Very weird, no?
In other news the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India may have at least temporarily undone one stinking pile of poo. Bravo.
Showing posts with label policy type stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label policy type stuff. Show all posts
Monday, May 09, 2011
Hon'ble Supreme Court of India
This may just be me, but the way I pronounce "Hon'ble Supreme Court of India" (as it is often written) in my head, the image that comes to mind is this:
Very weird, no?
In other news the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India may have at least temporarily undone one stinking pile of poo. Bravo.
Very weird, no?
In other news the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India may have at least temporarily undone one stinking pile of poo. Bravo.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Readings du Jour
- Sean Carroll skims over many, many thought provoking questions in Avignon Day 3: Reductionism
Of course it’s difficult to describe people using Schrodinger’s equation, but that’s not evidence that our behavior is actually incompatible with a reductionist description. To believe otherwise you have to believe that somewhere along the progression from particles to atoms to molecules to proteins to cells to organisms, physical systems begin to violate the microscopic laws of physics. At what point is that supposed to happen? And what evidence is there supposed to be?
- A delightful little piece on Israel-North Korea relations! In the early 90s, apparently the Israeli Foreign Ministry tried to persuade the North Koreans to not sell missile technologies to Israel's enemies.
Enter Mossad. Israel's spy agency got wind of this plan, and rushed to Pyongyang to stop it. In a moment of high black farce, the two Israeli delegations each only learned that the other had been in town as well when they bumped into each other on the plane back to Beijing afterwards. (The foreign ministry officials were seated in first class, while Mossad had to slum it in tourist class.)
...
Bush the younger - Kim Jong-bush, shall we call him? - made many a fateful policy choice. This is one of his less famous ones, but it may yet turn out to be up there with invading Iraq. - Terry Eagleton, whom I first came across in this critical review of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, where he distinguished himself with such drivel as
Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.
This, not some super-manufacturing, is what is traditionally meant by the claim that God is Creator. He is what sustains all things in being by his love; and this would still be the case even if the universe had no beginning. To say that he brought it into being ex nihilo is not a measure of how very clever he is, but to suggest that he did it out of love rather than need.
Whaddeva. But this piece on Marx is actually readable and interesting.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Oh Our Ancestors Knew Everything
This stuff is just all over the place nowadays. From last Sunday's Hindu magazine
I am sure said ancestors sat around saying, "Our ancestors saw non-agricultural life as wholesome life. It's living in peace without disturbing the land and other humans, eating only what you could hunt and gather, not taking much at all from the surroundings, not eating away the capital. This perception changed in the post-agricultural, post-draft animal society. We are all children of this phenomenon."
The possibly unpalatable truth is that our ancestors were just like us. When they saw something that made life easier, they latched onto it, without worrying too much about the consequences for future generations. Which is why we ended up where we did, otherwise we would've forever been in some Gandhian "paradise".
In fact, we're better off because at least we have a more systematic (although admittedly incomplete) understanding of the good and bad consequences of industrialization or what have you, and we're in a position , at least to some extent, to make deliberate choices to not make the same mistakes that our ancestors did. For the first time in 10,000 years or whatever, a significant minority of us (if not the majority) have the notion of an ethic that values all humans equally (you must ask the ancestors what they thought about their serfs), and since the late 20th century, the notion (admittedly not widespread enough) of seriously caring at a societal level about future generations.
I wish our ancestors had actually figured all this out, so that we didn't have go through the painful process of figuring out some of these things via trial and error, but they were largely superstitious bigots who did the best they could. There's not telling (yet) if we're any better, but our attempts are definitely more solidly grounded.
During the Indian Constituent Assembly debates, in response to attempts to sanctify the village as the ideal unit for Indian democracy, Ambedkar nailed it like so:
Addenda (5-March-2011)
Time for a pre-emptive cover-my-behind! :P Thanks to an AWACS style email from the supremely well connected Mami about possible ramifications etc., this clarification, in case it was not clear from preceding rant.
I am not seriously questioning the value of living in peace with nature and other humans in the here and now! That's an eminently desirable, almost tautologically desirable, and anything we can do to take better care of the environment, including organic practices, re-cycling etc. etc. is welcome. My point is that we don't need to bolster our justification for doing this with what we imagine/wish our ancestors' thought processes were like.
Sensitivity towards environment etc. isn't something we learned from our ancestors, nor is it something they were very consciously aware of. How could they, when they did not know what the industrial alternative was like? It's just the way life was for them. If any ancestors made those kind of choices, it's the sanyasi types, not the average citizen types.
Today's sensitivity to environmental issues appears to be a mostly modern sensibility and way of thinking, which actually forces us to make certain choices about our way of life, in direct contrast to what the ancestor types would possibly have done!
“Our ancestors saw organic life as wholesome life,” said K. Vijayalakshmi and A.V. Balasubramaniam at the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, which advises farmers on organic practices and connects their products to consumers. “It's living in peace with nature and other humans, giving back what you take from surroundings, not eating away the capital. This perception changed in the post-industrial society. We are all children of this phenomenon.”What is perplexing is that if these ancestors were such visionaries who knew what was best, why did they ever change when industrialism and post-industrialism came around? After all, they knew that the organic, bucolic, pastoral living was the right way, non?
I am sure said ancestors sat around saying, "Our ancestors saw non-agricultural life as wholesome life. It's living in peace without disturbing the land and other humans, eating only what you could hunt and gather, not taking much at all from the surroundings, not eating away the capital. This perception changed in the post-agricultural, post-draft animal society. We are all children of this phenomenon."
The possibly unpalatable truth is that our ancestors were just like us. When they saw something that made life easier, they latched onto it, without worrying too much about the consequences for future generations. Which is why we ended up where we did, otherwise we would've forever been in some Gandhian "paradise".
In fact, we're better off because at least we have a more systematic (although admittedly incomplete) understanding of the good and bad consequences of industrialization or what have you, and we're in a position , at least to some extent, to make deliberate choices to not make the same mistakes that our ancestors did. For the first time in 10,000 years or whatever, a significant minority of us (if not the majority) have the notion of an ethic that values all humans equally (you must ask the ancestors what they thought about their serfs), and since the late 20th century, the notion (admittedly not widespread enough) of seriously caring at a societal level about future generations.
I wish our ancestors had actually figured all this out, so that we didn't have go through the painful process of figuring out some of these things via trial and error, but they were largely superstitious bigots who did the best they could. There's not telling (yet) if we're any better, but our attempts are definitely more solidly grounded.
During the Indian Constituent Assembly debates, in response to attempts to sanctify the village as the ideal unit for Indian democracy, Ambedkar nailed it like so:
The love of the intellectual Indian for the village community is of course infinite, if not pathetic …What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism?A somewhat tangential disabusing of the ancestors-knew-all tack is found in Meera Nanda's article in Open Magazine on yoga title Not as Old as You Think...or very Hindu either.
Addenda (5-March-2011)
Time for a pre-emptive cover-my-behind! :P Thanks to an AWACS style email from the supremely well connected Mami about possible ramifications etc., this clarification, in case it was not clear from preceding rant.
I am not seriously questioning the value of living in peace with nature and other humans in the here and now! That's an eminently desirable, almost tautologically desirable, and anything we can do to take better care of the environment, including organic practices, re-cycling etc. etc. is welcome. My point is that we don't need to bolster our justification for doing this with what we imagine/wish our ancestors' thought processes were like.
Sensitivity towards environment etc. isn't something we learned from our ancestors, nor is it something they were very consciously aware of. How could they, when they did not know what the industrial alternative was like? It's just the way life was for them. If any ancestors made those kind of choices, it's the sanyasi types, not the average citizen types.
Today's sensitivity to environmental issues appears to be a mostly modern sensibility and way of thinking, which actually forces us to make certain choices about our way of life, in direct contrast to what the ancestor types would possibly have done!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
In-flight WTF
I was on a plane a couple of weeks back, from lovely, pleasant Madras to freezing, gray as the Tirpitz Amritsar. The in-flight magazine had one of those travelogue things, this one about a home stay type place somewhere in the Western Ghats in Kerala, on a cardamom/clove/other spice estate.
The family that owns and runs the place apparently used to live in Bombay and this was an ancestral estate of sorts that they were planning to get rid of. When they visited the homestead, they were enthralled by how beautiful and quiet and un-city like the whole setup was; so instead of selling the plantation, they sold their stuff in Bombay and moved lock, stock and barrel back to Kerala and went about the business of reviving the thing.
All well and good. The article had liberal doses of numbers in it. Some paper napkin arithmetic follows, bear with me.
Total acreage: 20 acres
Plant density: 400 / acre
Yield per plant per annum: 5 kg
Market price of said spice: Rs. 275 - Rs. 1700 per kg, depending on market conditions etc.
Revenue p.a. = Rs. 4 crore (at a sale price of Rs. 1000 per kg)
Then the gentleman goes on to reveal some of his costs. Apparently they have 6-7 full time workers, and hire another 10-15 during picking season. These people are paid Rs. 150 per day, apparently.
Total outlay on labour, generously speaking = 365 days * 20 workers * Rs. 150 ~= Rs. 11 lakh p.a.
Finally, in a somewhat rueful manner, this stunning comment:
"Everywhere from villas and townships, to the new airport that's coming up, construction pays way better for a far worse standard of living. None of my workers' children want to get into farming."
WTF.
You're making 4 crores a year, you spend 11 lakhs on labour, and this is your biggest crib?
I hope they replace the entire estate with a strip mall and (i) the workers get paid something approaching a fair wage and (ii) we get to work on the project.
Readers are invited to acquaint/re-acquaint themselves with this tale.
The family that owns and runs the place apparently used to live in Bombay and this was an ancestral estate of sorts that they were planning to get rid of. When they visited the homestead, they were enthralled by how beautiful and quiet and un-city like the whole setup was; so instead of selling the plantation, they sold their stuff in Bombay and moved lock, stock and barrel back to Kerala and went about the business of reviving the thing.
All well and good. The article had liberal doses of numbers in it. Some paper napkin arithmetic follows, bear with me.
Total acreage: 20 acres
Plant density: 400 / acre
Yield per plant per annum: 5 kg
Market price of said spice: Rs. 275 - Rs. 1700 per kg, depending on market conditions etc.
Revenue p.a. = Rs. 4 crore (at a sale price of Rs. 1000 per kg)
Then the gentleman goes on to reveal some of his costs. Apparently they have 6-7 full time workers, and hire another 10-15 during picking season. These people are paid Rs. 150 per day, apparently.
Total outlay on labour, generously speaking = 365 days * 20 workers * Rs. 150 ~= Rs. 11 lakh p.a.
Finally, in a somewhat rueful manner, this stunning comment:
"Everywhere from villas and townships, to the new airport that's coming up, construction pays way better for a far worse standard of living. None of my workers' children want to get into farming."
WTF.
You're making 4 crores a year, you spend 11 lakhs on labour, and this is your biggest crib?
I hope they replace the entire estate with a strip mall and (i) the workers get paid something approaching a fair wage and (ii) we get to work on the project.
Readers are invited to acquaint/re-acquaint themselves with this tale.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
On The Economics Of The Madras Autorickshaw
Netizens of Bangalore have apparently gathered under the banner of Meterjam. In their own words:
When the subject is broached with the average Madrasi and the average visitor to Madras from those delightful orderly places ("In Bombay you know, the autowallah will even give back Rs. 0.50 in change, you know."), you will find a small vein near the temple start to throb in an alarming fashion. Invective gushes forth; destinations are suggested for auto drivers that make a Siberian gulag seem like Mylai Karpagambal Mess; summary public punishments are proposed that leave the entire Saudi ruling class gasping in admiration.
The Meterjam fellows are definitely entitled to protest, more power to them. There is however, one problem. Why, the anguish?
Most of the people I know who crib about this state of affairs are honest Joes and Janes, strong believers in the glories of such things as Private Enterprise, Free Markets, "easier" Labour Laws, Libertarianism and so on. And yet when faced with this particular example of private enterprise, there seems to be a problem.
After all, what goes on during your typical Madras auto haggle? You quote a ridiculous (to him) price, he quotes a ridiculous (to you) fare, you do the +10/-10 dance for a bit, some emotional appeals to honesty and conscience, and finally either you agree, or both of you move on. Isn't the price of a thing (or service) that magic number which the consumer is willing to pay and the provider is willing to accept? I submit to you that the Chennai auto haggle is the closest thing you will ever see to a scene from "Atlas Shrugged"! Whence cometh the moaning and groaning?
Thinking about it differently, what if all techies were forced by law to work for Rs. 15,000 per month as salary (50% above meter if they put night-outs!)? No more performance based incentives, no more premium for being smarter or knowing more or being willing to do boring and distasteful jobs. Nice, no? So why are you complaining about Manikyam?
One objection I've heard when I've framed the issue in this manner is that it's still not truly a "free market". In a truly free market, anyone would be allowed to operate an auto, there won't be barriers to entry into the business and so on, and this will be a "fair" system and whatever price point results is the "fair" price.
The argument has merit, but I'm not buying it entirely. My feeling (admittedly un-verified/-verifiable) is that even if into that heaven of freedom this city awakes, the cribbers will crib about how auto drivers are colluding to jack up prices etc., as long as they can compare it to the "fixed price" systems in other cities.
To conclude:
1. Madras (and such) are the only places that have truly free and fair autorickshaw service markets. This is closer to the free market utopia that we're all so keen on, than all other "fixed meter" places. You might want to try and remember this the next time you begin to declaim on such matters.
2. Shut the fuck up, pay up, and enjoy the ride.
3. You may perhaps have noticed these other strange long contraptions with numbers etc. on the road. In the alphabet of public transport, if you can't stand 'A for Auto', the next best bet is 'B for the fucking Bus'. Try taking one ever so often.
4. Also, if you stand straight and look straight down towards the floor, right above it, most of you will find 2 columns, banana tree trunk like. They are called "legs". The remainder of this proof is left as an exercise to the discerning reader.
5. That's all.
ecause strikes need a strike back! We're tired of meter that always reads more than it should, drivers who refuse to ply and demand return fare whenever they want. And if all that wasn't enough, now we have to deal with strikes too, any time the 'unions' decide!If the Bangalore fellows can evoke such a reaction, the reputation of the Chennai auto fellows will possibly set off something like the Long March. At least in Bangalore, they'll pretend that the meter is jammed, there won't be a return savaari back from just the place you want to go to and so on. In Madras, there's no pretense. The meter is just an ornament, a pro forma declaration of intent to provide transportation.
Everyone is holding the janta to ransom. How much more will we pay? It's time to turn the tables.
So on 12th August, shake your head and say NO if an auto driver offers a ride!
When the subject is broached with the average Madrasi and the average visitor to Madras from those delightful orderly places ("In Bombay you know, the autowallah will even give back Rs. 0.50 in change, you know."), you will find a small vein near the temple start to throb in an alarming fashion. Invective gushes forth; destinations are suggested for auto drivers that make a Siberian gulag seem like Mylai Karpagambal Mess; summary public punishments are proposed that leave the entire Saudi ruling class gasping in admiration.
The Meterjam fellows are definitely entitled to protest, more power to them. There is however, one problem. Why, the anguish?
Most of the people I know who crib about this state of affairs are honest Joes and Janes, strong believers in the glories of such things as Private Enterprise, Free Markets, "easier" Labour Laws, Libertarianism and so on. And yet when faced with this particular example of private enterprise, there seems to be a problem.
After all, what goes on during your typical Madras auto haggle? You quote a ridiculous (to him) price, he quotes a ridiculous (to you) fare, you do the +10/-10 dance for a bit, some emotional appeals to honesty and conscience, and finally either you agree, or both of you move on. Isn't the price of a thing (or service) that magic number which the consumer is willing to pay and the provider is willing to accept? I submit to you that the Chennai auto haggle is the closest thing you will ever see to a scene from "Atlas Shrugged"! Whence cometh the moaning and groaning?
Thinking about it differently, what if all techies were forced by law to work for Rs. 15,000 per month as salary (50% above meter if they put night-outs!)? No more performance based incentives, no more premium for being smarter or knowing more or being willing to do boring and distasteful jobs. Nice, no? So why are you complaining about Manikyam?
One objection I've heard when I've framed the issue in this manner is that it's still not truly a "free market". In a truly free market, anyone would be allowed to operate an auto, there won't be barriers to entry into the business and so on, and this will be a "fair" system and whatever price point results is the "fair" price.
The argument has merit, but I'm not buying it entirely. My feeling (admittedly un-verified/-verifiable) is that even if into that heaven of freedom this city awakes, the cribbers will crib about how auto drivers are colluding to jack up prices etc., as long as they can compare it to the "fixed price" systems in other cities.
To conclude:
1. Madras (and such) are the only places that have truly free and fair autorickshaw service markets. This is closer to the free market utopia that we're all so keen on, than all other "fixed meter" places. You might want to try and remember this the next time you begin to declaim on such matters.
2. Shut the fuck up, pay up, and enjoy the ride.
3. You may perhaps have noticed these other strange long contraptions with numbers etc. on the road. In the alphabet of public transport, if you can't stand 'A for Auto', the next best bet is 'B for the fucking Bus'. Try taking one ever so often.
4. Also, if you stand straight and look straight down towards the floor, right above it, most of you will find 2 columns, banana tree trunk like. They are called "legs". The remainder of this proof is left as an exercise to the discerning reader.
5. That's all.
Monday, March 08, 2010
WTF, Hon. SC of India?
In which we may have invited judicial retribution...
Prelude:
In 2003/2004 Sushma Tiwari, a Brahmin from UP married Prabhu Nochil, an Ezhava from Kerala. They were in love. 7 months after they got married, to erase the insult to their caste and recover their honour etc. her brother Dilip and some accomplices murdered Prabhu, his father and 2 children in their Mumbai home, and left 2 others injured. A pregnant Sushma escaped because she was visiting a relative.
Cut to Now:
Today's Hindu carries a brief story. It says:
While capital punishment is demonstrably wrong, even if the SC had reduced some non-capital punishment in this case [added 2010-03-08 11:50 a.m. IST]for the reasons it lists[added ends], it would have been just a mega WTF.
I hope someone is doing him a favour and sending Ajmal Kasab this vital piece of information. Here is a sentence to get him started:
"If I became the victim of my wrong but genuine religious and patriotic considerations, it would not justify the death sentence... The vicious grip of religion and nationalism, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality." etc.
If only somehow the Delhi High Court of IPC Section 377 fame was promoted en masse into the upper echelons of the country's judiciary...
Can this blog post be construed as contempt of court? Nevertheless WTF ya.
Prelude:
In 2003/2004 Sushma Tiwari, a Brahmin from UP married Prabhu Nochil, an Ezhava from Kerala. They were in love. 7 months after they got married, to erase the insult to their caste and recover their honour etc. her brother Dilip and some accomplices murdered Prabhu, his father and 2 children in their Mumbai home, and left 2 others injured. A pregnant Sushma escaped because she was visiting a relative.
Cut to Now:
Today's Hindu carries a brief story. It says:
Although the fast track sessions court in Maharashtra, and later the Bombay High Court, awarded the death penalty to Sushma's brother Dilip Tiwari and his accomplices, the Supreme Court in December 2009 reduced the sentence to 25-year imprisonment.And why did the Supreme Court reduce the sentence? Lo and behold...
The Supreme Court, explaining its decision to revoke the death sentence, said: "It is a common experience that when the younger sister commits something unusual and in this case it was an inter-caste, intercommunity marriage out of [a] secret love affair, then in society it is the elder brother who justifiably or otherwise is held responsible for not stopping such [an] affair."clap clap clap clap.... WTF! WTF WTF WTF?!! Is there some jurisprudential nuance I'm missing here?
It added: "If he became the victim of his wrong but genuine caste considerations, it would not justify the death sentence... The vicious grip of the caste, community, religion, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality."
While capital punishment is demonstrably wrong, even if the SC had reduced some non-capital punishment in this case [added 2010-03-08 11:50 a.m. IST]for the reasons it lists[added ends], it would have been just a mega WTF.
I hope someone is doing him a favour and sending Ajmal Kasab this vital piece of information. Here is a sentence to get him started:
"If I became the victim of my wrong but genuine religious and patriotic considerations, it would not justify the death sentence... The vicious grip of religion and nationalism, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality." etc.
If only somehow the Delhi High Court of IPC Section 377 fame was promoted en masse into the upper echelons of the country's judiciary...
Can this blog post be construed as contempt of court? Nevertheless WTF ya.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Avogadro's Number And Other Stories
Not stories, really. Links. Hmph.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy has been in the news lately. Last Saturday, at 10:23 a.m. local time, people all across the United Kingdom stood outside Boots pharmacies and ODed on homeopathic "medicines". 45 died after hours of agony, while over 230 had to be hospitalized.
Not.
The whole shebang was organized by 1023.org. I suppose the standard homeopath defense of this whole thing will be on the lines of, "Oh, but that's not how the medicine is supposed to be taken." and "Ah, but the precise reason why nothing happened to them was that the dosage was too high."
Whaddeva. Make up your own minds.
Other related items. The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology had what they call an Evidence Check. The uncorrected transcript is here. One of the people who gave evidence was Paul Bennett, described as Professional Standards Director and Superintendent Pharmacist, Boots. The following curious exchange happened at the beginning of the hearing.
Q1 Chairman: ...You actually manufacture and sell homeopathic remedies. Do they work beyond the placebo effect, very briefly?
Mr Bennett: First, I need to correct you actually, I am afraid. We do not manufacture products.
Q2 Chairman: You sell them though?
Mr Bennett: We do sell them.
Q3 Chairman: So you sell them?
Mr Bennett: We do indeed sell them and there is certainly a consumer demand for those products.
Q4 Chairman: I did not ask you that question. I said do they work beyond the placebo effect?
Mr Bennett: I have no evidence before me to suggest that they are efficacious, and we look very much for the evidence to support that, and so I am unable to give you a yes or no answer to that question.
Q5 Chairman: You sell them but you do not believe they are efficacious?
Mr Bennett: It is about consumer choice for us. A large number of our consumers actually do believe they are efficacious, but they are licensed medicinal products and, therefore, we believe it is right to make them available.
Q6 Chairman: But as a company you do not believe that they necessarily are?
Mr Bennett: We do not disbelieve either. It is an evidence issue.
So basically they sell it because people will buy it. Makes perfect business sense. Which brings us to the whole, "the homeo people are small time, innocent, peaceful, Luke Skywalker types against whom the baleful forces of the Evil Pharmaceutical Empire are arrayed" type melodrama. Boots is the equivalent of the Death Star as far as pharma companies goes. They're selling homeo pills. The last thing you can accuse big business is about being nitpicky about ideology. If it sells, they'll sell it, whether it's vaccines or $8 a pop sugar pills.
Apparently the report of the Select Committee will be published next week. Watch this and other spaces.
Sam Bowles
Not many people have heard about this gentleman. Indeed, I wouldn't have, had it not been for That Man Keynes And His Homosexual Intrigues. Bowles and TMKAHHI have collaborated academically, and TMKAHHI is in awe of Sam.
The Santa Fe Reporter has a piece on Bowles (who looks uncannily like an oldish Gregory Peck) and his work. It's titled "BORN POOR? SANTA FE ECONOMIST SAMUEL BOWLES SAYS YOU BETTER GET USED TO IT" and is an absorbing read. Most absorbing is the fact that Bowles' collaboration with TMKAHHI is mentioned ;) I'm tho totally absorbed only re baba.
Among the more interesting things he's looked at, are measures of inequalities in society.
Bowles' father was Chester Bowles, US Ambassador to India for Truman and Kennedy. Sam spent part of his childhood in Delhi, and a few slices from those days can be found in Chester's book about his days as ambassador in Delhi (can't recall the name of said book, although crumbling copy belonging to Dad is lying at home somewhere). Sam apparently saw Bhakra-Nangal and told Chester he wanted to be a Civil Engineer :P The kids went to some Indian school in Delhi, unlike the children of other diplomats who went to international schools, and TMKAHHI tells me that his formative years in India influenced the directions of departure of Sam's later work.
On a personal note, TMKAHHI + wife and I have spent more than one evening at Sam's lovely book filled house in a lonely-ish corner of Montague, MA. The snow outside, music inside, and the "gurgle" of books, is what one chiefly remembers.
How To Fall 35,000 Feet And Survive
Truly amazing article from Popular Mechanics. Sample this:
How Vasili Alexandrovich Arkipov Saved The World (And Shame Shame Puppy Shame You Didn't Even Know His Name Till Now)
Via Wikipedia:
Even if you don't axe me, actually.
Actually, I don't think your hacking away at me with a metallic cutting implement will change anything one way or the other.
So don't.
Axe me.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy has been in the news lately. Last Saturday, at 10:23 a.m. local time, people all across the United Kingdom stood outside Boots pharmacies and ODed on homeopathic "medicines". 45 died after hours of agony, while over 230 had to be hospitalized.
Not.
The whole shebang was organized by 1023.org. I suppose the standard homeopath defense of this whole thing will be on the lines of, "Oh, but that's not how the medicine is supposed to be taken." and "Ah, but the precise reason why nothing happened to them was that the dosage was too high."
Whaddeva. Make up your own minds.
Other related items. The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology had what they call an Evidence Check. The uncorrected transcript is here. One of the people who gave evidence was Paul Bennett, described as Professional Standards Director and Superintendent Pharmacist, Boots. The following curious exchange happened at the beginning of the hearing.
Q1 Chairman: ...You actually manufacture and sell homeopathic remedies. Do they work beyond the placebo effect, very briefly?
Mr Bennett: First, I need to correct you actually, I am afraid. We do not manufacture products.
Q2 Chairman: You sell them though?
Mr Bennett: We do sell them.
Q3 Chairman: So you sell them?
Mr Bennett: We do indeed sell them and there is certainly a consumer demand for those products.
Q4 Chairman: I did not ask you that question. I said do they work beyond the placebo effect?
Mr Bennett: I have no evidence before me to suggest that they are efficacious, and we look very much for the evidence to support that, and so I am unable to give you a yes or no answer to that question.
Q5 Chairman: You sell them but you do not believe they are efficacious?
Mr Bennett: It is about consumer choice for us. A large number of our consumers actually do believe they are efficacious, but they are licensed medicinal products and, therefore, we believe it is right to make them available.
Q6 Chairman: But as a company you do not believe that they necessarily are?
Mr Bennett: We do not disbelieve either. It is an evidence issue.
So basically they sell it because people will buy it. Makes perfect business sense. Which brings us to the whole, "the homeo people are small time, innocent, peaceful, Luke Skywalker types against whom the baleful forces of the Evil Pharmaceutical Empire are arrayed" type melodrama. Boots is the equivalent of the Death Star as far as pharma companies goes. They're selling homeo pills. The last thing you can accuse big business is about being nitpicky about ideology. If it sells, they'll sell it, whether it's vaccines or $8 a pop sugar pills.
Apparently the report of the Select Committee will be published next week. Watch this and other spaces.
Sam Bowles
Not many people have heard about this gentleman. Indeed, I wouldn't have, had it not been for That Man Keynes And His Homosexual Intrigues. Bowles and TMKAHHI have collaborated academically, and TMKAHHI is in awe of Sam.
The Santa Fe Reporter has a piece on Bowles (who looks uncannily like an oldish Gregory Peck) and his work. It's titled "BORN POOR? SANTA FE ECONOMIST SAMUEL BOWLES SAYS YOU BETTER GET USED TO IT" and is an absorbing read. Most absorbing is the fact that Bowles' collaboration with TMKAHHI is mentioned ;) I'm tho totally absorbed only re baba.
Among the more interesting things he's looked at, are measures of inequalities in society.
The Gini is an expression economists use to measure equality or inequality in a society.More
Zero describes the ultimate level playing field, a nonexistent land in which everyone has all the same stuff. A completely unequal society, in which one person has sole control of literally everything, would have a Gini of 100. New Mexico’s Gini score (45.7) reveals this state is more unequal than most. Utah is the most egalitarian state (with a 41.3 Gini), while the District of Columbia (53.7) is the most economically polarized, according to the most recent Census report, from 2006.
The second figure, 23, is the Gini for Sweden, the world’s most egalitarian country. Whereas most of Europe, Canada and Australia have Ginis in the low 30s, the US has over the past several decades developed inequalities usually found only in poor countries with autocratic governments.
So what? Isn’t inequality merely the price of America being No. 1?
“That’s almost certainly false,” Bowles tells SFR. “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”
Again with the numbers:So much for trickle down.
30
32
The first number is the likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a child born to parents whose incomes fall within the top 10 percent of Americans will grow up to be at least as wealthy.
The second is the percentage likelihood that a person born into the bottom 10 percent of society will stay at the bottom.
Just to drive the point home, here’s a third number: 1.3
That’s the percentage likelihood that a bottom 10 percenter will ever make it to the top 10 percent. For 99 out of 100 people, rags never lead to riches.
Bowles' father was Chester Bowles, US Ambassador to India for Truman and Kennedy. Sam spent part of his childhood in Delhi, and a few slices from those days can be found in Chester's book about his days as ambassador in Delhi (can't recall the name of said book, although crumbling copy belonging to Dad is lying at home somewhere). Sam apparently saw Bhakra-Nangal and told Chester he wanted to be a Civil Engineer :P The kids went to some Indian school in Delhi, unlike the children of other diplomats who went to international schools, and TMKAHHI tells me that his formative years in India influenced the directions of departure of Sam's later work.
On a personal note, TMKAHHI + wife and I have spent more than one evening at Sam's lovely book filled house in a lonely-ish corner of Montague, MA. The snow outside, music inside, and the "gurgle" of books, is what one chiefly remembers.
How To Fall 35,000 Feet And Survive
Truly amazing article from Popular Mechanics. Sample this:
You have a late night and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake. There’s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?, you think. Where’s the plane?Outstanding stuff. Take a bow, Popular Mechanics and Dan Koeppel.
You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling.
Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.)
...
...
By now, you’ve descended into breathable air. You sputter into consciousness. At this altitude, you’ve got roughly 2 minutes until impact. Your plan is simple. You will enter a Zen state and decide to live. You will understand, as Hamilton notes, "that it isn’t the fall that kills you—it's the landing."
Keeping your wits about you, you take aim.
How Vasili Alexandrovich Arkipov Saved The World (And Shame Shame Puppy Shame You Didn't Even Know His Name Till Now)
Via Wikipedia:
On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped a nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. Allegedly, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory nuclear-tipped torpedo.Reads suspiciously like the plot of Crimson Tide, if you axe me.
Three officers on board the submarine — Savitsky, the Political Officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the Second in command Arkhipov — were authorized to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favour of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch, eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear warfare which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.
Even if you don't axe me, actually.
Actually, I don't think your hacking away at me with a metallic cutting implement will change anything one way or the other.
So don't.
Axe me.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A Carnatic Krithi, A Rock Classic
In which the title of the post is a con
Brachevarevarura
Seeing as there was a Facebook meme going on a couple of days back about this subject, this may be relevant.
Not for the weak of stomach. The essay describes how a "surgeon" removed a tumor from Abigail "Nabby" Adams' breast in 1811, without the use of anesthesia. You have been warned. Thanks to Orac for the link. This is how it was done.
Tern, Tern, Tern
The Arctic tern undertakes a "colossal" (where colossus = 70,000 k.m.) journey every year from Greenland to the Weddell Sea. Scientist type fellows fitted the birdie type fellows with little tracking devices. Surprisingly, the devices don't work off of GPS or other such sat nav technologies. Instead
Brachevarevarura
Seeing as there was a Facebook meme going on a couple of days back about this subject, this may be relevant.
Not for the weak of stomach. The essay describes how a "surgeon" removed a tumor from Abigail "Nabby" Adams' breast in 1811, without the use of anesthesia. You have been warned. Thanks to Orac for the link. This is how it was done.
Warren then straddled Nabby's knees, leaned over her semi-reclined body, and went to work. He took the two-pronged fork and thrust it deep into the breast. With his left hand, he held onto the fork and raised up on it, lifting the breast from the chest wall. He reached over for the large razor and started slicing into the base of the breast, moving from the middle of her chest toward her left side. When the breast was completely severed, Warren lifted it away from Nabby's chest with the fork. But the tumor was larger and more widespread then he had anticipated. Hard knots of tumor could be felt in the lymph nodes under her left arm. He razored in there as well and pulled out nodes and tumor. Nabby grimaced and groaned, flinching and twisting in the chair, with blood staining her dress and Warren's shirt and pants. Her hair matted in sweat. Abigail, William, and Caroline turned away from the gruesome struggle. To stop the bleeding, Warren pulled a red-hot spatula from the oven and applied it several times to the wound, cauterizing the worst bleeding points. With each touch, steamy wisps of smoke hissed into the air and filled the room with the distinct smell of burning flesh. Warren then sutured the wounds, bandaged them, stepped back from Nabby, and mercifully told her that it was over. The whole procedure had taken less than twenty-five minutes, but it took more than an hour to dress the wounds. Abigail and Caroline then went to the surgical chair and helped Nabby pull her dress back over her left shoulder as modesty demanded. The four surgeons remained astonished that she had endured pain so stoically.What an unbelievable woman she must've been! Must've got her genes from mum (Apparently the first recorded use of "Mere paas maa hai." is from this era.) Abigail Adams (the mother, the daughter was named for her) was a major intellectual studmuffin. When her husband John Adams, later to be the second president of the newly formed United States, was part of the Continental Congress, trying to cobble together a constitutional form of government, she wrote him:
"...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.And on slavery she
...explained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such "passion for Liberty" as they claimed they did, since they "deprive[d] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.Respect.
Tern, Tern, Tern
The Arctic tern undertakes a "colossal" (where colossus = 70,000 k.m.) journey every year from Greenland to the Weddell Sea. Scientist type fellows fitted the birdie type fellows with little tracking devices. Surprisingly, the devices don't work off of GPS or other such sat nav technologies. Instead
The devices record light intensity. This gives an estimate of the local day length, and the times of sunrise and sunset; and from this information it is possible to work out a geographical position of the birds.
Friday, January 08, 2010
See? Links...
Cannot be bothered to bring forth original content all the while, so we'll do with industrial quantities of links.
- Group Gives Up Death Penalty Works. Via Veena.
Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.
- Astonishing pictures show how a Devon kayaker got up close and personal with a humpback whale feeding frenzy
When you’re in a tiny kayak and a 40-ton giant of the deep decides he’s a bit peckish, the sensible option is to scarper as fast as your paddle can carry you.
And while we're on the cetacean theme...
But wildlife photographer Duncan Murrell does the opposite. To capture images of humpback whales feeding and surging through the surf off Alaska, he often ventures within 15ft of the fearsome creatures. - Seaquake Theory
The concept that mass stranded pods of whales and dolphins were injured three to six weeks prior to the beaching by excessive and rapid changes in the surrounding water pressure generated when the rocky bottom jerked violently in the vertical plane during certain undersea earthquakes was first presented in 1987...
- Fruitful Decade for Many in the World
IT may not feel that way right now, but the last 10 years may go down in world history as a big success. That idea may be hard to accept in the United States. After all, it was the decade of 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial crisis, all dramatic and painful events. But in economic terms, at least, the decade was a remarkably good one for many people around the globe.
- A visual map of the arguments for and against human-caused global climate change - Looks like an excellent place to get a quick-ish summary of the pro- and anti-AGW arguments.
- What does it take to save a species? Sometimes, high-voltage power wires
Then, one bright June day in 2006, eureka: The bee was found in a hillside meadow...
...Even more remarkable, though, was the environment where this find was made: In a 250-foot-wide power line corridor off Route 163 in Southeastern Connecticut. Transmission corridors have long been considered symbols of environmental degradation, with their enormous steel skeletons and high-voltage lines slicing through forests, wetlands, and salt marshes; they divide the landscapes that thousands of species need to survive. Yet now they are gaining a new reputation: As critical homes for faltering species of birds, bees, butterflies, plants, and a host of other species. - Apparently, mobile phone radiation 'protects' against Alzheimer's. Notwithstanding what the fair city of San Francisco wants, I think I'm going to permanently strap my phone to the side of my head. [All sidey remarks about how this will serve the dual purpose of keeping me from losing the phone will be treated with the contempt they deserve.]
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Of Rivalries
A happy conjunction of conjunctibles is able to giving rise to this post on rivalries.
I. Cambridge v. Cambridge
Paul Samuelson died. The world lost a great textbook author. Apparently he was also a great economist. RIP.
[Aside: As Abi has pointed out, Subramanian Swamy wrote a tribute to his guide and mentor. Curiously, the Rediff version has a few choice not-so-nice things to say about certain "Left triumvirate" including a certain other Nobel laureate. Pretty much the same tribute, minus the not-so-nice is in the Hindu. Either some editor has wielded the selective scissor of Hindu-style political correctness, or Swamy himself, for all his brashness, went easy on the masala.]
[Aside': This is a first derivative aside. Aside to the above aside. Heh heh. Some lovely lectures happening at IISc over the next few days. Damn.]
Enough asiding. Onto the rivalry. Our good economics professor friend and lurker on this blog who goes by the epithet That Man Keynes And His Homosexual Intrigues told us about a Samuelson rivalry that possibly only economists know or care about.
The Cambridge Capital Controversy is a debate from the 1960s that pitted Samuelson and Robert Solow from Cambridge, MA against Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa from Cambridge, not-MA.
Apparently, the debate was
Like all highly technical questions in most subjects, the details need not concern us ;) The consensus is that the culmination of the debates was a more or less hands down (if inconsequential, as noted) win for the Poms. I remember That Man Keynes... saying that Samuelson had the good grace to admit as much in writing, and pretty much capitulated in front of Robinson, at least as far as this issue went. He must've been a great man.
[Aside: Joan Robinson was arguably one of the greatest economists of her generation, and sadly (? post-Obama and Kissinger) never won the Nobel. That Man Keynes..., the source of so much of the economics tidbits claims that the Nobel Committee pretty much waited for her to cop it, before awarding the Nobel to one of her rivals. Details will follow, if I can find them.]
II. Krishna v. Srinivasan
The Hindu carried a piece last Sunday by the vocalist T.M.Krishna in which he (pretty unambiguously) criticized the use of certain instruments in Carnatic music, because they cannot render all the notes and microtones needed to make a raagam what it is. Violins and mandolins can apparently be successfully re-incarnated in south Indian avatars (ugh!), but saxophones and pianos cannot. This was the opening salvo.
Today's Hindu Sunday edition has a riposite from (my friend!) noted pianist Anil Srinivasan. Anil, while agreeing in part with Krishna, argues against being "...autoregressive when discussing the preservation or conservation of a tradition. Trapping it in a time capsule and not allowing it to breathe or acquire newer characteristics is antithetical to the very notion of an intergenerational transfer."
By this time, the issues are abstruse enough that people like me whose aesthetic sense was last seen headed in north-northeasterly direction across the Siberian tundra have only a vague notion of what both sides are talking about.
Surprisingly, today's Hindu also contains a re-rejoinder from Krishna, who says that Anil misses his (Krishna's) point entirely. The show goes on. One wishes it didn't end here and moved into blogosphere. Rahul Siddharthan is doing his bit to make this happen!
III. Sibling v. Sibling
Vijay Nagaswami eschews the customary "end of year" ramble for his column and writes quite sensibly about relationshipsbetween siblings. Very readable, my brethren and cistern.
Here endeth the year. Blogging will possibly be more prolific in 2010. By the way, we must take this opportunity to announce that alack! the Filter Coffee will no longer be served in the new year. But every silver lining has a cloud, in the form of more enthu and content for the choultry.
Take care, y'all.
I. Cambridge v. Cambridge
Paul Samuelson died. The world lost a great textbook author. Apparently he was also a great economist. RIP.
[Aside: As Abi has pointed out, Subramanian Swamy wrote a tribute to his guide and mentor. Curiously, the Rediff version has a few choice not-so-nice things to say about certain "Left triumvirate" including a certain other Nobel laureate. Pretty much the same tribute, minus the not-so-nice is in the Hindu. Either some editor has wielded the selective scissor of Hindu-style political correctness, or Swamy himself, for all his brashness, went easy on the masala.]
[Aside': This is a first derivative aside. Aside to the above aside. Heh heh. Some lovely lectures happening at IISc over the next few days. Damn.]
Enough asiding. Onto the rivalry. Our good economics professor friend and lurker on this blog who goes by the epithet That Man Keynes And His Homosexual Intrigues told us about a Samuelson rivalry that possibly only economists know or care about.
The Cambridge Capital Controversy is a debate from the 1960s that pitted Samuelson and Robert Solow from Cambridge, MA against Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa from Cambridge, not-MA.
Apparently, the debate was
...concerning the nature and role of capital goods (or means of production) and the critique of the dominant neoclassical vision of aggregate production and distribution.Whatever. It seems that the debate was in many senses inconsequential. Wikipedia says:
Despite the highly technical nature of most of the discussion, in many cases it generated more heat than light.Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen says:
Sadly I must characterize the Cambridge capital debates as a fruitless diversion.
Like all highly technical questions in most subjects, the details need not concern us ;) The consensus is that the culmination of the debates was a more or less hands down (if inconsequential, as noted) win for the Poms. I remember That Man Keynes... saying that Samuelson had the good grace to admit as much in writing, and pretty much capitulated in front of Robinson, at least as far as this issue went. He must've been a great man.
[Aside: Joan Robinson was arguably one of the greatest economists of her generation, and sadly (? post-Obama and Kissinger) never won the Nobel. That Man Keynes..., the source of so much of the economics tidbits claims that the Nobel Committee pretty much waited for her to cop it, before awarding the Nobel to one of her rivals. Details will follow, if I can find them.]
II. Krishna v. Srinivasan
The Hindu carried a piece last Sunday by the vocalist T.M.Krishna in which he (pretty unambiguously) criticized the use of certain instruments in Carnatic music, because they cannot render all the notes and microtones needed to make a raagam what it is. Violins and mandolins can apparently be successfully re-incarnated in south Indian avatars (ugh!), but saxophones and pianos cannot. This was the opening salvo.
Today's Hindu Sunday edition has a riposite from (my friend!) noted pianist Anil Srinivasan. Anil, while agreeing in part with Krishna, argues against being "...autoregressive when discussing the preservation or conservation of a tradition. Trapping it in a time capsule and not allowing it to breathe or acquire newer characteristics is antithetical to the very notion of an intergenerational transfer."
By this time, the issues are abstruse enough that people like me whose aesthetic sense was last seen headed in north-northeasterly direction across the Siberian tundra have only a vague notion of what both sides are talking about.
Surprisingly, today's Hindu also contains a re-rejoinder from Krishna, who says that Anil misses his (Krishna's) point entirely. The show goes on. One wishes it didn't end here and moved into blogosphere. Rahul Siddharthan is doing his bit to make this happen!
III. Sibling v. Sibling
Vijay Nagaswami eschews the customary "end of year" ramble for his column and writes quite sensibly about relationshipsbetween siblings. Very readable, my brethren and cistern.
Here endeth the year. Blogging will possibly be more prolific in 2010. By the way, we must take this opportunity to announce that alack! the Filter Coffee will no longer be served in the new year. But every silver lining has a cloud, in the form of more enthu and content for the choultry.
Take care, y'all.
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