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!

🙂

Must see, must listen

well, atleast once..

Alaipayuthey on Guitar

Mungaru Male (Title song, Anisuthide)

(Incidentally Mungaru Male (which means Monsoon Rain) has been shot mostly in Sakleskpur, Jog falls and Madikeri. Hah!)

colorAssassin

After a long while, I got some time to play with a little pet project.

colorAssassin!

tada!

Try it on for size

Here is an image of Jupiter’s LRS (Little Red Spot) taken by the New Horizon’s space craft. The “spot” is about 1.5 times the size of Earth. It is a long standing storm system in the gaseous planet.

Here is a movie of a volcano on Io. The plume is 330kms long. Incidentally, the Himalaya stand about 8kms above Earth’s sea level.

And just for kicks, here is a snap of the New Horizons spacecraft taking off, from this little blue planet.

hmm.. let’s see

where have I been to? and didn’t blog it yet..

• Bike trip to Bekal beach with Ashutosh. Return via Madikeri & Mysore. A small detour to the temple at Addur. Mysore palace, at night, lighted up for Dasarah. About 1200km; the whole trip was a beautiful experience!
• Trek to Goecha-La in Sikkim with Oneiro, BLD and Mr Moustaches. 15 days. 5000m. Sub zero temperatures. Was fun, though not as much as I had expected. On return, detour to Jaldapara Wildlife sanctuary in Dooars.
• A trip to Ambe-Jogai in Maharashtra with family. Roads are terrific. Temples are poorly maintained. Ugh!
• Trip to Yellagiri in Tamil Nadu with Astro-friends. We sighted Comet McNaught!
• Trip to Shiroda Beach, MH with family, including Circuit and Mamu. It was fun travelling together.
• Savandurga, all in a day’s work
• Trip to Hampi with astro friends. A little of a flop, with weather playing foul
• Muktihole. Long back.. I am not even sure I went there anymore. There’s an unfinished draft. Need to publish sometime. Sigh!

.chess.

Two totally wierd games I have been playing:

Game 1

Game 2 (still in progress as of today)

I love to play chess with this guy!

NGC 602

This is just too freaking fantastic…

APOD : NGC 602 and Beyond

Notice the several hundred galaxies in the background of the image! It kind of freaks me out to see them all in one frame.. I mean, you always know at the back of your mind that the universe is big. But seeing it all sprawled out in front of you is utterly unnerving!

What’s more, by some weird space-time curvature, we might be looking at our own galaxy as it would be in the future! what what!

Wonderful World

Hear it here.

ooooh ooOOOhh oOOooooo! what a wonderful world.

George D Weiss & George Douglas

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom, for me and you.
And I think to myself… what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.
And I think to myself… what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces, of people going by.
I see friends, shaking hands, saying how do you do

They’re really saying, “I love you.”
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow;
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know

And I think to myself… what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself….. what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces, of people going by.
I see friends, shaking hands, saying how do you do
They’re really saying, “I love you.”

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow;
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Yes I think to myself….. what a wonderful world.
Oh….. yea…..

Avast! You land lubbers!

Check out them sites, Talk like a pirate and try this
program.

Check out this video. Amazing stuff in there.

Arrr!

more objerwhashns

the skies were amazingly clear on Friday, though the seeing was bad. Jupiter kept dancing in the field-of-view like Helen doing a cabaret. i was out on the gallery with my binocs, and DV joined me for a view. we were going to KP that night, so had very little time with us.

Only the western part of the sky was crystal clear, so apart from the usual suspects (M7, Jupiter), i saw,

M6 (or Butterfly cluster), and open-cluster in Scorpius.

M8 (or the Lagoon Nebula), but ain’t very sure of it. there are couple of objects in the same location, and all i could see was a bright blur.

M22, a globular cluster in Sagittarius, was fun to hunt. it was very faint at magnitude 7.1!

NGC 6231, an open cluster in Scorpius, clearly visible at mag 2.8!