You may say I am a cynic, but I am not the only one…

Just feeling in the mood for some pseudo random numbers.

78% of the world’s population doesn’t have wealth, strength, intelligence nor character.

9% have only strength. half of which toils and labours for the rich, the other half works as goons.

4% have wealth and intelligence. Well, of course, these are the lucky few in this world. These are the ones that drive the economy. Much like the dancers in front of the groom’s horse. And much like the dancers, they rarely actually care about the horse (or the groom; but then no one cares about the groom anyway).

5% have only wealth. These are the even more luckier ones. They don’t drive anything. They just gawp and/or hire the con-men. (see above)

3% have only intelligence. They are usually the ones who light up a beedi sitting under the mango tree, sip some tea, and feed the mosquitoes.

1% have character. Alone. Character never comes with other freebies like wealth, intelligence or strength. These fellows suffer. But some soon learn that suffering is futile. So they spend their lives trying to get some wealth, intelligence or strength instead. In the process they lose their character and also the suffering. Some simply don’t get it. They persist and sometimes make great speeches or deeds. They change the world. They then die. (Some linger on to decorate photo frames).

0% have nothing better to do on a foggy winter night and thus wear purple glasses with essential pulverisation to give exquisite fragrances of servile safety and marble synchronisation.. gah…. have to … turn off.. the random number .. generator

Short. But not sweet.

You might have read Hemingway’s short story (in 6 words):

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I saw a couple of other good ones.

Kirby had never eaten toes before.
- Kevin Smith

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

For more of these, check this.

Here’s mine:

When shall I open the parach…

.the beginning of the end.

What do you call somebody who plants a time bomb and gets out quick?

A smart bomber.

What do you call somebody who explodes a bomb tied to oneself?

A suicide bomber.

What do you call somebody who plants a time bomb, wagers a bet on the quality of the bomb, and hangs around to watch it explode?

An investor.

Dude!

MACSJ0025

No … words.. that.. I can … muster

I am (burp.. excushe me) a little sloppy, perhaps, but I AM trying to be a capitalist

It has become rather difficult for even an innocent surfer to open a random web page and not stumble upon the Tata – Singur plant and surrounding controversy. Today I saw multiple blogs taking pot-shots (here and here) at it and I couldn’t resist it any longer.

So here’s my take on it.

I fully support the stance that Ms Banerjee is taking. (Disclaimer: I am not an avid political watcher, and I don’t know whether Ms Banerjee has a hidden agenda or not. I don’t think this knowledge is central to the argument. And moreover, if the only purported agenda is “to get more political mileage”, I don’t see a problem with that either. Politicians/activists have a life too, you know, and they need to survive, to the best of my knowledge.)

If you are capitalistically inclined, it should be clear to you that this deal was not an open-ended one. The WB govt forcefully grabbed private land and then handed it over to another private party. Instead, in a capitalistic society based on free market principles, the acquiring company, i.e. Tata Sons and Uncles, should have struck a direct deal with the previous land owners.
If in the unlikely circumstance that you are communistically inclined, it should be clear to you that the very concept of a profit-oriented private company is rooted in evil. There is no good reason for the WB govt to hand over land to such a company.

So, does Ms Banerjee really deserve all that flak?

.babel.

Some of my newly acquired acquaintances are really quite quaint. They all have a unique way of pronouncing plural words in English. They use ’s’ instead of ‘z’ at the end.

For example, “Your ice are very red today” .. My what?

“Give me the kiss please” or “I hope you didn’t forget to bring the kiss”

Thankfully, this strangeness is only reserved for plurals. The “please” is still pronounced with “z” at the end.

Then there are are some sounds that they can pronounce that I simply can’t. Such as the ‘zh’ in Kozhikode. I pronounce it like the ‘Ɣ’ in Marathi “kEƔa” (banana) or “bAƔA” (child). But apparently it’s something between my ‘Ɣ’ and ‘d’ and ‘l’. I have tried to make those sounds but I really don’t know where to start since I can’t hear any difference between what I say and what they say. (Even french pronunciation was much easier!)

My misery doesn’t end there, yet. Their intonation, accents are all different. “Origin” is pronounced like “Arjun”. “Does the bag come with wheels” sounds like “Does the bag come widheels”. To make matters more interesting, that last sentence was heard on an STD call, and the speaker was in a running auto-rickshaw.

But after reading about Tonal Languages, I think I am much better off than say a newly married Cantonese man. From wikipedia,

In the most familiar tonal language, Chinese, tones are distinguished by their shape (contour), most syllables carry their own tone, words tend to be short, and many words are differentiated solely by tone. (This is more true in Cantonese than Mandarin.) Tone also plays almost no grammatical role. In many African tone languages, such as most Bantu languages, however, tones are distinguished by their relative level, words are longer, there are fewer minimal tone pairs, and a single tone may be carried by the entire word, rather than a different tone on each syllable. Often grammatical information, such as past versus present, “I” versus “you”, or positive versus negative, is conveyed solely by tone.

Imagine speaking in a language in which the meaning of the word changes, sometimes diametrically, based on what “pitch” you say it in! I think there’s one big disadvantage. You wouldn’t be able to lie easily.

“That dinner you cooked was simply terrific”.

“oh really? huh! Then why did I hear an augmented C minor chord there?”

.depressing.

… and so unfair (

This guy is an MD, who fiddled with biology at the molecular level, was a winter olympic coach, did some space-walks and now some Mt.Everest-walks

Check this out,
Climbing Mt.Everest between space-walks

Expect the unxpected

This game is hillarious:

Oracle

It’s like bash.org getting cosy with Yahoo Answers

Update:
Alright it was fun, before the space monkeys invaded it.

The price “we” pay

For a limited resource with high demand, such as gasoline, the price elasticity of  demand is very high, and consequently can adversely affect the economy. Yes, we all know that, but by how much does it really affect?

This article turns a concept into numbers with a stunning conclusion.

Good news! Bad reporting?

My sasural is about 20 light years away from my current residence, which means

1. I need to travel long distances
2. I need to find loopholes in relativity theory to be able to manage my vacation plans
3. Every trip is a good excuse to catch up on reading.

On one such recent trip, I picked up a copy of Business World, and pretty soon I was exasperated by the quality of some of their articles.

To pull out an example (from memory, I lost the hard copy), there was this story about a dip in sales in the automotive industry. The news (facts) were simple:

1. Sales of automobiles – in India – in the previous few years have shown strong growth (about 32% year on year)
2. Sales of automobiles – in India – in the first half of 2007 has shown a relatively lower growth rate (about 26% or something) over the corresponding period of previous year.

Now, this is obviously bad news for the automotive business. But is it bad news for business in general? That’s what the article tried to imply:

1. It said that sales of automotive industry are an indicator of economic activity because if sales of automobiles are increasing, it means that more goods are being transported, which is an indicator of economic activity. Ok, accepted. But the key word is “indicator”. The two things are co-related, but not necessarily by a cause-effect relationship. So, if sales of automotives slump, it doesn’t imply that the economic activity has slowed down or will slow down (which the article tried to imply). It could be that transportation has become more efficient, or that it has become redundant (think paper less offices, work-from-home empolyees, SEZs, blah blah). It could be that transport infrastructure has saturated, or businesses are doing more international trade (which requires alternate transportation). There are 2*n reasons for a slump in automotive sales, which don’t imply a slump in economic activity. Further, the fact is that only the growth rate of sales has slumped, not sales itself, which kind of makes the whole argument moot!
2. From #1, the article went on to suggest that RBI should decrease interest rates, to boost economic growth! What! Excuse me, but WTF!!
   According to the article itself, RBI has recently increased interest rates to cool down the economy (to control inflation). (Whether policy makers should play with interest rates is itself debatable. See this article). Now, just for the sake of a subset of businesses, the article suggests that RBI change its fiscal policy!?
3. Macro economic considerations aside, isn’t it just plain good news at an individual level, that automotive sales are slumping!? For example, it could mean:
   • Most people who could afford to own a car, do so now, so atleast they are happier.
   • People have finally become intelligent and decided to travel by two wheelers instead
   • Less cars on roads are going to mean, less pollution, less congestion and a better lifestyle for all

   The article doesn’t touch up on these issues at all!

Apalling!

Anyway, with all this food for thought, I had a good trip!