Wednesday, May 26, 2021
A story about a Green Boy who saw beauty in everything
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
No smoke without fire
Meanwhile, Argentina was throwing a fit: “Your ship is going to the Falklands. We don’t recognize that name. Reapply with ‘Islas Malvinas’.” I curse the Falklands War and reapply with newly attested fingerprints and affidavit.
Britain is sensibly playing down talk of a new war with Argentina. Since the Falklands conflict in 1982, London has slowly but steadily rebuilt its relations with Buenos Aires, now an important trading and political partner. But the Government has made it quite clear that the islands and access to them are, and will be, defended in the face of any new threat from the mainland.
Argentina’s declaration that it will do all it can to prevent the drilling for oil in Falklands waters must be dismissed for what it is: foolish bluster, provoked by dreams of oil wealth under the seas and intended to divert Argentine public opinion from the failings of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s floundering administration
I am having immense (for lack of a better term) sense of deja vu about this. This smoke and fire quotation makes too much sense!
Also, the power of travelogues is immense, don't you think?
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Giddy heights...
The Burj is American in another way. Most of the coverage of the Dubai tower has focussed on its height and its location, but it is also an interesting design. The form is not a minaret, like the Petronas Towers, or a stylized spire, like the Taipei Financial Center. Smith (who is no longer with SOM) and Baker have not produced an elongated cluster of shoe boxes like the Sears Tower, a high-tech-construction like Norman Foster's Hearst Tower, or a twisty sculpture a la Santiago Calatrava. Instead, they have opted for a distinctly unfashionable organic form, a sort of stalagmite. Many observers have noted the similarities between the Burj and Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt 1956 proposal for a 528-story state office building for Chicago's lakefront, which he christened the Mile-High Illinois. Wright's design is twice as high as the Burj, but there are distinct parallels. Both buildings are constructed of reinforced concrete; both have floor plates that reduce in area as the building rises, producing a stepped-back silhouette; both have a treelike central core that rises the full height of the building to become a spire. And both use a tripod design: The Mile High is triangular in plan, and the Burj has three wings that act as buttresses.
I'm not sure if the famously prickly Wright would have considered imitation the sincerest form of flattery, but he would have been pleased to see a version of his conception take shape in the Middle East, which was the site of one of his most spectacular unbuilt projects. In 1956, the government of the young king of Iraq, Faysal II, aiming to modernize the city of Baghdad, commissioned a number of leading Western architects: Walter Gropius for a new university, Alvar Aalto for the national gallery, and Le Corbusier for a stadium and sports complex. Wright was invited to build the opera house. The Old Wizard, as his biographer Brendan Gill called him, produced an astonishing interpretation of Scheherazade on the Tigris, a circular opera house surrounded by colonnades and water gardens, and topped by an open spire containing a statue of Aladdin and the wonderful lamp. Shortly after the design was completed, King Faysal and his family were murdered in a military coup, and the new regime abandoned the project. Fanciful proposals, such as the Baghdad Opera House and the Mile-High Illinois, are usually regarded as slightly off-key, the day dreams of a master in his dotage. The Burj suggests that the Wiz still has lessons to teach us.
(Read the complete article here)
Monday, November 02, 2009
Travel on my mind
- Journey in the Konkan - Ratnagiri, Guhagad, Ganapatiphule, Chiplun
- In Durian Land - Kuala Lumpur
- Amongst the Rajputs - Jaipur
- Rooftop of the World - Leh
- Beach cocktail - Goa
The perfect traveler must be a perfect contradiction. She should be open to almost everything that comes her way, but not too ready to be taken in. He should be worldly, shrewd, his feet firmly on the ground; but he must also have the capacity to give himself over to moments of real wonder. He or she must be curious, observant, spirited and kind—ready to spin a spell-binding tale of adventure and irony at the Explorers’ Club, and then throw it all over for a crazy romance in the South Seas.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
If half the world were sterile...
Instead there would be brutal division between those with the power to possess the future and those without. If millions of immigrants were brought over, they would populate the buildings but not perpetuate the culture. They wouldn’t be like current immigrants because they wouldn’t be joining a common project, but displacing it. There would be no sense of peoplehood, none of the untaught affections of those who are part of an organic social unit that shares the same destiny......But, of course, that’s the beauty of this odd question. There are no sterilizing sunspots. Instead, we are blessed with the disciplining power of our posterity. We rely on this strong, invisible and unacknowledged force — these millions of unborn people we will never meet but who give us the gift of our way of life.
Monday, December 22, 2008
"Ceteris Paribus & in Hindsight, we were right!"
"Overly aggressive mortgage lenders, compliant appraisers, and complacent borrowers proliferated to feed on the housing boom. Mortgage originators, who planned to sell off the mortgage to securitizers, stopped worrying about the repayment risk. They typically made only perfunctory efforts to assess borrower's ability to repay their loans - often failing to verify borrower's income with the Internal Revenue Service, even if they possessed signed authorization forms permitting them to do so."
"Indian banks are not levered like American banks. Capital ratios are 12 and 13%, instead of 7 or 8%. All those exotic structures like CDO and securtization are a very tiny part of our banking system. So a lot of the temptations didn't exist"
"The government, on its part, also infused Rs 4,000 crore into the housing sector through National Housing Bank (one of the reasons for LIC Housing Finance cutting its rates) and forced PSU banks to slash home loan rates for new loans of up to Rs 20 lakh.
The steps taken by the government and the RBI were also aimed at reviving the housing sector which is struggling because of the slowing economy"
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Three articles that are worth reading.

Sunday, November 30, 2008
My Story...
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Ten suggestions to get out of this rut
- Online Activism: Many journalists are net savvy and have large readership amongst net users. There should be blogs, twitter pages, Facebook communites which keeps the readers updated and provide opportunity to contribute to change
- Media Persistence: I sincerely believe that people do not forget such things, unless a more atracting carrot is dangled in front of them. There should be a regular section on every primetime news production to update, everyday on the developments on the investigation of the case
- Seek Foreign Interest: I saw a reporter on TV this morning saying that this will have a significant impact on the international opinion because foreigners have been targeted. Call me opportunist and biased, but we Indians have an affection when we are discussed by westerners and we should use tis opportunity to get the international community to see that there is no other place in the world, where there is a terrorist attack every week, and there is hardly a hue and cry. Apart from condolence messages and overtures about how two nations are united in their efforts to fight terror, nothing ever happens. Atleast the public does not know about it. It is time we know, because believe me when I say this, its not the government which is under trouble, its the common man.
- Canvas to Think Tanks: Around the world and in India, the politician always has his political party and the idealogical party. The change in attitude needs to come from the idealogues. The idealogical party is the 'school' for politicos. These breed the new generation and they need to come sensitized to these issues. Both in India and abroad
- Remove Economic Barriers to Trade: Terrorism is a symptom of the terrorist weighing his and his extended communities, opportunity cost. Humans are inherently self loving people. If we have an opportunity to positively influence our own lives through economic activity and trade we will choose it. It is only because of restrictive trade practices that some people don't see a profit motive and hence resort to other things. All the notions of freedom fighting is not relevant if it does not pertain to individual liberty. One man's freedom fight may be another's terrorism, but in fact it is each man's fight for individual liberty that matters in the long run
- Be Apathetic to certian things: When the controversy over Da Vinci Code's blow to Christianity was being discussed, the author Dan Brown made a great observation. It was only since the publication of his book that religious groups started recognizing that their beliefs were under threat. He said that it was not his book that will kill religion, but apathy towards it. We spend time being apathetic towards the terrorists until they cause a commotion. We should be apathetic to irrationality and kill it, not apathetic towards the terror attacks.
- Educate the Children: About the principles of Liberty. Every child should know that he can do anything he wants to; as long as he does not cause harm to another. "Your Right to Swing Ends Where My Nose Begins"
- Educate the Children: About responsibility. Every man is the cause of all that he experiences. Most people have issues with others, with groups, with idealogies. But in the end it is how one individually responds and reacts to things that makes the difference. Teach them to adapt a constructive approach.
- Educate the Children: That government is an abstraction for delegating responsibility of actions which individuals cannot influence. And it has been grossly overused. Each person can individually decide what is good for him in the market, about trade and commerce. The government should not have this responsibility, nor can it have a positive influence in the true sense. Governments should restrict themselves to their prime function - protecting its citizens from physical harm by others and protecting property rights. My actions cannot influence (in a big way, individually) when it comes to preventing terrorists from comadeering police vans and shooting at me. This I appoint a government to help me against. I can however decide how much money I need to save and how much I consume and how I price the intellectual capabilities I have, in free trade. I know what perception of value is, in an exchange.
- Have Active Minds: We are told from the days we are born that we should have an open mind towards everything. Objectivist thought neatly points out that an open mind to everything is an open mind to even a bad idealogy - say for instance, racism. Have an active mind. It is only man's intellect which distinguishes him from the other animate creatures and he has to make use of this mind actively and 'Reason' it out.
"The Crown Jewel on Fire"
"It should be very clear that the perpetrators of this heinous crime cannot hide behind any ideology since such attacks do not warrant any. It is weak cry by a few pathetic human beings whose only response to any form of competence is a blaring and violent display of their impotence. An impotence characterized by a lack of constructive capability, satiated by such pre-meditated acts of indiscriminate violence. "
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
'Broken Window' theory and Mumbai's litter problem
"The idea that observing disorder can have a psychological effect on people has been around for a while......It was this effect that his experiments, which have just been published in Science, set out to test.
His group’s first study was conducted in an alley that is frequently used to park bicycles. As in all of their experiments, the researchers created two conditions: one of order and the other of disorder. In the former, the walls of the alley were freshly painted; in the latter, they were tagged with graffiti (but not elaborately, to avoid the perception that it might be art). In both states a large sign prohibiting graffiti was put up, so that it would not be missed by anyone who came to collect a bicycle. All the bikes then had a flyer promoting a non-existent sports shop attached to their handlebars. This needed to be removed before a bicycle could be ridden.
When owners returned, their behaviour was secretly observed. There were no rubbish bins in the alley, so a cyclist had three choices. He could take the flyer with him, hang it on another bicycle (which the researchers counted as littering) or throw it to the floor. When the alley contained graffiti, 69% of the riders littered compared with 33% when the walls were clean."
Going by this theory, here is an answer to all those who think that cleaning up the streets of Mumbai is futile. If it were done, people would not see litter and would be that much more reluctant to be the ones who litter it.
It is high time. Lets keep our cities clean, then others will too.
"Government Spending to Save Businesses"
"More than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons "
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Valedictorian Administration
"Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law)."
"If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed"
"There are a lot of great minds on the list.“Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton’s top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.
Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.”
Notice anything missing ?
Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he “doesn’t do start ups”. Which means there isn’t a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows that its like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That’s a huge problem."
This is absolutely true. It is only thruough entreprenuerial vigor that one can see this battered economy regain its past glory and such calculated risk takers need to be fairly represented in the administration.
But then again, will entreprenuers want to get into politics and waste their time? They might be more interested in taking the 'worthwhile risks' in the Market rather than in the political arena!
