soldiers have you heard court-marshaled for committed these crimes in the times of war ? ]. But Bryan has an interesting argument for treating the other side especially the soldiers well :
There is however a reason for treating prisoners well that should appeal to any rational tribalist. Even if you only care about the lives of the people on your side, there is a good reason to treat prisoners well. Namely: Treating prisoners well encourages enemy soldiers to surrender, and treating prisoners badly encourages enemy soldiers to fight to the death.
..which in turn will hopefully bring the war to an quicker end. I don’t know about the counter-arguments to this, but I thought it was interesting anyway.
Inequality as an issue January 27, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, economics.add a comment
Talking about income inequality in the United States, Tyler Cowen in the Times argues that natural demographic factors account for it. [ Read it, a well written article ]. In the end though he adds :
The broader philosophical question is why we should worry about inequality — of any kind — much at all. Life is not a race against fellow human beings, and we should discourage people from treating it as such. Many of the rich have made the mistake of viewing their lives as a game of relative status. So why should economists promote this same zero-sum worldview? Yes, there are corporate scandals, but it remains the case that most American wealth today is produced rather than taken from other people.
What matters most is how well people are doing in absolute terms. We should continue to improve opportunities for lower-income people, but inequality as a major and chronic American problem has been overstated.
To which Berkeley Economist Brad Delong quotes Steven Kyle saying :
To this, I can only say that it takes a white middle aged economics professor with tenure to come up with a statement like that…. [I]n the real world [inequality] makes people distrustful of the system and causes them to lose faith in the fairness of society. General belief in the social contract is a long term asset to us all and one we should be very worried about losing. Only a very narrow view of the world could conclude otherwise…
I imagine what Tyler would say to that. I am undecided – I wouldn’t go as far as Steve did, but I wouldn’t side with Tyler either. I am worried about the larger problem of inequality especially the way it plays out in India, but the solutions the current center-left pursues aren’t something endorse either.
In a free country …. January 27, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant.add a comment
Apparently Mr. Bachchan wants to pray to the ‘gods’ and in the process, he and his friends in the UP government will trample on people’s livelihood. This can happen only in a ‘free country’ like India. Mr. Bachchan, instead of giving out platitudes about being impressed with the love of your fans and the people of India, do something.
While fans in the city might be a happy lot, local traders are not all that amused. The police have ordered shops to shut down during the visit of the superstars. Therefore it is more of a question of livelihood for them more than a sneak peak at their Bollywood idols.
“It’s a matter of our livelihood. Once they come we will have to shut our shops,” a trader says.
“It’s good to get a glimpse of stars but we will have to keep our shops closed,” another trader adds.
“Once the stars arrive roads will be blocked and it will be difficult for everyone including the other devotees,” another trader says.
So the Bachchan’s spree to please the gods and goddess continues and while the visit has been perfectly timed to Amar Singh’s birthday, sources tell us that a ceremony for Ash and Abhishek is also on the programme.
Do you ..? January 26, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, life.add a comment
Yes, I do. Even more than I spend with my ’significant myself’, so to speak.
Economics of misinformation January 26, 2007
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I am not surprised by the results of this survey.
The surveys says :
Instead of asking people about actual economic policies, the survey gave them two fairly worded policy options and asked the people to choose one.
And then it appears that in order to find out whether people support foreign investment or not, they are given these options.
Support: Govt. should allow, foreign companies to come into our country since they bring more capital and technology..
Oppose: Govt. should not allow foreign companies to come in our country because they exploit us and take profits away
If that is how you word your survey, it would require a fool to support foreign investment. What, may I ask, is fairly worded about it ?
When 26% of the entire population believe that reforms have benefitted only the rich as one of the tables suggest, the headline is that “Everyone agrees that reforms have benefited only the rich”. 26 is not equal to 0.
Mr. Yogendra Yadav, don’t tell us to opine what you think and what you we should opine.15 years back if you had asked the general public whether the government should run telecom and ban private cell phone companies, a huge majority would have said yes. What else do you expect when generation after generation is brought up to believe that to have a secure government job is everything. I want to visit your house and see what consumer appliances you use – Kelvinator/LG ? A BSNL net connection or Airtel/Sify.
And all this when barely 3% understand what reforms really mean ? What percentage of the population understands the meaning of “downsizing the government”. I would think that would be less than 3%. Did you explain it to them ? If so, in what words ? Reading stuff like this, I am sometimes inclined to stretch so far as to say that we should consider teaching economic history of the world and free-market economics in our high schools even at the cost of some Trignometry/ calculus/English. While each and every individual who consumes goods and/or has purchasing power is a cog in the machine that the economy is, barely a handful have an idea how economies work even in the most elementary terms.
Some of those in the Indian media should just shut shop. Or not handle subjects when you can’t do it competently. Just stick to Abhishek-Aishwaraya, the item girls and SRK-BigB- in a country of a billion, you will (unfortunately) find at least a few million underemployed who will keep your shop. running.
The more educated you are…. January 25, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, india, science, statistics.add a comment
Another survey – this about religion and India. A similar table, similar statistics for America. [ Harris Poll ]
Some differences -
57% believe in heaven/hell in India ; 85% according to this survey. [ Remember thats a Fox news poll ! ]
Biggest difference yet I think is this : More educated you are in America, less religious you are. While in India, its the other way around. Baffling, ain’t it – something about American education or Indian religion. :p
Also rural India is less religious than urban India ; in America its possibly the other way around – I have no data on this though. Understandably, food, shelter and clothing is more fundamental needs than belief, philosophy etc. – its not surprising thats on top of their mind.
Top 1% or bottom 1% January 24, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, india, rant, statistics.add a comment
One line summary of this post : 20% of those who want to marry virgins have accosted prostitutes. 26% of those who did accost prostitutes want to marry virgins. Hypocrisy wins yet again !!
Consider the question (put to men) asked as a part of the survey : At what age did you first have sex?
Now look at the response and guess the city where the survey was conducted.
LESS THAN 15 YEARS – 11%
16-18 YEARS – 41%
18-21 YEARS – 36%
22-25 YEARS – 12%
Answer : With a robust sample size of 2,559 males across 11 cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Patna, Ludhiana, Kolkata and Chennai), street-corner sampling was used to find respondents from the India Today latest issue.
Wow ! Shocker indeed. Disbelief. Maybe I have lost touch with urban India or was never in touch. Or respondents are plain lying. Or the poll methodolgy is suspect. Its got to be one of them. Those numbers add up to 100 %. Is there nobody in the >25 years bracket ? Not even in Bangalore ? ( Cmon yaar ! I know a few. Well, maybe the survey tells me I don’t know them well enough !). Or did India Today choose to talk to men below 25.
Rajaram, I remember your 1% minority funda. The debate was just about whether that was top 1% or bottom 1% !
But I guess according to this survey, the Urban Indian man should get an award for hypocrisy. As the Reuters report quoting the survey doesnt fail to point out :
Nearly two-thirds of young Indian men expect the woman they marry to be a virgin, but nearly half have had sex with prostitutes, according to a poll.
Let me do some math here. If there are 100 men, 50 of them have accosted prostitutes and the other 50 haven’t. Now 63 of the 100 expect to marry virgins. That means in the best case, of these 63, 50 are those who didnt accost prostitutes and 13 are those who did !! In the worst ( and more unlikely case ), of the 63, 50 are those who did accost prostitutes and 13 who didnt !! That means in the best case scenario, 13/63, nearly 20% of those who want to marry virgins have accosted prostitutes. Worse still, 13/50 nearly 26% of those who did accost prostitutes want to marry virgins.
Oh Indian man ! how, I wonder, do you manage to look at yourself in the mirror ? Double standards man, thats the way to go. I really hate people who have so-called ’single standards’ !
Going back in time ….kinda January 24, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, science.add a comment
Teacher : Sharath, what are you doing there ?
Sharath : Nothing teacher.
Teacher : Are you dreaming in class ?
You kinda get my point teacher, don’t ya 
[ Dubara mat poochna ]
Bollywood, Bush and Nitihari January 24, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, economics, india, politics.add a comment
Amit Varma has well-written post slams Bollywood for its historical potrayal of businesses as unethical, of never having celebrated human enterprise and expresses glee that Bollywood might finally be going capitalist ! While I am tempted to say – “Too little too late, I change my mind” (to Bollywood, not Amit ! ) , I will make a departure and instead say this.
In Bollywood, over the ages, one of the template villains has been the businessman. He will look suitably sinister, will alienate his own children, and will either deal in drugs or arms on the side, or spend his time evicting slum dwellers. Anything for profit, especially murder and rape. Most Bollywood businessman villains were classic caricatures of “the evil capitalist,” exploiting the workers and growing rich on their blood and toil. They often freelanced as mafia dons or were crony capitalists, but when the hero raged against their greed, this distinction was lost: business—and the profit motive—were itself painted as twisted, and the rare benevolent businessman stood out starkly as an exception to the rule.
Amar Singh meanwhile thinks Nitihari is not a law and order problem. He says don’t politicize it – its a problem with the system he says – and proceeds to do exactly that in his next sentence. Well, what if it happened in a Congress/BJP ruled state ?
Karan Thapar: Both, how they handled it before the killings were discovered, when they were avoiding registering FIRs, and afterwards?
Amar Singh: I am fully agreed with you that nobody should be spared. But my only thing is politicisation of this entire issue is wrong.
Karan Thapar:I agree with you. I am not politicising, I am trying to establish the truth and your opposition.
Amar Singh: I am using your forum for a noble message. I am not attacking anybody. Whether it is Nithari; where it is Gurgaon serial killings, where for Rs 100, 28 people were killed; or it is Mukhtsar where the same kind of crime was discovered in the premises of a Congress leader; or it is the Hyderabad skeletons…
Statistical analysis of the State of the Union address. Hmm..statistics catching on in the mainstream media :p. Type in a word to see how often its been occurring over the years.
heels, bags and the like … January 23, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in life, science.add a comment
John Tierney at his new science blog asks : Why do women suffer to look like skeletons even when men don’t want them to? And he quotes replies he got :
“I find it incredibly curious,” wrote Stephen de Las Heras “that women’s aesthetic judgments are so influenced by other women. Men prefer the wider hips, and most likely could care less about high heels and handbags. Yet for many women all these things are essential to marking their beauty status with other women.” (He was quickly corrected by another reader about the high heels – although men don’t care if Jimmy Choo made the heels, they definitely like what the heels do to the legs and derriere.)
Interesting. When my friend was describing a busy day where she had to literally run around in her high heeled shoes, I asked her a few questions. Why the high heels ? a) visual effects – looking taller ( she is 5′5″ ) or the b) audio effects – the sound that she would make when she walk into a quiet room. She wasnt sure why. She asked me if I notice shoes or high heels. Yeah, if someone trips over and falls off, I will look to see if its their heels that gave them up. I asked her how many pairs of shoes she has. “On average, women have about 8-9 pairs of shoes at a time”. Since she told me the average value, it is safe to presume she owns more :p.
Now this is a personal experience and I only speak for myself. Moreover, given how different statistical properties of men and women are, I am sure there are things that men do to make a mark ( among other men) mistakenly imagining that it registers a few points with women. I can’t think of something right away – 4-wheel drive, xx turbo power V8, xx BHP engine, auto-transmission…..etc. etc. perhaps.
Foreign aid and welfare January 23, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, india.1 comment so far
Becker and Posner have 2 essays on the idea of foreign aid to developing countries not quite serving the purpose. Becker cites India as an example :
India is my favorite example to illustrate the failure of government foreign aid. From the fifties until the end of the 1980’s more private and government aid went to India than to any other country. Yet during that same time period, India had a very modest growth in per capita income of about 1 percent per year-sometimes resignedly called in those days the “Hindu rate of growth”. I am not claiming that foreign aid was the main source of India’s mediocre performance, but it clearly did not overcome the bad economic policies of its government. In fact, aid may well have encouraged these policies as the India government could always count on foreign aid to help it out of the worst aspects of any mess caused by its restrictions on foreign trade, severe controls over private investment even by Indian companies, and neglect of basic education, roads, and agriculture.
Fortunately, in the early 1990’s, the Indian government recognized that the real cause of its economic problems was not insufficient aid, but its own policies. Reforms at that time include opening up more investments to the private sector, greatly lowering tariffs, quotas, and other barriers to foreign trade, and changes in its thinking about relying on rich countries to help its development. Indeed, India can legitimately claim that now one important obstacle to its growth comes from the very same rich countries which had been important donors because of their import restrictions that hinder the access of Indian farmers and manufacturers to their markets.
I think lots of Indians would agree with that. So many things I read remind of me of this. [ Or read this ]
But Posner gets my points for being such an excellent writer. He also takes a chance to compare the effects of foreign aid to that of welfare payments – dependence on dole – and also explains what is marginal income tax. I wonder how long he took to write such a well-written piece. I look forward to being so good at at least one thing, one subject so that I can author a few well-written pieces on that topic. I think we should consider such a goal worth striving for.
I linked to Posner before.
Sidhuisms, Idiocy and shameless plagiarism January 22, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in rant, sport.add a comment
Notice this exchange between Mr. Navjot Sidhu and Anuradha Sengupta early in the interview :
Anuradha SenGupta: When do you sit and think of these Sidhuisms? Do they just come extemporary or do you think of certain areas where you need to create a few of them?
Navjot Singh Sidhu: When you do live shows and you do live cricket, can anybody tell you what will happen in the match? It is like a machine gunfire when you sit in front of 300 hundred people. Everybody wants to ask a question. Can you be prepared for it?
You will not even have time to think. It is like a bullet from a shotgun. It is spontaneous. It has to come from the heart. I always say, ‘Dil se jo baat nikalti hai, asar rakhti hai’ or whatever comes from the heart, communicates.
Late in the interview Sidhu says :
Navjot Singh Sidhu has never looked for sympathy. I made 17 comebacks in the Indian cricket team. If the conclusion is to withdraw then—he who dallies is a dastard, he who doubts is damned. I don’t doubt myself.
Anuradha then asks him : Was that quote your original or did you quote someone else?
He clearly evades the quesion and says :
What ever it is, I will give you another one. Doubt creates a mountain, faith will either demolish that mountain or tunnel through it.
I wish Anuradha had a laptop right there because it turns out – “he who dallies is a dastard, he who doubts is damned”, is a quotation from one George Mcduffle.
Later in the interview in response to a separate question he says :
Have you heard a song sung by Asha Bhosle that says Aage bhi jaane na tu, peeche bhi jaane na tu. Jo bhi hai bas yehi ek pal hai (You don’t know about the future or the past. Everything happens in the present). Let me put it into a Sidhuism. The past is a bucketful of ashes. No body built a reputation thinking about tomorrow. Between yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s hope is today’s opportunity. Take it!
Now let me break that down for you :
“The past is a bucketful of ashes” is a quote from Carl Sandburg.
“Between yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s dream lies today’s opportunity” is a quote from Barbara Johnson
“No body built a reputation thinking about tomorrow” is a almost the quotation from Henry Ford.
The biggest irony here in a TOI interview where he says :
Then he talks about the importance of being original, “My originality is my strength, I live in the present, the past is a bucketful of ashes.”
So Sidhu, you think we are idiots to buy this from you and that nobody will figure you out. Lot of smart people already have.
There is a quotation due to Alex Mayfield who said – “Every time [some software engineer] says, “Nobody will go to the trouble of doing that,” there’s some kid in Finland who will go to the trouble.”
He was referring to leave out loopholes thinking people are too ignorant to figure that out, somewhat a reference to the rise of Linux. Here too, all that requires to expose the liar-plagiarist that Mr. Sidhu is, all one requires is a computer connected to the internet and a disdain for people like you.
And as for CNN-IBN, the less said the better. Thanks for having censored by comment on your website !
The economics of cricket January 21, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, sport.add a comment
Scheduling matches and locations has got more to do with commerce than meets the common man’s eye.
A bilateral contest between India and the world’s number one team is aimed at capitalising on India’s lucrative pay television market, with each of the planned seven games expected to generate up to $6 million. A triangular contest would mean lesser returns for each participant, apart from relative lack of viewer interest when India fails to make it to the finals as happened in the DLF Cup in Malaysia in October 2006. The BCCI reportedly sold the offshore television rights for each game in the series that featured India for $US5.8m but had to offload the Australia-West Indies matches for only $US1.2m.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Indians are believed to hold the upper hand in the negotiations, for any of the other major nations – West Indies, South Africa, England or Pakistan – would jump at the chance to make millions were Australia to refuse to play. Yet, the paper also cited insiders as claiming that the Indian board was desperate to get the Australians on board if they hoped to raise $ 42 million from the series.
..been a while January 21, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, sport.add a comment
since we saw a headline like that. Good to have you back, man.
"Unstructured struggle" January 21, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, india, life.add a comment
Paul Farhi seeks to burst the myths of American education system in this article. I am not qualified to make overall judgements on his arguments but this little extract seems relevant.
Recently, Newsweek International’s Fareed Zakaria noted Singapore’s success on international math and science exams, but asked Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam why Singapore produced so few top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives and academics. “We both have meritocracies,” he replied. America’s “is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well — like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America.”
Its strikingly similar to what I wrote to a friend on July 24, 2005 as I warned him about how its different here.
This whole thing is a long haul – it’s several solitary marathons. Its not like sitting in a class with 100 other students. It’s not just about getting good grades and cracking exams.
This struggle is unstructured – where you have no clear-cut guidelines and precedents to go by. More importantly, its solitary – each case is unique and in the end, apart from your academic ability, what matters is your own ingenuity to see and seize opportunities, take informed decisions and calculated risks. In some sense, it gauges the extent to which you can work within the American system, which places a great importance on unstructured struggle, something that gives the individual a better opportunity to differentiate himself from the crowd than merely from standard exam scores. ( Ofcourse, the American system has other problems – best left for another day! )When you look back a few years from now, you will probably see that you have had no examples to follow and that much of what you did was never done before. That really will be your legacy.
"…hopeless, but not serious." January 21, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, science.add a comment
Why pessimism is so widely prevalent.
But when it comes to the still bigger picture — the fate of civilization, of the planet, of the cosmos — pessimism has historically been the rule. A sense that things are heading downhill is common to nearly every culture, as Arthur Herman observes in “The Idea of Decline in Western History.” The golden age always lies in the past, never in the future. It’s not hard to find a psychological explanation for this big-picture gloominess. As we age, we become aware of our powers diminishing; we dwell on the happy episodes from our past and forget the wretched ones; moving toward the grave, we are consumed by nostalgia and foreboding. What could be more natural than to project this mixture of attitudes onto history at large?
Reasons to be optimistic about optimism –
Optimism bias no doubt causes a good deal of mischief, leading us to underestimate the time and trouble of the projects we undertake. But the mere fact that it is so widespread in our species suggests it might have some adaptive value. Perhaps if we calculated our odds in a more cleareyed way, we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. couple of decades ago, the psychologist Shelley Taylor proposed that “positive illusions” like excessive optimism were critical to mental health. People who saw their abilities and chances realistically, she noted, tended to be in a state of depression. And there is new evidence that optimism may in some ways be self-fulfilling. In a recently published study, researchers in the Netherlands found that optimistic people — those who assented to statements like “I often feel that life is full of promises” — tend to live longer than pessimists. Perhaps, it has been speculated, optimism confers a survival advantage by helping people cope with adversity.
Reasons to be optimistic about pessimism :
But pessimism still appears to have its advantages. Another recently published paper observes that over the last three decades, the people of Denmark have consistently scored higher on life-satisfaction than any other Western nation. Why? Because, say the authors, the Danes are perennial pessimists, always reporting low expectations for the year to come. They then find themselves pleasantly surprised when things turn out rather better than expected.
And the perfect blend
….the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus came up with a formula nearly a century ago that remains the perfect blend of optimism and pessimism: Things are hopeless but not serious.
There….there…I now have an answer to questions such as a) “Hi man, how are things ?” b) “Hey, whats up.” c) “Hey, howz life treating you ?”
Yeah, the answer is the same : Things are hopeless but not serious.
Lip lock in the dock January 20, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in media, movies, rant.add a comment
Here you go again.
As one of the commenter says –
What Abhishek did with Rani Mukherji in YUVA? So they think there can be two rulesfor one to their Bahu designate and their son? What a shame?
Firstly, my views of Abhishek are here. Secondly, I am not fan of Aishwarya Rai’s acting talents, but I am a fan of her ( and any other adult’s ) personal freedoms. What kind of condescension towards the Bahu, Oh family ! Further evidence that education is a necessary, but by no means sufficient condition for rational, enlightened behavior.
Given the frequency of instances that call for the application of norm – “Hypocrisy is the rule, not an exception” – I will probably coin an abbreviation for that. HITRNAE ? HIRE ? HRNE ? Not sure.
Oh, yeah and the disclaimer, I havent seen the movie or the lip lock itself and couldn’t care less if it stayed or went. But its the intent, the bigger picture that gets me wondering what the …!
Mathematics and Government ! January 20, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, humor, india, politics.add a comment
1. Some tips on how to pass the Class X Maths exam !! I know most of us here dont need it but just saw this and reminded myself that its been 10 years since I wrote ( and passed ) the Class X maths exam. Most amusing of these tips -
List some simple topics, which can ensure you marks as they contain mechanical or direct formula based question.
Do not leave any question unattended in the paper. Write at least the formula and the information hidden in question. This will give you some marks.
Dont expect this in grad school.
2. Sanjika, my colleague and I have regular discussions on myraid topics and several of them turn into a left-right debate. His experience of his country Sri Lanka motivates a different point of view with respect to how much government can do. I obviously see the government as a major force for distortion. Here is now an article from the Times that reviews a book on India and maybe the Author Edward Luce puts it best when he says :
Mr. Luce encounters a woman in Sunder Nagri, a New Delhi slum, whose quest for a ration card entitling her to subsidized wheat and other staples involved bribing an official to get an application form. The form was in English, which she could not read, so she had to pay a second official to fill it out. When she turned up to claim her wheat, it was moldy and crawling with insects. The store owner had evidently sold his good government wheat on the black market.
In the northern state of Bihar, Mr. Luce writes, more than 80 percent of subsidized government food is stolen. Most ration cards are obtained through bribery, by Indians who are not poor. It’s the same story in nearly every area of an economy touched by the groping tentacles of a government that “is never absent from your life, except when you actually need it.”
Who does Sagarika Ghose have that job ? January 20, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, media, rant.1 comment so far
I have a few questions. Watch this program and tell me -
- What is Sagarika Ghose trying to do ?
- Why is she trying to elicit from the panelists ?
- Is she just trying to spin what the panelists say to subscribe to what she thinks ? Anyone who has read her articles knows her views, her politics, her slant and its evident from the program as well.
- What was the question asked to Kiran Desai ? How you put the question can elicit different replies from interviewees ?
- What does she mean by 83% of the views saying that the west and east are on the colision course ? How many people voted ? 10 ? 20 ? 100 ? 10000 ? Is that figure meaningful in anyway ?
- What kind of questions are those – about whether A Roy and K. Desai were awarded the booker for their ethnicity ?
- What does she mean by “millions and thousands of viewers are writing in to us about racism they are facing ? Does she know how many thousands make a million ? And how many million viewers does CNN-IBN have ?
- And whats with that accent dear, that feigned sense of urgency, immediacy and emergency ?
- And finally do you have that job because of who your husband is ?
I have barely watched 30 hours of American TV or any kind of TV for that matter in the past 2.5 years. I find most of it boring. News coverage with a few exceptions is poor and unnecessarily sensational. I thought India TV was more interesting although over the years I have lost touch with the Indian electronic news media. But this came as a shocker.
Personally, hard to disagree with a word that Meghnad Desai or Mr. Bhagchi said.
Indo-British trade January 19, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, india.add a comment
While the Indian communists often allege that foreign trade doesn’t benefit India as much as it does the outsiders, the sentiment in UK is quite the other way around.
And yet while India is keeping its part of the deal, growing at 8% a year, Britain has thus far been slow to profit. A report by the House of Commons select committee on trade and industry recently declared that British business had been left behind. Exports have grown slowly compared with those from other big economies (see chart): a baffling mixture of scrap metal and pearls has constituted almost two-thirds of Britain’s sales to India recently, the select committee found. British firms have also been unadventurous investors. Just 0.5% of their foreign direct investment has gone to India in the past few years, although India’s share picked up in 2005.
Common sense suggests that both of them can’t be right.
Here is something else on the Indian immigrant community in the UK.
They are a conspicuously successful bunch. The most recent survey of what 18- year-olds are up to in Britain could not find enough unemployed Indians to constitute a meaningful sample. Those who have arrived in the past few years have entered the labour market right at the top. Indians have been granted over three times as many visas for highly skilled migrants as any other nationality since the Home Office invented the category in 2002.
Before someone starts singing the song about “Indians being smarter”, let me remind you of this thing called ’selection bias’ which partly accounts for this difference.
Howling hollow January 17, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant.2 comments
[ Correction appended ]
I dont know how to react to this.
Hindus in Europe are opposing a German call for an European Union ban on the display of swastikas, the 5,000-year-old Hindu religious symbol that became the insignia of the Nazi Party, saying it was ’sacred’ to the community.
At the deepest level they may have a point, but more realistically, I only imagine whether this is consistent with we in India renaming cities, streets, bridges, towns and city circles because this reminded us of our colonial masters. I am sure that should offend the 1,300,000 strong Anglo-Indian population out of a total of 1,100,000,000 – rougly 0.00102727273 %. There are about 3 million Hindus in a continent of 751 million ( 0.00399467377 %).
I wont reiterate my position with respect to organized religion all over again but given that we have live with it in the forseeable future, if a country is trying to put its past behind and we form barely a trifle portion of their population, we can do without throwing our weight around in the name of symbolisms.
2.
On a related issue, here is the Indian Express editorial on the Big Brother issue. Long back I wrote
that my position on issues are almost lock in step with that of the Express. I can’t disagree with the Express this time either when it says :
But if for a moment one set aside the prism of race, it would be clear that the TV programme in question is designed to bring out the worst in participants. It can be race, it can be class, it can be gender, it can be any marker, real or perceived, that excites the kind of human interaction that forms the basis of such television entertainment. That Ms Shetty happens to be Indian, that she happens to be a celebrity should not therefore automatically engender a pan-national narrative. Which is to say just as one doesn’t need to be an Indian to find the comments against Ms Shetty obnoxious, being an Indian doesn’t call for indulging in reflexive, overarching condemnation either.If racism is a fact in many interactions in British society, prejudice is a quotidian reality of Indian social life. It is possible to argue, in fact, that Western societies have a better institutional mechanism to deal with prejudice, that the public space is more alert to bad behaviour and that one of the unfinished tasks of Indian institution building is to develop similar sensitivities. The Indian elite has to do some introspection about this every time it accuses — no matter how strong the provocation — the West of racist bias.
You may want to take a visit to your grand parents house. If you are a Brahmin, its likely that you will still see the maid servant/helper entering through the backdoor of the house, having lunch sitting on plantation leaves ( or plates/utensils meant only for him/her) on the floor and not allowed into the prayer room.
Further reinforces that hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception.
Update : Indian government, has on second thoughts, come up with a ‘cool’ response to it all.
Correction : Anand points out mistakes in my percentage calculation. They are off by an order of 2 !! I used Google calculator to divide and forgot to multiply by 100 to express it as percentage rather than per unit. The sentence should read “I am sure that should offend the 1,300,000 strong Anglo-Indian population out of a total of 1,100,000,000 – rougly 0.102727273 %. There are about 3 million Hindus in a continent of 751 million ( 0.399467377 %).” Ofcourse, even these relatively inflated figures dont change the meat of the argument. Thanks Anand.
The last one January 17, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in CMU, contemplation.1 comment so far
The first day of my last semester at Carnegie Mellon started today. Since I am not going in for my Ph.D. ( atleast not right away ), this might be last semester at Carnegie Mellon. Although in some sense I am looking forward to this day ( especially now that Natasha has put it so well ), in every other sense, its not a “good thin” ( this sounds like African-American :p ) ! I will have my longest ever post dedicated to this topic few months down the road.
With 2 courses, a lab, whole lot of research/project work and that thing called “job search”, posting will certainly be light starting today. If you have to kill time, you are encouraged to go down and sample some of the older posts you mightn’t have read. Some changes in the formatting therefore -
a) All the posts I ever have here are now displayed on a single page. If this takes years to download on your connection, mail me/leave a comment.
b) Archiving is daily.
In the meantime, I just realized I finished 300 posts the day before. This one. When I completed 100 and 200 posts, I made a big deal about it. This time I wont ( anymore than I just did ).
Hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception January 17, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, economics, rant.add a comment
Ravikanth has this interesting link to the Walmart store – pictures a visitor put up.
Hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception. While I concede the merits of the above situation, there is one thing all those who have a problem with Walmart’s practices can do – just dont go there. You will have your greatest wish come true – Walmart will close down.
Ofcourse other effects include :
Most of the low-class Walmart employees ( over 100,000) would lose their livelihood. Millions other poor Americans who save a few $100 every month ( which is a lot for a family that manages $ 20,000 per year ) because of Walmart’s low prices will be in trouble. Millions in China that exports more to Walmart alone than India exports to the rest of the world, will go homeless and slip back into poverty.
Companies like Walmart are soft targets. Read what Nicholas Kristof from the Times ( who is by no means right of center ) has to say and you know what I mean.
Or listen to this video atleast from time 3.35 to 5.50 seconds.
Or if you think about it still more deeply, get yourself “The End to Poverty” and read up page no. 12. Or use the “search inside the book” facility from Amazon. Use the search term : “New York ladder”
And even more specifically on Walmart here.
Bothering Deepak Krishnan ( and tens of million others ) January 17, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in general, india, rant.1 comment so far
Deepak Krishnan asks :
There are also times when I leave aside blind emotion and think with reason. What can the planners of Mumbai do more than what they have done so far? There is no place to lay extra tracks; and the roads are already loaded beyond their capacity. The only factor that I can blame is the ever burgeoning population of this giant city.All the bus routes that I can take back home, 373 Ltd, 310, 350 etc are all jam packed, with no opportunity to set foot into them, leave alone have a comfortable ride. And this story holds good for all other bus routes as well. The story of the trains is only too well documented to warrant any attention here. The option of letting a few buses go so that you can take the next ‘empty’ one is also thrown out of the window…..
Firstly, I sympathize with DK that he has to go through this.
Having exercised my right to feigned condescension , let me make a mention of things people do. I am no urban planner but there are a whole lot of things cities around the world have tried. Some of these things already are in place in Bombay – like restricion on where Autorickshaws can ply. But other things include -
Congestion pricing in London and making parking expensive in downtown areas as in NYC ( $15-40 per hour in some areas – roughly Rs. 300 per hour in terms of purchasing power ) are simple examples. Also parking rates depend on not just day of the week but if there is an event etc. For eg: Parking rates near and around stadia almost doubles/triples if there is an important match ! I guess that should apply to near wankhede for One-day matches, Tuesdays near the Siddhi Vinayaka temple and Fridays near mosques etc.
For the interested you can read this interview with an urban planner. Of the many things he says, this stands out :
For example, someone who starts gaining weight COULD say, ‘Oh the problem is my pants are too tight’. Of course it is true but it is not a useful way to look at the problem. You would probably not ever think of eating healthily or exercising if your focus is ‘tight pants’. Focus on people and goods instead of vehicles and traffic jams. Concentrate on how can we move people and goods in the most efficient ways. When you think like that, you tend to think a lot more about public transport, which is much more space efficient.
What he means by “Focus on people and goods instead of vehicles” is probably :
These include downtown parking policy, the encouragement of bicycling, the staggering of work hours by dominant employers, and the use by medium-sized cities of a “multimode” ticket that charges cars entering the city center a toll equal to the transit fare. The reorientation of urban transport analysis that they advocate will by no means eliminate traffic delays but should speed up the adoption of a richer, more flexible, and ultimately more effective set of policies to alleviate urban traffic congestion.
Another example I can think of is to have schools in the same area start at different times – schools in city centers are a big cause of traffic jams – vehicles have lower speed limits, parents’ cars are parked by the side of the road to pick up and drop children.
Shashi Tharoor quotes the "Epistles" January 15, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, india, landmark-post, life, media.9 comments
About a month ago I wrote this post quoting Shashi Tharoor’s article on doctors leaving the Indian shores – the medical brain drain. Since Tharoor took the often cited ( and more than meritorious ) position that the Indian public should not be subsidizing the education if they were to leave Indian shores to adopt foreign lands. Recognizing that this position will not go down well with a section of the public, I wrote :
Although I more than recognize the issue as I wrote before, I will not jump to conclusions right here, right now. In the meantime I will leave Mr. Tharoor to read his weekly quota of hate mails.
Turns out I wasnt entirely right. In his article in the Hindu dated Jan 7th, 2006, Tharoor says :
As is usually the case, the responses can broadly be divided into two categories: agreement (sometimes enthusiastic) and disagreement (often vehement). But many in both categories of respondents are willing to see some merit in the opposite point of view, which has led to somewhat more nuanced positions than anticipated by blogger Sharath Rao in Pennsylvania, who cheerfully wrote, “I will leave Mr. Tharoor to read his weekly quota of hate mails”.
So beautiful ! January 14, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, india, movies.2 comments
Director Mani Ratnam comes across as a really intelligent man and an exciting conversationalist in this interview. I could possibly listen to him talk about his art for much longer than 20 minutes. He ofcourse got his MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj in Bombay and look what he says when the scintillating Anuradha asks him how he has used his management education for making movies.
Anuradha SenGupta: Where have you used that degree. Does it come in handy when you are producing your film or I am just being simplistic by making that connection?
Mani Ratnam: There is a sequence in Yuva where Ajay Devgan is in the lock up and he is still talking physics. And when we were doing it, there was an elaborate equation on the wall and he had to learn physics for that scene.
So I was telling him about my econometrics professor who would write an equation right across the board and then look back and say ‘so beautiful’. So that’s what I made Ajay do and that’s the amount of econometrics I have used in my life.
But any education just gets you a way of thinking. It’s not a direct one-to-one application. But you must have an analytical way of approaching a problem.
Passage to India January 14, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, india, life.add a comment
A little short story here about a woman’s search for an ideal man for her cousin.
For many months after my father and I gave up matchmaking, I felt guilty about our failure. Recently I’ve begun to feel guilty about the attempt. I hear there are several suitors in India who are interested in Neet, but she’s still in no hurry to be married, or to otherwise sort out her future. Maybe we were wrong to think that she should be, or to think that we knew what was best for her.
I suppose all I really wanted was to see my cousin in more secure circumstances. It’s mere chance, after all, that she’s there and I’m here; that she has one kind of life and I another; that opportunities I take for granted are beyond her reach. I’m not saying that one situation is better than the other. But I’m not denying it either.
"We care for your life" January 14, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, life, politics, reminisces-2000.add a comment
This picture shot by Rajaram on June 21st, 2004 at the Biwi ka Makbara at Aurangabad in the middle of one of the best trips/vacations I ever took has an interesting inspiration. (An extremely short description of the vacation ( June 19-June 30th) is as below from a mail I wrote to my school buddies soon after the trip. ). If you have been into Indian photography or into a certain Indian politicians you would likely know. [ You will have to notice this picture rather carefully - I mean, read what the notice says. ]
Several years ago I had seen a picture that had a similar message, except that it was Jawaharlal Nehru posing. I in fact remember telling Rajaram about this justifying the need for such insolence and the pictorial evidence of it. I couldn’t recall what exactly Nehru’s picture was. I first thought he was standing next to a board called “Not drinking water” while drinking it. Several google searches for that failed. I then thought he was for picking a flower in a park while standing by a board that carries a prohibition notice. Failed to find that picture either.
Finally, I found it ! A rather poor resolution, but should you expand it, you get the message.
This picture was shot by one of India’s best known photographers and certainly best known lady photographer – Homai Vyarawalla. In an interview, Homai says that this is her favorite picture. I havent ofcourse seen all her pictures, but yes, this is certainly a lovely one. ( even if it makes Nehru look blind ).
As an aside I am impressed to see what the board in the first picture says – “We care for your life. Please do not sit on the stone railing”. For it were somewhere here, it would read more like – “Under no circumstances shall the XXXX be responsible for any loss including but not limited to life, property – material or immaterial, past or present. All consequences of the act of maintaining direct contact shall rest with the individual(s) concerned.”
That photograph wouldn’t be as exciting to pose for, or shoot .
Beyond belief January 14, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in geo-politics.add a comment
Thats ofcourse lot of cruelty.
At the new base, I stayed put for three weeks. Then one day, we heard that a rebel group was on its way to attack our village. I tightened the bandage around my shin, picked up my gun and followed my squad to ambush them. We killed most of the attackers and captured a few whom we brought back to base. “These are the men responsible for the bullet holes in your leg. It’s time to make sure they never shoot at you or your comrades.” The lieutenant pointed at the prisoners. I was not sure if one of the captives was the shooter, but any captive would do at that time. They were all lined up, six of them, with their hands tied. I shot them in their shins and watched them suffer for an entire day before finally deciding to shoot them in the head so that they would stop crying. Before I shot each man, I looked at him and saw how his eyes gave up hope and steadied before I pulled the trigger. I found their somber eyes irritating.
The problem is that it comes from a 11 year old child who was recruited as a soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone. He then found his uncle who was willing to repatriate him. He says :
About a month or so later at Benin Home, Leslie told me it was time for me to go live with my uncle. I was happy, but I was also worried about living with a family. I had been on my own for years and had taken care of myself without any guidance from anyone. If I distanced myself from the family, I was afraid that I might look ungrateful to my uncle, who didn’t have to take me in; I was worried about what would happen when my nightmares took hold of me. How was I going to explain my sadness, which I was unable to hide when it took over my face, to my new family, especially the children?
Where we learnt our lessons January 14, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in general, life.add a comment
Lions sleep about 20 hours a day (Boy, would I like be one of them!). Adult lions don’t have natural predators. So they can sleep happily. Male lions in the pride don’t hunt. They just watch as the females hunt down zebras, wilderbeests, buffalo etc. The females work in unity. They have a plan.
They spot a herd a zebras grazing in the fields. The most experienced lioness is in the front, slowly walking and stalking the zebras. Her belly is touching the ground, because she is lying low. She doesn’t want the zebras to see her. It is kind of confusing, because lions see in black and white, and the zebra stripes are not helping the situation to just isolate one animal from the herd.
She comes near the zebras and start the chase. Zebras start running. They are 2-3 times as big as the lioness. She doesn’t want to get kicked by them. She isolate one zebra and start chasing it. She is getting tired after a little while.
It is like a relay. Now the second lioness start chasing who was waiting for the zebra to pass her. Then the third lioness. The zebra cannot escape. It falls down, one lioness suffocate it. Lunch is ready.
The males arrive. They eat first usually. If they are not too hungry, they will tolerate the females eating along with them. All this time, Numa and the rest of the cubs are with a babysitter, usually a younger lioness.
From here. Unfortunately until recently, another species I am more familiar practised a similar way of life.
How time flies – a search engine optimization perspective :) January 13, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, media.add a comment
..do we get a chance to be kids all over again. Quintura is a search engine for kids. I particularly like the dog’s tail .
And even before you realize, it will time to get (to) cranky.com – a search engine for 50+ users.
The thing that perverse incentives do ? January 13, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, economics, life.1 comment so far
Very interesting article about what perverse incentives do, in this case to the Manhattan traffic.
Still, it seems unusual that more than a third of all government workers drive into the city, an even higher percentage than construction workers. So why is that ? According to the article, the government workers have a very simple and powerful incentive: “because they have free parking.”
Now one might imagine that this parking is not really free – since the land itself is mostly owned by the government, it doesnt cost the government a thing. But if it were indeed land that the government rented from private individuals, then the government is using your money to worsen the traffic situation by subsidizing parking for a handful of its employees ( by no means the poorest of the society ). Vulgar, isnt it ?
What if they instead chose to pay the employees an extra $100 a month, most employees would take the public transport because spending $100 a month on parking would seem preposterous when most of the neighbourhood is taking the subway. The extra money would most likely be put to better use and also in the process improving the traffic situation.
Ofcourse, one would have to look at all the details in the current case. But I dont consider the above to be so sweeping a generalization since we know that we all respond to incentives ( and disincentives). Just to remind you, incentives can be of moral/social nature – not merely monetary. Sometimes ofcourse these are conflicting. To set up a trap – there is a strong social disincentive against say throwing garbage in broad daylight on a crowded street – you wouldnt think of doing it. If you were offered a ten thousand dollars for doing that, you wouldn’t think twice. That monetary incentive can be put to good social use like this :
Pitt confirmed that their newly-born daughter will have a Namibian passport while speaking to local journalists. Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these extremely valuable snapshots. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide – the most expensive celebrity image of all time. All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Jolie and Pitt.
Yeah, we all respond to incentives – drivers, criminals, taxpayers, parents, journalists, none spared.
Kinda "wow" moment January 13, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, science.add a comment
From here.
Evidence can disprove a theory, but it cannot prove it. The most we can ask is that the evidence is not inconsistent with the theory.
Now, theory/model doesnt have to be a mathematical/economics model, its pretty much any world view that seeks to explain anything. Its not a foreign idea and it emerges in debates all the time ( and has always had ), but sometimes you just feel good when you read something you know put in pithy and precise manner.
Non-atheists and atheists alike will do good to remember this in their next debate “on the non-existence ( or otherwise ) of god”. The somewhat discomfitting phraseology in the previous sentence is entirely intentional .
Spare a thought … January 13, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, science.add a comment
and imagine a distance of 13,000 light years.
The most detailed x-ray image yet of one of the youngest known supernova remnants—the debris cloud created when a massive star explodes—solves a long-standing mystery about how the star died, an astronomer announced on Tuesday. About 400 years ago people on Earth, including the famous German astronomer Johannes Kepler, saw the light from a supernova. The explosion was so bright that it was visible with the naked eye even though it occurred about 13,000 light-years away.
I have written about these limitations before – to go where no mind has gone.
Now spare another thought for those depending on what Jane Galt calls the stamps of shame.
This put me in a curious mood the other day, when I was at the market checking out my groceries. I started to wonder: what is this “EBT” thing that’s on all the supermarket checkout card machines? So I asked the checkout woman. She stared at me. “That’s for food stamps,” she said, finally. She was black. I am so white that sometimes, in the early morning, I blind myself in the bathroom mirror. I have never felt like such a dumb, privileged middle class white girl in my life. Ever.
Whose line was it now ? January 11, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, media.2 comments
When somebody says, “If you ever have a problem, come talk to me.”, it might appear to comes across as a rather comforting one.
Except when its a Mumbai gangster saying it – it probably means somebody somewhere is subsidizing your comfort, maybe with his life.
One of the best similies ever ! January 11, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor.add a comment
Once in a while. some scatological humor.
“As soon as you mention Hitler, the entire subject of German history comes up again,” said Henryk M. Broder, a German Jewish journalist who gave “Mein Führer” a mixed review in the magazine Der Spiegel. “Like a congested toilet, everything that was flushed down comes back.”
Fortunately I haven’t had to put up with such a toilet.
That by the way, comes from a review of a German comedy movie based on Hitler.
Identity and America January 11, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, india, rant.add a comment
I came across this article by the Indian Consul-general in San Francisco, where he writes about “What it means to be American”. I was quite surprised to see a title as presumptuous as that in an Indian portal. It was quite interesting to read – not that any of that is new – they stand out from what we read in American newspapers, blogs and magazines. Nevertheless, when it all comes into one article, it made for a good reading. I am ripping apart his paragraphs and putting them in a more readable and commentable manner.
a) Respect for the individual and not for any collective entity based on class, religion or sectarian identity.b) The business of America is business and that the most important freedom is freedom from the government. To be a true American is to distrust the government. The state can be an umpire of our rights, not the arbiter of our fates.
c) The spirit of America is to oppose taxes. Taxes are a necessary evil, no doubt, but if we are true to the first principles, we must oppose any growth in government and above all any new taxes.
d) The right to carry arms makes us distinctive. To be American is to defend the right to defend oneself. Guns define American identity — a point that I had heard made aggressively earlier, which I have described in an earlier column — Guns and Roses.
e) Extremism in the cause of liberty is no vice and moderation in the defense of freedom no virtue — a quote from the arch conservative Senator Goldwater.
Point e. is more of rhetoric and I would not really comment on that.
Point a. has been something I have lived with and agreed with for several years now – my stay in this country hasnt significantly changed that – perhaps some reinforcement.
Point d. seemed absolutely preposterous until quite recently. It seems so even today. But I dont have a defence for the fundamental argument in its favor : Say you are at home with your family. An armed burglar breaks in. If you had a licensed gun, you could protect your life and that of your family. But if the state/government banned firearms, you don’t have one. The burglar comes in and shoots your spouse and child, you are seriously injured. Who is responsible for this ? America translates gun control to – “You dont have the right to self-defence, you have to lay down your life and that of your family for the sake of an ‘orderly’ society.” In other words, in the larger interest of the society, you have to make that big a sacrifice. I cant come to terms with Point d. and may never will. But I wont have a strong rebuttal to the argument above either. Let me know if you have one.
Point C. is getting more and more reasonable by the day.
Point B. is the big one – which I consider as the single biggest contribution of America to my political science education – the relationship between the citizen and the state. For most of my life, I thought that liberty means freedom from slavery/foreign rule etc., that its the freedom from the state is something I can comprehend better now. I have written about it before.
Any of this ‘acculturation’ is not an attempt to be anything other than what I am. We travel, we make homes in different places, within our country and outside and we learn new things – some stay on for the duration of our stay and some forever thereafter. Infact, we adapt to the point that enables us to survive and have a good time – nothing more, nothing less. It happened in Assam too, except not as much as perhaps in a foreign country.
I am of the firm belief that intrinsically the place you grow up is really what we fundamentally are. For the same reason, I disapprove of first generation immigrants who want to bring up their children in a totally Indian way. While the actual reason for settling here is that of a more comfortable life and better economic opportunity (nothing wrong with it per se), it often gets cloaked in alibis like better opportunities for children. And as the children to grow up, they are expected to learn only Bharatnatyam, play the tabla and not the violin, be good at mathematics and science and not American history, play with other Indian kids ( if they are allowed to play at all ). I think its extremely selfish on the part of some of the parents who insist so. If that is what they seek, it can be better accomplished back home without ruining your children’s life, leaving them confused and eventually having them hate everything that India stands for.
Perhaps a little simplistic, but essence is what I am getting at.
P.S: Meanwhile the article itself attacted very poorly expressed comments. I think in terms of meaningful discourse, the Outlook magazine comments section is less of a waste of time.
P.P.S : CNBC reporter asks why :
I would like to guess but will pass. I don’t know whats more worrying, whether they do or they do not. Actually, it is my submission that only 5 per cent of self-exiles actually ask questions. To the credit of this 5 per cent, as I have seen in some cases, they can go through considerable heartburn. The other 90 per cent I would argue, do not even pose these questions. Of course there are many who steadfastly maintain Indian citizenship. We would all know some of them.I always wonder why Indians (sure, maybe many Chinese do as well) find it so simple to switch nationalities ? Or is it that it does not matter when you are in the flow, student to H1B (or equivalent) to Green Card to citizen. Where is the time or energy to ponder where you really belong ?
Marriages and profession – II January 11, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, life.3 comments
In my previous post I talked about looking for data/evidence showing and demonstrating why doctors are more likely to marry doctors ( if they indeed do ) than say teachers marrying teachers etc. following a discussion with my doctor friend.
Source 1 :
Nearly half of all new physicians are women, and traditionally half of women doctors have married other doctors, forming a union called colloquially an “MD2″ (MD-squared). If the pattern continues, half of all physicians soon will be married to physicians. Among MD2s, however, women differed greatly from men: they worked fewer hours on average, earned less money, and more often were primary or equal caregivers to their children. Women MD2s were also more likely to arrange their work schedules to care for their children and were less likely than men to report success in achieving career goals.Nonetheless, both men and women MD2s enjoyed many advantages, compared to doctors whose spouses were not physicians. Their family incomes were substantially higher than the family incomes of other physicians (70 percent of MD2 households earned more than $200,000 compared to 47 percent of other doctors’ households), they more often benefited from sharing professional interests with their spouses, and more often felt their spouses’ careers were successful. Moreover, MD2s achieved career and family goals as often as doctors who married non-physicians, and they experienced conflict between their professional and family roles no more frequently than did other doctors.
Source 2 : A medical student says – Don’t marry me, I’m a doctor
Source 3 : There is even a movie called “I married a doctor“.
Source 4 : And another called “Doctors Should Never Marry.”
And finally according to 43things.com, there are atleast 12 people in the world who want to marry a doctor . Actually, make that 13 – I must email him this link. Oops. Its 14, Sadiq included.
Marriages and profession – I January 11, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, life.add a comment
The NYTimes says that the future of economics isn’t so dismal and lists 13 stars in the making.
So before this year’s conference, I did an informal poll of about 20 senior economists around the country and asked a single question: who are the young (untenured) economists doing work that is both highly respected among experts and relevant to the rest of us? Who, in other words, is the future of economics?
The most interesting part though is this -
In fact, the least diverse aspect of the list of 13 — the full roster appears above — may be the way that its members have chosen their mates. Six of them are married to another person in the group.
Spare a thought for the kids and their dinner table conversations. How exciting !
On the sidelines, Sadiq tells me that doctors prefer to ( and more often than not ) get married to doctors because they understand each other’s needs and compulsions. I have heard this before but I want to know if this is merely a myth or there is data to support this or if its a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, doctors seldom go in for “inter-profession marriage”, if such a word exists. And if so, what makes doctors special I asked. “They have weird schedules”, he says. What about nurses then who also have weird schedules. Why not teachers, carpenters ? Okay, thats a long shot, I haven’t heard of a lady carpenter…not in India atleast. ( But I want to meet one before I die ( doesnt mean I will die soon after I meet one !) ). Well, why not other professions where men and women are in approximately equal number ( actually there aren’t many ). I searched the net for data but couldn’t find anything to support this hypothesis.
Update 1: I did find data. See next post.
Update 2: Kudos women ! I found a British company all of whose employees are lady carpenters. They haven’t mentioned the professions of their spouses though.
Why hearing is not believing ? January 10, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, life, reminisces-1990s.1 comment so far
What is the earliest picture of yours ever shot ? Probably the day you were born or maybe a month old. If you are among the poorest in the world ( in which case you wouldn’t be reading this ), maybe you live an entire life without a picture of yours ever shot.
Now, what is the earlier dated recording of your own voice that you have access to ? That you or someone else recorded, that exists, maybe not with you, but exists nevertheless ? Most certainly the earliest picture is older than the earliest recording.
Keeping aside the possibility of video recording that makes available both visual and audio memories, why do we choose visual ( photograph ) over audio media to store our special moments ? Is it just about accessibility ? Cost ? Or thats just how we are – evolutionary reasons for prefering human faces over human voices, if at all such a comparison can be meaningfully made. Or is it because visual imprint is stronger owing to how hard it is to impersonate – its harder to look like another but relatively easier to sound like someone else ? Or even that its harder to change the way one looks than to change one’s voice and diction ? Why when friends and family get together you have elaborate photo sessions but rarely a session where you record the conversations ? Is it because we process images near instantaneously but sounds sequentially and hence less exciting ? When prospective alliances are sought, why do people exchange photographs, why not ( even in addition to photographs ), audio recordings ?
If you had to preserve a person’s memory and had to choose between a picture versus an hour’s recording of the person’s speech, what would you choose ? Why ?
P.S : My earlier picture would be within a week of being born in Oct 1981. It took over 15 years before a recording of my voice is available. To the best of the knowledge, the earliest recording of anything I said comes from this month 11 years ago – Jan 24th, 1996. It was enacting a ‘radio show’ at Little Rock – a recording of which I have a copy of.
Back to India stuff January 10, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, contemplation, india.2 comments
Geo-predictions January 9, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in geo-politics, humor, india.add a comment
India and Pakistan must solve Kashmir soon enough because 100 million years from now, its going to be much more complicated.
May your head spin. Amen. January 9, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in CMU, humor.add a comment
The Wikipedia page on Pittsburgh.
The uncyclopedia page on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia page on Uncyclopedia.
15 years ago, 7700 miles away January 9, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, reminisces-1990s.3 comments
News from Guwahati :
The violence in Assam is continuing unabated. Even as the Centre says that it would deploy more troops to intensify operations in the state, the ULFA has changed tactics and tried to attack an Army camp late on Monday evening. At least seven persons were injured when two bombs exploded near the cantonment in Satgaon on Monday evening.
I travelled to the Satgoan Cantonment every day for two years in 1991-93, my school – Army School, Narangi – is located in the heart of the cantonment area. I thought it was the safest area in the city ( though a likely target ). I remember when Babri Masjib demolition took place on Dec 6th, 1992, the last thing my parents had to worry about if we were safe at school – the cantonment was the last place you would expect a communal riot to break out. I went to one of my friends’ ( Pankaj Chauhan) dad’s office ( an army colonel ) and played computer games till the evening while the mosque was coming down. ( I hope a 11 year old is not held guilty of indifference/apathy ).
Its been about 14 years, since May 28, 1993 when I left Guwahati for the last time and I haven’t been there since. I am not in touch with anyone but one classmate from those days – inspite of best efforts. I wish they had an alumni association. As I wrote to my Little Rock friends in July 2005 :
I studied at an Army School in Assam for 2 years like you studied in Little Rock Indian School for 3 years. I left 12 years ago like you did 13 years ago. And I am not perhaps as lucky as you to one day crash into over 100 batchmates of mine !! I have not been in touch with a SINGLE classmate of mine. Only last June I caught up with a batchmate � infact a real buddy back then and to my utter dismay, he too has never been in touch with anyone ! So, here we are now, 2 people who are each in touch with 1 person i.e. each other � thermodynamic analog of a closed system ….
House no 21, Jogen Barua Lane,
Jorphukri,
Uzan Bazaar,
Guwahati – 781001
Assam
Thats the place. Courtesy : Wikimapia. The word “Jorphukri” in my address splits up as “Jod” ( joined ) + Phukri ( lake ). It comes from the 2 adjacent lakes that you see in the picture.
I love the city – Guwahati. The early 90s were the peak of millitancy in Assam. Yet, as a 11 year old, I roamed the city, much of it by foot – on walks, shopping, just going around, walking home from dad’s bank or the other way around – either with my parents/family friends/Bharath and so often, just alone. I knew Guwahati, every inch of the city, when I left her in 1993 ;perhaps better than I knew Bangalore when I left in 2004 or Mangalore when I left KREC in 2003. I dont think I have ever felt so liberated in any other city before. Maybe Boston. But then I didnt explore Boston too much either.
When I visit India next, perhaps in mid 2008, I want to make a trip to Guwahati. That will be 15 years from 1993 !
I searched for Army School Narangi and this is one of the pages that showed up. I believe thats a competition being held in the basketball court near the huge Tamarind tree in the middle of the ground ! This single picture brings back an interesting recollection. About 15 years ago I awaited my turn to pick my topic for the English extempore. For someone who was considered ( not at all incorrectly ) extremely unruly and mischievous in class, it turned out that my topic was “The naughty student” and the audience went up in a roar. It wasnt ofcourse my first time on stage , but my talk, as I recall now, was incoherent and by the standards I would choose to measure upto now, an unmitigated disaster. [ As a matter of fact, my entire time on stage right up till 1995 was less than mediocre. ]
Unfortunately though, I dont have a single photograph of myself in the school campus, though several elsewhere in Guwahati.
A tale of two ads January 8, 2007
Posted by Sharath Rao in littlerockers, media.2 comments
[ Or maybe I am of the opinion that Big B is just overexposed. ]
This is infact how I imagine atleast a part of the next Little Rock Class of 1997 reunion should be, whenever it happens. In the dark, perhaps on the beach or just an open ground. Not in the afternoon, not on chairs arranged in circles, not with a handful of people running the show. Although we, as human beings have an evolutionary need to be able to make eye contact when we talk, I think talking into the dark, under the sky has its own ‘big-dealness’ about it. From personal experience, I feel that people connect in an unusual way. [ Not that it means anything on a broader scale ]
“Sometimes things need to switch off for people to switch on”, as he says in the end of the ad.
My previous post on advertisements – here and here.
The advertisement, by the way, is based on a true event.
