The Daily Salty

Shopping for Weed in the U.S

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:34:00 +0000

Kannu

Here's a funny description of how weed shopping happens in some parts of the USA. I'm a firm believer in drug legalisation. As a libertarian I cannot understand this tendency of governments to ban drugs. As long as I'm dealing in things out of my free will what's the problem? The drug war has been the most spectacular failure. It's like prostitution. Cannot be stopped.

Yes. You may or may not try it. I actually didn't like it. First is the loss of control. Second is that it's just weird. And more importantly I'm naturally high and optimistic. :) I have fun, have faith in myself and in the future and am fairly happy most of the time. Other than when Diya and you call me fat. Then I'm grumpy. :)

Anyway. Here's the story. Remember the society we are building. Learn it's characteristics as you will have to navigate it son.

Love

Baba

Shopping for Weed in the U.S. - GQ May 2013: Newsmakers: GQ
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201305/legalizing-marijuana-united-states-shopping-for-weed?printable=true

Newsmakers

It happened. We legalized it! Pot is going to be the next great consumer product. Or so we all sort of believe. To commemorate, GQ’s critical shopper (marijuana division) travels to the most weed-friendly states in the union and offers GQ readers the first-ever authoritative guide to the lingo, the rules, the shops, and of course the many, many methods (lollipops! honey! wax! magical microwave popcorn! something called “dabs”?!) of getting high-legally! kind of!—in these United States

By Devin Friedman
Photographs by Maurcicio Alejo
April 2013
In November, they basically legalized marijuana. Even if you don’t pay attention to ballot initiatives or the like, you probably still possessed a fuzzy picture of where things stood. As of the past election cycle, marijuana is now totally street legal in Colorado and Washington. And possibly Oregon? And you’d been hearing for years about all those other places—there was a new state all the time—where you could buy it for medical purposes. Like California and Washington, D.C., and Connecticut and Rhode Island and, like, maybe New Mexico? Meanwhile, even in states where there is not yet a stipulation for those undergoing chemo to be able to blaze out, isn’t it functionally decriminalized? Isn’t it more or less okay to smoke weed right in front of a cop in New York City as long as you’re not killing someone with a tire iron while simultaneously being young and nonwhite? And conventional wisdom, at least from certain purviews, holds that the social taboo surrounding marijuana is now close to zero, whether you’re into older white women in Eileen fisher comfies (see: Steve Martin in It’s Complicated) or rap music (see: rap music).

Why Still So Few Use Condoms

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Thu, 02 May 2013 05:59:00 +0000

So many myths. So little facts. One interesting article son. I didn't realise the stats in the withdrawal method. Fascinating. I always believed that pre ejaculate had sperm.

Lesson for you? Wear condoms for the first few times. It doesn't matter if you like it or not son, you have to be safe. Once you are comfortable, no issues, no diseases, etc etc, then you can go bareback. And plus your first objective is to ensure your partner enjoys and loves the act. Golden words son. If you make sure first and foremost that your partner enjoys, then you will enjoy more.

Stay safe son. And have fun.

Why Still So Few Use Condoms - David Masciotra - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-still-so-few-use-condoms/275301/

Continue to the TheAtlantic.com

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With the “next-generation condom” initiative, Bill Gates is acknowledging that the practical reasons people don’t use condoms warrant honest conversation.
David Masciotra Apr 29 2013, 9:02 AM ET

ryan.berry/Flickr
As the late author Norman Mailer put it, “The only thing you can depend on with condoms is that they will take 20 to 50 percent off your f***.” In a conversation with Madonna on the topic, Mailer also condemned condoms for making people part of “the social machinery” and destroying “most of the joy of entrance.” Madonna argued that condoms are “essential in the age of AIDS,” but conceded, “they feel terrible.”
If we’re honest, many of us do see condoms as robbing us of pleasure, stealing some excitement and spontaneity from intimacy, and dulling the intensity of sexuality. It’s okay to say that. These factors are the primary reasons that still only 60 percent of teenagers claim to use condoms. These factors warrant acknowledging. From there, condom usage declines as people grow older. The number one reason we have seen given time and again for refusal to wear condoms is the reduction of pleasure.
Anyone who dares criticize the condom is typically made the subject of demonization and condemnation.

It is politically incorrect to acknowledge the truth and simplicity of the condom’s inadequacy. Criticism of the condom opens one to righteous demonization and condemnation. Condom defenders often stifle honest and helpful discussion about sexuality, unplanned pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections.

Olivier Blanchard’s Five Lessons for Economists From the Financial Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Fri, 03 May 2013 05:55:00 +0000

I take no pleasure in being prescient but one of the reasons we are ahead is because I lived thorough 3 recessions now. Son what goes up must come down. Details matter. Value investing is always going to win out. There are no silver bullets in investing returns. Find undervalued companies and invest. Look for good growth stories and good management. You read the intelligent investor.

Still as an economics student this article is worth reading son. The plumbing matters. The connections, the pipe width, the material, the angles all matter in the financial and economic world. And you can never be 100% right.

What people don't understand is that they don't understand what the future of the economy and financial system will be. So when people don't understand what's happening they react in bad ways. Go pray to god. Or bite people's heads off like the reaction against bankers. Or throw more laws. Like more laws against rape are supposed to lead to less rape. The thinking goes like this.

We have a problem. So something must be done. This is something. Thus this must be done.

Weird ass thinking son.

Love

Baba

Olivier Blanchard’s Five Lessons for Economists From the Financial Crisis - Real Time Economics - WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/01/olivier-blanchards-five-lessons-for-economists-from-the-financial-crisis/

What did the worst financial crisis and deepest recession in 75 years teach academic economists and policymakers on whose watch it happened? At a recent London School of Economics forum, convened to honor Bank of England Governor Mervyn King,Olivier Blanchard offered some answers.

Getty Images
Olivier Blanchard

Mr. Blanchard, 64 years old, is well positioned to offer such reconsideration. An internationally prominent macroeconomist, he spent 25 years on the MIT faculty before becoming chief economist at the International Monetary Fund in September 2008, just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Here are Mr. Blanchard¹s five lessons in his own words, lightly edited by The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel:
#1: Humility is in order.
The Great Moderation [the economically tranquil period from 1987 to 2007] convinced too many of us that the large-economy crisis - a financial crisis, a banking crisis - was a thing of the past. It wasn’t going to happen again, except maybe in emerging markets. History was marching on.
My generation, which was born after World War II, lived with the notion that the world was getting to be a better and better place. We knew how to do things better, not only in economics but in other fields as well. What we have learned is that¹s not true. History repeats itself. We should have known.

The Weeklies

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:16:00 +0000

he Weeklies
http://prospect.org/article/weeklies

Poverty is hugely distressing son. It destroys your dignity, there is no love and you become the worst of the worst. Having lived though serious poverty which included your parents crying about money or rather the lack of it, it's not something that I would care to repeat.

You never know what may happen so always have emergency cash and good savings. I keep on telling you, save a third of your salary son. Cut down on outgoings. It may mean a few less luxuries or entertainment but as you can see from me, having fun doesn't mean you need to spend money.

See what happened to this family. Or families. Washed up in a hotel. But they will get out. That is what's creditable. They are fighting. And that's impressive Kannu.

Love

Baba

From the outside, it is hard to know that people live in the Ramada Inn. The parking lot is always empty. The hotel sits facing a wide suburban boulevard called Kipling Street, just off Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The interchange where Kipling meets the freeway is packed mornings and evenings with daily commuters going to or coming from Denver and with skiers heading west into the Rockies. Hotels dot I-70 as it cuts through the 764-square-mile stretch of suburbia that runs from the city into the mountains, but at the intersection with Kipling is a cluster of seven budget-savers that travel websites warn tourists away from. The hotels advertise low prices—ranging from $36 to $89 a night—on neon signs next to gigantic flags that whip in the Front Range wind. Most offer even lower weekly or monthly rates. The Ramada is farther from the frontage road than the other hotels and is harder to notice, with its plain yellow stucco and dimly lit red sign.
Inside the lobby, which has wide windows and a clear view of a long, low mountain called Table Top and the snowy peaks beyond, are plenty of clues that the Ramada is more than just a hotel. Off the lobby sit two sets of washers and dryers that each take a dollar in quarters, and on weekends families use one of the bellhop carts kept in a back hall to roll out baskets of dirty laundry. In the late afternoon, schoolchildren do their homework on the dozen tables where guests have breakfast. Residents sit at the two computers with Internet connections. They wander around in sock-clad feet and chat with whomever they run into.
At any given time, roughly 20 to 40 guests are staying long term. Since they pay by the week, they call themselves “weeklies.” To score the cheap rates, $210 for individuals and slightly more for families, they must pay in advance. Residents sign a form that lists the activities that could get them kicked out (mostly involving drugs) and warns that they won’t get reimbursed if they leave early, no exceptions. Some families stay only for a few weeks, some for months, giving the hotel the feeling of a dormitory. A rotating cast of front-desk clerks sells candy and rations towels and washcloths. Though some of the clerks are kind and helpful, the guests think of them as enforcers, and the clerks tend to treat the weeklies less as customers than as undergraduates stealing toilet paper and sneaking in hot plates.

Robert Peston on his wife Siân Busby: 'I miss her all the time'

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:13:00 +0000

A paean to a loved one. Brave? Most definitely. Curious eh? To see and read these memories? Lucky that they had such a love to share and behold son.

But one thing. Don't cry when I leave. One of my teachers told me that tears are an expression of regret. Regret that that person didn't get to do so many things. Play with them. Read with them. Dance with them. Cook with them. So on and so forth. We have had fun son. We have done so many things together. So nothing to cry about. But be happy for the times we spent together. That's the thing. Look around you at the people you love. Will you cry if they go? Why? Regret? If there's regret then why haven't you done those things with them? Do it now!

Be happy son.

Love

Baba

Robert Peston on his wife Siân Busby: 'I miss her all the time' | Radio Times
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-05-05/robert-peston-on-his-wife-sin-busby-i-miss-her-all-the-time

Siân Elizabeth Busby died on 4 September 2012 after a long illness. A few days later I transcribed her handwritten manuscript for the end of A Commonplace Killing, her final novel. My motive was selfish: I wanted to keep talking to her. I still do. The tears could not be staunched as I read, deciphered and typed. Foggy-brained, the transcription was spoilt by spelling mistakes and typographical errors. All mine. Siân’s prose was as pellucid and accurate as ever. And brave. Here she was, all hope lost of reprieve from the lethal cancer, reflecting on what it is like to know that death awaits on the morrow.

What caught me off guard is that the work is complete, and – for me at least – more-or-less perfect. Siân worked on it until the illness became excruciating and wholly incapacitating. I did not know, until reading handwriting as familiar as my own and hearing her voice in my head, that she had finished this exquisite work. I should have guessed. When Siân put her formidable mind to a project, whether it was teaching herself to read as an infant, years before going to school, or curating a museum on the history of Judaism (a non-Jew, she could hold her own in a scholarly spat with the rabbis, and inevitably knew far more about my inherited faith than me), or directing a 19-hour Chinese opera, she always triumphed. And as if to accentuate my own vanity, she was never smug, always dissatisfied with her own efforts, routinely critical of her achievements.

Voices of sanity in wilderness

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Thu, 09 May 2013 06:11:00 +0000

Kannu

Here's a heartfelt letter of thanks from a Muslim man who thanks Hindus for helping his discriminated community.

You can see the discrimination all over the world. But you personally should fight this. Have a gf. Or friend. So what if she he is a Muslim. Are they good? That's all you need to know and you don't need no stinking book or political party to tell you so. This is why I hate the Bjp. It's primarily filled by bigots. Hardly any of them exhibit any intelligence and their followers are usually idiotic as well. And the funny thing is that for a Hindu party, most don't know Sanskrit or have ever read any Hindu books. So they have no frikking idea what Hinduism is either.

But as I said you don't need to read a religious book be a good person.

Love

Baba

Voices of sanity in wilderness | TwoCircles.net
http://twocircles.net/2013apr14/voices_sanity_wilderness.html

Even as communalism grows in India, some of the fiercest voices raised in defence of Muslims happen to be those of Hindus
By Aijaz Zaka Syed,
Every time I despair of the land of the myriad hues and contradictions that is India, every time it’s many heroes give me fresh hope. And every time I stick out my neck to share the insecurities and concerns of my tribe and other dispossessed, I receive loads of fan mail most of which cannot be reproduced in these columns. Clearly, the Net is full of all sorts of fish. The comforting anonymity of cyberspace removes all inhibitions revealing our true colours.
But there are also those out there who never cease to amaze you with their generosity of spirit and ability to feel others’ pain. One such blessed soul is my friend Shashank Sharma, who heads a multinational IT giant. (I hope he will forgive this impudence to name him).

War and Famine in Late Colonial Bengal

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Mon, 13 May 2013 05:54:00 +0000

This was a raw read. A snippet: ]

A review of Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire 1939-1946, by Janam Mukherjee.
Janam Mukherjee’s dissertation is a thorough study of late colonial Bengal in the context of war, famine, and riots leading up to the eventual dissolution of empire. The central argument of the dissertation is built on the claim that famine was the “most profound factor influencing the structural, political, social, economic and communal fabric of Bengal” during this period (p. 5). The author provides a vivid illustration of the famine’s “awesome magnitude” in terms of its impact on the socio-political landscape of Bengal (p. 7). Before proceeding to the core content of the work, the author makes three important revisions to our understandings of the famine: first, he complicates the chronology of the famine, which is otherwise more commonly referred to as the Bengal Famine of 1943. Secondly, he shows that the war efforts and business interests, both centered in Calcutta, were responsible in equal measure for the devastation that ravaged rural Bengal, thus leading to the famine. And by looking beyond the actual famine victims and drawing a more explicit link between rural and urban Bengal, this work also demonstrates that the Bengal Famine was indeed “man-made.” Finally, contrary to the claim that the famine victims “died without a murmur” (Sugata Bose,Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure, and Politics, 1919-1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) the author argues that by broadening the chronology of the famine the active resistance of the victims becomes evident.

I have spoken before about witnessing the raw hunger and pain in Calcutta when I was a teeny weeny chappie, around the war of independence in 1971. Seeing people fighting over scraps of food in the rubbish bins with dogs and others was a horrible sight. But to see that the British actually had direct responsibility over the death of millions of Bengali’s is a big big issue.

Sad.

Here is the wiki entryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 for the Bengal Famine.

Niven's laws

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:21:00 +0000

One of my friends shared this link with me. Very amusing some of them son. Perfect to sprinkle in your conversation or essays. Provides a bit of zest. Btw, a bit of a sneaky tip. In your exam papers and essays, just a small hint of humour increases your marks. Marking papers is a bloody boring job. One of the main reasons why i couldn't be full time in academia. So when I read something a bit amusing, it increases my marking generosity. And many other teachers have said so to me as well.

Love

Baba.

Niven's laws - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven%27s_laws#Niven.27s_Law_.28re_Time_travel.29

Niven’s laws were named after science fiction author Larry Niven, who has periodically published them as “how the Universe works” as far as he can tell. These were most recently rewritten on January 29, 2002 (and published in Analog Magazine in the November 2002 issue). Among the rules are:
Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naïve.

It is easier to destroy than to create.

Ethics change with technology.

The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.

Others

Niven’s Law (re Time travel)

See also: Novikov self-consistency principle
A different law is given this name in Niven’s essay “The Theory and Practice of Time Travel”:
Niven’s Law

If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe.

Hans Moravec glosses this version of Niven’s Law as follows:
There is a spookier possibility. Suppose it is easy to send messages to the past, but that forward causality also holds (i.e. past events determine the future). In one way of reasoning about it, a message sent to the past will “alter” the entire history following its receipt, including the event that sent it, and thus the message itself. Thus altered, the message will change the past in a different way, and so on, until some “equilibrium” is reached—the simplest being the situation where no message at all is sent. Time travel may thus act to erase itself (an idea Larry Niven fans will recognize as “Niven’s Law”).
Ryan North examines this law in Dinosaur Comics #1818.
This proposition is also extensively examined in James P. Hogan’s Thrice Upon a Time.
(stories)

is also the title of a 1984 collection of Niven’s short stories.
Included in the 1989 collection N-Space are six laws titled Niven’s Laws for Writers. They are:
Writers who write for other writers should write letters.

Never be embarrassed or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market.)

Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don’t.

It is a sin to waste the reader’s time.

If you’ve nothing to say, say it any way you like. Stylistic innovations, contorted story lines or none, exotic or genderless pronouns, internal inconsistencies, the recipe for preparing your lover as a cannibal banquet: feel free. If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn’t get it then, let it not be your fault.

Everybody talks first draft.

In the acknowledgments of his 2003 novel Conquistador, S.M. Stirling wrote:
And a special acknowledgment to the author of Niven’s Law: “There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is ‘idiot’.”

(from Known Space)

Drawn from Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven

Never throw shit at an armed man.
Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re having fun.

F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa

Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.

It is easier to destroy than create.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

History never repeats itself.

Ethics change with technology.

Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.

There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.

The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.

The world’s dullest subjects, in order:

Somebody else’s diet.

How to make money for a worthy cause.

Special Interest Liberation.

The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
Niven’s corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you’re talking to isn’t necessarily one of them.

Fuzzy Pink Niven’s Law: Never waste calories.

There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
in variant form in Fallen Angels as “Niven’s Law: No cause is so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads.”

No technique works if it isn’t used.

Not responsible for advice not taken.

Old age is not for sissies.

There's No Turning Back': My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:38:00 +0000

Son

What happens when people go loopy over religion. I was talking with somebody about the situation in Bangladesh. Where the secular govt is battling Islamists and genocidal bastards. And then INDIAN Muslim organisations decided to join in with their Bangladeshi morons. And somebody said, good Muslims don't do this. I replied, I'm sorry but do you think that when the razakars and Pakistani troops were killing Bangladeshis, they thought that they were bad Muslims? No. They thought they were good Muslims. Their priests told them that they were doing good with Allah. Look at the jihadi videos. When they are killing and slitting throats, they shout Allah u Akhbar. God is great. Good Muslims? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like this fellow.

You don't need religion to tell you not to kill. Still an interesting read son.

Love

Baba.

'There's No Turning Back': My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist | Danger Room |Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/omar-hammami/all/

Omar Hammami at a press conference in Mogadishu. Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP
‘There’s No Turning Back’: My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist

Omar Hammami, the most prominent American jihadi left alive, probably should be running. When Hammami came to Somalia for jihad in 2006, he never anticipated that al-Qaida’s local affiliate would pledge to kill its former propaganda asset. And last month, the U.S. government put a $5 million bounty on the head of the 28-year-old Alabama native. These could be the last moments of Hammami’s life.
But Hammami tells Danger Room in an extremely rare and exclusive interview that he’s staying put. From an undisclosed location in Somalia, he grows vegetables, helps his wives around the house, and trolls his one-time colleagues in al-Shebab on Twitter, his newfound passion. As @abumamerican, he’s tweeting his ongoing jihad in 140-character installments, and is happy to debate it with U.S. national security professionals. Uniquely among jihadis, Hammami shoots the breeze with the people whose job it is to study and even hunt people like him.
That’s caused a cognitive and emotional dissonance within U.S. counterterrorism circles. Several openly say they like the charismatic Hammami, who’s quick with a joke and a touch of irony. Their Twitter interactions with him have led to a worry about his well-being, and a dim hope that maybe, just maybe, they can convince Hammami to give up a path that seems to promise a violent and imminent end. “It’s just a process of talking about what it is he believes and trying to understand it,” says J.M. Berger, Hammami’s main interlocutor, “and seeing if there’s an escape hatch for him from this life.

Aethelflaed: Iron Lady of Mercia

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 28 May 2013 05:56:00 +0000

An example of another Iron Lady, poignant when another Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher just died. Interesting character kids. And one which isn't taught enough in history. Fascinating.

We live in London and this place is absolutely drenched in history. Battles were fought few kilometres from our homes between the Romans and native tribes.

Fascinating

Love

Baba

Aethelflaed: Iron Lady of Mercia | Alex Burghart - Academia.edu
http://www.academia.edu/3214814/Aethelflaed_Iron_Lady_of_Mercia

Æthelflæd: of Mercia warrior queen 60 BBC History Magazine Anglo-Saxon kings Viking victory Æthelflæd was a far superior ruler to her husband Æthelred, and made Mercia a kingdom to be feared, repelling foes from her borders and bringing unruly neighbours under her control Her deeds are largely forgotten, but as Alex Burghart explains, Æthelflæd turned a cornered kingdom into a powerhouse that defeated the Welsh and the Vikings xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A ALAMY nglo-Saxon history is full of forgotten heroes. This year marks the 1100th anniversary of the accession of one of the most forgotten and, in some ways, one of the most remarkable. In 911, Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred the Great (871-99), succeeded her husband, Æthelred, as ruler of the midland realm of Mercia. In doing so she became one of the only Anglo-Saxon women to rule in her own right, and a key player in the period that would shape the formation of England. Rarely has British politics been so turbulent as it was in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. In 866 a huge Danish force had landed in eastern England and started, systematically, to occupy regions and kill kings. By 877 roughly all the territories to the east of Watling Street (the A2) – the kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia, East Mercia (the east Midlands), Lindsey (Lincolnshire) and Northumbria – lay in Danish hands. Nor were they the only hostile power. From early in the ninth century Norse Vikings (from Norway and no friends to the Danes) had established bases in Ireland and were using them as springboards to launch forays on mainland Britain, attacking and sometimes allying themselves with the Welsh kingdoms. Anglo-Saxon England appeared to be on the brink of becoming AngloScandinavian England. It was under these pressures – and others from the Welsh kingdoms to the west – that, in about 879, Æthelred, the new leader of the remaining Mercians, chose to submit to King Alfred of Wessex. Asser, Alfred’s biographer, says that Æthelred agreed ‘that in every respect he would be obedient to the royal will’, and it seems that he was as good as his word. In our sources, Æthelred is never called ‘king’ only ‘ealdorman’ or ‘lord’ – there was to be one king: Alfred, and it is his name alone which appears on the royal charters and coins of the time. So seriously did Alfred take this new alliance that he gave his eldest daughter, Æthelflæd, to Æthelred in marriage. Exactly when this happened is not known

My Hyperinflation Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:58:00 +0000

Day before, I raised a cheer son. This was when I read that USA was paying back it's debt after many years. While I recognise that a debt market is required for the proper functioning of a modern economy, too much debt can be bad.

At end of the day, somebody has to lend to you. You have a choice, you do thus voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntarily is fine, you can ask for higher returns commensurate with the potential higher risk. But when this avenue is cut off, then govt's will go down the involuntary route by forcing banks insurance companies and pension funds to hold govt debt.

And the returns are paltry. Like India and Egypt and Argentina, so many countries have done so. And when govt's spend too much, like now, they have to print money when debt financing is not possible. Then inflation raises its head. Inflation is the silent economy killer son.

This is another reason why govt's and govt spending must be kept on check because inflation hits the poorest and eldest who are on low or fixed incomes without any way out.

Love

Baba

My Hyperinflation s Vacation - Graeme Wood - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/my-hyperinflation-vacation/309263/?single_page=true

Vets
Continue to the TheAtlantic.com
Advertisement

The Money Report April 2013
A trip to the Iranian resort island of Kish illuminates the pressures, limits, and strange consequences of economic sanctions.
Graeme Wood Mar 20 2013, 9:50 PM ET

Kevin van Aelst
For years, I have been advising my cash-poor friends: the secret to an ultracheap international holiday is a Google News search for the words runaway inflation. The place listed in the dateline of any recent articles including that phrase should be your destination. En route to your home airport, visit the bank and withdraw U.S. dollars in crisp hundreds and fifties. At your beleaguered landing place, the local currency’s value will be melting away like a snowman in July. Your greenbacks will remain pleasantly solid. Everyone at your destination—hoteliers, restaurant staff, tour guides—will covet them and cut you deals. For you, luxuries will suddenly become affordable. Until your return flight (assuming you make it back safely, and are not robbed by an increasingly desperate local mob), you will experience the dismal science at its most cheery.
Economists’ name for truly berserk runaway inflation is hyperinflation. America’s most nightmarish bout of inflation—in recent memory, at least—came and went at the end of the Carter administration, when prices rose by about 14 percent in 1980, the peak year. Hyperinflation, by contrast, is beyond nightmarish: a rise in prices of at least 50 percent amonth, according to the generally accepted definition. Thankfully, it is rare. Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, has documented 56 instances since 1795, ranging from a comparatively benign monthlong burst in Taiwan in 1947 (prices rose by a little more than half in that month, then the increase slowed), to a truly surreal year in Hungary in 1945–46, when at one point prices doubled every 15 hours. In Slobodan Milošević’s Yugoslavia in 1994, hyperinflation stopped only when the presses at the national mint, in Topčider, overheated to their breaking point.

[Letter from Lima] | All Politics Is Local, by Daniel Alarcón

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Thu, 30 May 2013 05:49:00 +0000

This is such a foreign world to us Kannu. We live in a bubble where people like Avi only appear in magazines or in news stories. But we are locking up more and more people. They need to be locked up. They need to be tried. They need to be rehabilitated. And and. Interesting society we are raising.

Love

Baba

[Letter from Lima] | All Politics Is Local, by Daniel Alarcón | Harper's Magazine
http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/all-politics-is-local/?single=1

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To understand a place like Lurigancho, it’s best not to dwell on words like prison or inmateor cell, or on the images these terms generally connote. The 7,400 men who live in Lurigancho, Peru’s largest and most notorious penal institution, do not wear uniforms; there is no roll call or lockdown or lights-out. Whatever control the prison authorities have inside Lurigancho is nominal. They secure the gate to the prison, and little else.
The complex’s twenty housing blocks can be divided roughly into two sections: the better-off inmates live in El Jardín (the Garden), the odd-numbered blocks. The greenery withered long ago, but the name and its cachet have remained. Many residents carry the keys to their own cells and are free to wander the grounds as they wish, though some prefer not to leave the relative calm of their territory. The other side of Lurigancho is known as La Pampa (the Plain), the even-numbered blocks, home to thousands of accused murderers and petty thieves. The density here can be twice that of El Jardín, the conditions unsanitary and often violent.

Review of Rachel Duffett’s The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 05:57:00 +0000

Kannu

Hope you liked the omelette of last night. Perhaps too many greens in there but have them son, it gives you a nice high protein diet with tons of vitamins and minerals.

This is a great book review about food. Food for soldiers. Remember I told you the quote? Amateurs talk about tactics. Professionals talk about logistics. In whichever field of work son, you have to have a firm grasp of logistics. Most activities are won or lost due to logistics. In the business world as well. That's what is going to give you the reputation of competence. As and how you rise through the ranks, your job is to ensure that men materials and money are available in the right time at the right place at the right amounts. Alexander said, if I lose a battle I come back and kill my logistician.

Details son details. That's the key. Think of the logistics of feeding a million soldiers in the middle of wartime.

Love

Baba.

Canadian Military History – Review of Rachel Duffett’s The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War by Matthew Walthert
http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/review-of-rachel-duffetts-the-stomach-for-fighting-food-and-the-soldiers-of-the-great-war-by-matthew-walthert/

Rachel Duffett, The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 269 pages.
Reviewed by Matthew Walthert (Carleton University)
Anyone who has studied the First World War has read about the food. Complaints about bully beef, alternate uses for rock-hard biscuits, and generals fattening themselves behind the lines while the troops suffered from ration shortages at the front are common features of many Great War histories. Despite these oft-repeated stories, the enlisted man’s relationship with his food (official ration and otherwise) has not been the subject of a scholarly, book-length study, until now. Using the diaries and memoirs of the rank-and-file soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Rachel Duffett has put together a detailed review of ordinary soldiers’ experiences with food on the Western Front.
In The Stomach for Fighting, Duffett exposes truisms – such as the enlisted men having better diets in the military than in pre-war, working-class England – which have crept out of sometimes self-congratulatory official statistics and histories, or overly-optimistic army ration scales. In The Last Great War, Adrian Gregory explored some of these clichés, particularly as they related to the British home front. Here, Duffett turns to the actual soldiers, whose caloric needs were being met, but were often less-than-thrilled with their food. Using a variety of published and unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs, she breaks new ground in looking not only at what (and how much) enlisted men ate, but also their reactions to their food.

Search for the USS Thresher

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:48:00 +0000

A fascinating account of the search for a sunken submarine son. Put yourself in the seat of the commander of the operation. So many difficult decisions to take.

April 10, 1963: Search for the USS Thresher | Naval History Blog
http://www.navalhistory.org/2013/04/10/april-10-50th-anniversary-of-the-loss-of-the-uss-thresher

This article was published in the May 1964 issue of Proceedings as “Searching for the Thresher” by Frank A. Andrews, Captain, U.S. Navy.
The Thresher search was very much an ad hoc operation. On 10 April 1963, the day of theThresher‘s loss, there was no real search organization, no search technique, nor specific operating procedures for locating an object lying on the ocean bottom at 8,400 feet. In the first frantic hours after the Thresher‘s loss, a full scale search effort consisting of 13 ships was laid on with the aim of scouring the ocean for possible life or floating signs from the Thresher. Within 20 search hours, all hope for survivors had passed, and the entire Thresher project began to change character from that of a standard Navy search and rescue operation to that of an oceanographic expedition. This special expedition soon consisted of three ad hoc elements, which, as later events were to show, combined in a most successful and harmonious manner in support of searching out the Thresher‘s hull.

How to Save American Finance from Itself

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:06:00 +0000

In a previous email Kannu, I told you that we are living in a complicated world which is getting even more complicated. The grand poobahs recognise this. Instead of simplifying they decide to add to complexity by adding giant rafts of regulation. Adding much more complexity. And that's just now.

Here's an economics Nobel prize winner talking about his student who is the fed chief and asking for a more complex set of instruments to manage the economies and financial markets. And taking a gratuitous swing at hedgies.

The result? Another crash is coming. Guaranteed. Before you are 25. So what can you do? Avoid debt son. As much as possible. Have your investments in good solid sectors and companies who will keep on operating despite downturns and crashes. Have a technical skill son that will always give you a job. Or if you are running a firm, then be in one which will always have demand. Keep an eye on your cash flow. Or marry a rich girl :)

But the article is interesting from a macroeconomics perspective. It's people like these who will be running the world when you graduate and start looking for work or are working. It takes time for macroeconomic prescriptions to work it's way through the economy and hit individuals. So decisions taken today will impact you in 3-5 years time.

I studied wave theory once. Ocean waves. The science is poorly understood even now. Which wave will just give you a ripple or give you a dunking or a great surf is difficult to know. The ocean interacts with temperature, wind, continental shelf topology, currents, gravitation, climate, seashore landscape in poorly understood ways. So what does a surfer do? Understand as much as possible. Be prepared. Take chances.

Love

Baba.

How to Save American Finance from Itself | New Republic
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112679/how-save-american-finance-itself

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TODAY’S EDITION

Other stories from April 27, 2013

BOOKS APRIL 8, 2013
How to Save American Finance from Itself Has financialization gone too far?

BY ROBERT M. SOLOW
Central banking is not rocket science, but neither is it a trivial pursuit. Excellent books have continued to be written about the art and craft of central banking, from Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street in 1873 to Alan Blinder’s Central Banking in Theory and Practice in 1998. Running a central bank is in one way a little bit like flying a plane or sailing a boat: much of the time standard responses and small adjustments will do just fine, but every so often a situation arises in which fundamental understanding, knowledge of history, and good judgment can make the difference between riding out the storm and crashing. There was no such person in charge in 1929, and the result was disaster. There was one in 2008.
In his earlier scholarly life, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, had been a careful student of the general interaction between the financial system and the real economy and especially of its working out in the Great Depression of the 1930s. So he had done his homework. His decisive and innovative actions at the Fed saved our economy from free fall with a possibly catastrophic end. I once non-joked that Bernanke was the Captain Kirk of central banking: he had loaned where no man had loaned before. In a life before turning to government service, first as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, then briefly as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and then returning to the Fed as chairman in 2006, Bernanke was a well-known and highly respected academic economist. (The reader should know that I was one of his teachers in graduate school at MIT, and have remained a friend.) My opinion is that, after a briefly hesitant start as Fed chairman, probably still under the considerable aura of Alan Greenspan, Bernanke rose admirably to a difficult occasion and has been generally right in his judgments and his decisions, and in his willingness and his ability to explain both.
In March 2012, George Washington University invited Bernanke to give four lectures as part of a course devoted to the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. The lectures are now reproduced in book form, apparently from lightly edited transcripts. Each lecture ends with half a dozen questions from anonymous “students” and Bernanke’s answers. Some of the questions are smart, some less so, in which case Bernanke exhibits the professorial skill of seamlessly answering a slightly different question. We are not told anything about the audience. I imagine a lot of people wanted to hear about the Federal Reserve and the financial crisis from the chairman himself. It’s rather like hearing Admiral Nelson reminisce about the battle of Trafalgar.

Princeton's Marriage Market Theory Worked for Me

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:46:00 +0000

From an aesthetic and romantic perspective it sounds cold blooded and far too planned. But there is truth in this article. Human behaviour can be modelled. Even if you are not interested in economics, your behaviour and the way society and fellow individuals act behave and are structured are based in economics.

The benefits of marriage are many and are well known. So in terms of maximising your life's happiness, be on the lookout for a good partner at LSE or Oxford or Cambridge wherever you go. This is the best population for you to find your partner. After this, the chances drop dramatically. It's simple statistics and macroeconomics that you will never come across such watering holes with such high density of potential mates. Don't rely on blind luck son.

So find a mate by the time you graduate in 20-22 years in uni. This doesn't mean you become celibate. Far from it. Explore. But when you find the one and the point is to find the one in uni. Be with them. Marriage around 25-28 and life will be good. Any changes to this timeline and your lifetime happiness will be reduced or be suboptimal. Simple economics.

Of course shit happens but plan and aim for the best and prepare for the worst.

Love

Baba

Princeton's Marriage Market Theory Worked for Me - Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-03/princeton-s-marriage-market-theory-worked-for-me.html

Most of my research deals with the economics of cities, but I have a smattering of knowledge in the minor field of spouse-meeting at Princeton.
There is usually little demand for such arcana — the American Economic Association has never held a symposium on the topic — but the blogospheric explosion after an alumna’sletter to the Daily Princetonian advising female students to “find a husband on campus before you graduate” led my editor to urge me to weigh in.
While I don’t feel I can provide advice to young women, I am comfortable, based on both personal experience and the infallible majesty of economic theory, urging young male Princetonians to view your female classmates as prospective long-term friends and spouses (the qualifications for the two roles having much in common), rather than short-term amorous encounters.
The letter writer, Susan Patton, is surely right that for many people, college years provide the high point of intense exposure to a wide range of prospective life partners.
However, my own finely tuned algebraic simulations of an optimal spousal-search model find that while college provides an ideal time to accumulate a large stock of good friends (prospective spouses), it is typically suboptimal to wed at age 21 because of preference uncertainty and the benefits of continuing to meet alternatives.

The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:35:00 +0000

A nice little overview of this rather interesting phenomena of suicide bombing. It's a very complex situation and cannot be reduced to simplistic solutions. All one can do is to keep an open mind, not easy to do when every body else around you - both on your side and their side has either lost their minds and/or have a closed mind. The lesson here is to stay flexible, resolute and to be brutal about it a bit. And one more thing, don't muck around in foreign adventures. The USA hasn't learnt from history. Take the uk. In the past 3 centuries, we buggered around the world. Leaving our dead in most corners of the world. We got terrorism and and and millions of our young men dead around the world. For what?

The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
http://origins.osu.edu/article/human-use-human-beings-brief-history-suicide-bombing

On February 1, 2013, a suicide bomber killed himself and a security guard at America’s embassy in Ankara, Turkey. This attack, carried out more than a decade after 9/11, reveals a great deal about the phenomenon we have come to know as suicide bombing.
First, a radical left-wing group with a vaguely Marxist agenda (The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party in Turkey) claimed responsibility, demonstrating that suicide bombing is not the exclusive domain of religious fanatics.
Second, the bomber detonated his explosives before he had the opportunity to enter the embassy complex. This shows that individual initiative and fallibility are important aspects of the organizational process of suicide bombing—a process that requires expertise and practice to be truly effective.
Finally, the attack confirms that suicide bombing will continue to be a dangerous security nuisance for the foreseeable future.

The Hell of American Day Care

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 05:54:00 +0000

Here's an interesting problem son. Govt's around the world are actually trying to reduce taxes and spend as the current level of spending is clearly unsustainable. More debt, borrowing from the future to spend in the present is starting to hit limits. So should we fund child care? The author talks about France but France is struggling with awesome amounts of debt. And it's social system creaks. Furthermore with such a great system France is useless at getting its people into work.

Second aspect to remember is that having children is considered to be a choice. If you have children its expected that you are able to take care of them. Why should somebody else pay for your choices? I can understand low income, divorce etc etc but just like you wouldn't expect somebody else to pay for your vacation, the argument is that you have to have funds.

But life isn't that simple and people will still have babies without the ability to pay or look after them. In my charity we find so many parents just useless at parenting at best and a threat to the kids at worst.

So some element of child care has to be setup. Not a good choice.

Love

Baba

The Hell of American Day Care | New Republic
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care
M
Mire looked down at her baby girl, Kendyll, who was curled up tight on a foldaway crib. “Night, night,” Kendyll had just murmured in her quiet, serious way. At 20 months, she was picking up all sorts of words, like “baby,” the name of the doll she kept nearby, and “Bryce,” the name of her big brother. She hadn’t slept much that night, and Mire thought about calling in late to work so Kendyll could get more rest. But it was only Mire’s second day at a new job she badly needed, as a receptionist at a Houston oil company. Mire, who was 30, with an open face and wide smile, was intent on making a good impression. The best she could do was give Kendyll an extra hour to nap and prepare some warm milk for her breakfast.
When Kendyll got up, Mire dressed her in a purple shirt that matched her own—purple was Kendyll’s favorite color—and put a pair of purple-striped stretch pants in her backpack. It was a challenge to get Kendyll to sit still for the hour it took to unbraid and re-braid her dark hair, and on such a hectic morning, Mire didn’t even try. At around 7 a.m., they got into the car and drove to Kendyll’s new day care.
The place was called “Jackie’s Child Care,” but there wasn’t anyone named Jackie who worked there. The proprietor was Jessica Tata, an energetic 22-year-old registered with the state of Texas to look after children in the wood-paneled house she rented on a quiet, middle-class street. Her regulars included Elias, a chunky 16-month-old with a bowlegged walk, and 19-month-old Elizabeth, who always jumped into her mom’s lap when it was time to drop her off. As Mire walked back to her car that warm February morning in 2011, she noticed Kendyll hovering at the entrance—a little sleepy, a little curious, gazing at the scene inside. Mire felt uneasy about leaving, especially since it was only Kendyll’s second day there and she didn’t know Tata that well. Shortly after, she called Tata to check in, and Tata reassured her that Kendyll was doing just fine.  
Just after lunch, Mire’s cell phone lit up. The number was Tata’s, but she didn’t recognize the voice. “There’s been a fire,” a woman said. “They’ve taken all the kids to the hospital, for smoke, as a precaution.” Mire tried not to panic; she clutched at the word “precaution.” Her phone buzzed again, this time with a text message from a friend: “What day care did you say Kendyll goes to?” Mire called the friend, who was watching live TV coverage of a burning Houston day care. Black smoke was billowing from windows and holes in the roof; firemen were running out of the house, cradling limp babies in their arms. One little girl had braided hair and a purple shirt, her friend told her. She looked like Kendyll. Mire ran to her car. I can’t panic, she kept telling herself as she drove through heavy traffic and later past ambulances and fire engines. I just have to get there.
Trusting your child with someone else is one of the hardest things that a parent has to do—and in the United States, it’s harder still, because American day care is a mess. About 8.2 million kids—about 40 percent of children under five—spend at least part of their week in the care of somebody other than a parent. Most of them are in centers, although a sizable minority attend home day cares like the one run by Jessica Tata. In other countries, such services are subsidized and well-regulated. In the United States, despite the fact that work and family life has changed profoundly in recent decades, we lack anything resembling an actual child care system. Excellent day cares are available, of course, if you have the money to pay for them and the luck to secure a spot. But the overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian.

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 06:08:00 +0000

Kannu

I've written much about Pakistan before. It's a classic example of the worst that can happen when religion gets mixed up in state matters. Despite encouraging signs like the first democratic govt since independence able to complete its term of office, the state and religious nexus isn't broken and is actually getting stronger.

For example some of my Pakistani friends on fb are showing an increased religiosity. One prayed to Allah to get Imran Khan elected. This fellow is a blithering nincompoop. He talks absolute rot but to listen to his supporters, the sun shines out of this backside. So to tease, I asked if other Pakistani religious minorities will also be praying to Jesus and Ram and Guru Gobind Singh to get him elected? No response but it was amusing.

This is one of the reasons why I detest religion in politics and overwhelming state power. The combination is even worse.

These 200000 estimated jehadis in this group are with us, the group is growing and not only I but you will be dealing with this over the next 30-50 years minimum. Joy

Love

Baba

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’ - ProPublica
http://www.propublica.org/article/terror-group-recruits-from-pakistans-best-and-brightest/single#republish

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’

Imagine a terrorist group that recruits tens of thousands of young men from the same neighborhoods and social networks as the Pakistani military. A group whose well-educated recruits defy the idea that poverty and ignorance breed extremism. A group whose fighters include relatives of a politician, a senior Army officer and a director of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission.
That is the disconcerting reality of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the world’s most dangerous militant organizations, according to a study released today [1] by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The report helps explain why Pakistan has resisted international pressure [2] to crack down on Lashkar after it killed 166 people in Mumbai — six U.S. citizens included — and came close to sparking conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India.

Resort Of Last Resort

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 05:47:00 +0000

Here's an example of where the bottom feeders live. People who are escaping Islam. Poverty. They are desperate to get away from the bastards who have ruined countries such as Pakistan Afghanistan and Iran. And more will come. The history of Islam tells us that Muslims kill more Muslims than any other religion. And this sad story has a long way to run. Till Muslims manage to box Islam into the civilised box rather than the shape fundamentalists have put it into.

Ironically you see one of the sets of idiots, Saudis, who are responsible for this desecration of Islam coming to Indonesia to get their rocks off. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The Saudis piss over their co religionists in India Bangladesh Pakistan Indonesia Egypt Lebanon and in return these guys fawn over the Saudis and lick their feet. Only place there where I faced in your face racism. Bah.

But there you go. It's a sad view of one of the sad spots of the world. As an economist you need to consider why nations hate and love immigration. Freedom of capital is allowed generally but of labour? Nope. Think about why this is so son.

Love

Baba

Resort Of Last Resort | The Global Mail
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/resort-of-last-resort/585/

Fear, corruption, boredom, smugglers, extortionists, Saudi sex tourists and temporary wives: such is life in the Indonesian resort town that has become limbo for asylum seekers.
Night is enveloping the hills of Cisarua, a resort town high outside Jakarta, and the area’s evening rituals are beginning. Rainwater thunders down from nearby mountaintops along hundreds of canals and rivulets that go whooshing on into the polluted sink that is Indonesia’s capital.
Across the bowl-shaped valley, dozens of mosques begin booming the call to prayer, all merging together into an asynchronous whine. In hillside villas, groups of men from Saudi Arabia — some in traditional white thawb robes, some in baggy track pants – load up on the evening’s stock of alcohol, which is banned in their home country. On motorbikes and in cars, pimps begin ferrying in the men’s other vice — Arabic-speaking Indonesian women.
(See the photos behind the story: Barat Ali Batoor’s series from Cisarua, In Between Persecution And Asylum.)
In other rented houses, hundreds of asylum seekers sit with little to do. Many have become near-nocturnal out of sheer boredom, and are just starting their day. Over the past decade, the town has become the unofficial haven for asylum seekers heading to Australia. For some, it is a brief stopover before they jump on a smuggler’s boat. For others, it is a limbo that can last for years.
Haider — not his real name — is sitting in a living room with half-a-dozen other men who, like him, are Hazaras from the Pakistani city of Quetta. All appear drawn and exhausted. One of the men, Ghulam Reza, sits with his foot extended because of an untreated, bloody gash.

Creative Jobs Versus Financial Stability - Is Creative Ambition Enough to Get Financial Stability

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:56:00 +0000

Son

Didu told me a story when I would read books rather than study. It was about a man who gets down from a big expensive car wearing a suit and bumps into a woman. She is his old gf who had dumped him as he never could show determination to do something in his life. Always lost in books and dreams. After a coffee, they parted ways. The gf is kicking herself for having let him go. And then the next scene is of the man who lives in a little pokey room on top of a garage. He is a driver. Still reads books but also drinks.

That stayed with me and still does. I could have been that man son if luck/god/whatever hadn't intervened. So do have a creative side. Paint. Write. Sing. Teach. Photograph. But only after you have financial security. I'm proud of your saving habits. When you told mamma that you will buy your phone from your own money, I was so proud. Seriously. That's my boy.

Keep on it son. I love you.

Baba

Creative Jobs Versus Financial Stability - Is Creative Ambition Enough to Get Financial Stability - ELLE
http://www.elle.com/life-love/society-career/creative-ambition-versus-financially-stable-job

When I was 26, my then roommate was a great scavenger of furniture. One day, she came home with a daybed frame: a twin-size wooden box with only three legs, which is likely why someone had left it on a curb in the first place. The frame sat propped against our dining room wall for the next year, until I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband), and she let us take it. My husband made a fourth leg out of salvaged wood, and we found a cushion that more or less fit the frame in the “as is” section of IKEA. The back was constructed from a mattress pad rolled up and stuffed into a homemade pillowcase, and the whole ensemble was eventually covered with some black corduroy fabric that we bought for $10. All told, I think we spent about $40 on the “couch.” That was six years ago. At the time, I thought of our jury-rigged furniture as a temporary arrangement, a way station on the path to adulthood. Now it serves as a reminder of how slow and grueling the road to financial security can be.
Which brings me to a second anecdote, one that occurred about a year ago. Over a plate of pasta one night, my husband told me that I needed to make more money. I don’t remember what prompted it, whether we were discussing saving for a down payment or planning a vacation, but regardless of the topic, it was hard to argue with his point. If I really wanted the things I said I did, we’d need more than we were bringing in, than I was bringing in, because, as he implied, I was the one who wasn’t really holding up my end.

Ben-Hur and Lew Wallace: How the scapegoat of Shiloh became one of the best-selling novelists in American history

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:28:00 +0000

I have to admit Kannu that I never read the book. The film itself made a huge impact on me. Judah Ben hur was such a heroic man, going through huge trials and tribulations. Then wins through. Takes revenge over his enemies. Becomes wealthy. Finds god. For I had seen the movie as a teenager. My aunt took me to see this in Calcutta. Big impression. Do see it if you can.

But the backstory is perhaps more interesting. Didn't know the link to the carnage of the civil war.

Fascinating.

Love

Baba

Ben-Hur and Lew Wallace: How the scapegoat of Shiloh became one of the best-selling novelists in American history. - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2013/03/ben_hur_and_lew_wallace_how_the_scapegoat_of_shiloh_became_one_of_the_best.single.html

Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861. Courtesy of Brady-Handy Photograph Collection/Library of Congress
You can also listen to John Swansburg read this piece using the player below:
I.
Lew Wallace was making conversation with the other gentlemen in his sleeper car when a man in a nightgown appeared in the doorway. The train was bound for Indianapolis and the Third National Soldiers Reunion, where thousands of Union Army veterans planned to rally, reminisce, and march in a parade the New York Times would later describe as “the grandest street display ever seen in the United States.” It was Sept. 19, 1876, more than a decade since the Civil War had ended. Wallace had grayed a bit, but still wore the sweeping imperial moustache he’d had at the Battle of Shiloh. “Is that you, General Wallace?” the man in the nightgown asked. “Won’t you come to my room? I want to talk.”
Robert Ingersoll, also a veteran of Shiloh, was now the nation’s most prominent atheist, a renowned orator who toured the country challenging religious orthodoxy and championing a healthy separation of church and state. Wallace recognized him from earlier that summer, when he’d heard Ingersoll, a fellow Republican, make a rousing speech at the party’s nominating convention. Wallace accepted his invitation and suggested they take up a subject near to Ingersoll’s heart: the existence of God.
Ingersoll talked until the train reached its destination. “He went over the whole question of the Bible, of the immortality of the soul, of the divinity of God, and of heaven and hell,” Wallace later recalled. “He vomited forth ideas and arguments like an intellectual volcano.” The arguments had a powerful effect on Wallace. Departing the train, he walked the pre-dawn streets of Indianapolis alone. In the past he had been indifferent to religion, but after his talk with Ingersoll his ignorance struck him as problematic, “a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness.” He resolved to devote himself to a study of theology, “if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.”
But how to go about such a study? Wallace knew himself well enough to predict that a syllabus of sermons and Biblical commentaries would fail to hold his interest. He devised instead what he called “an incidental employment,” a task that would compel him to complete a thorough investigation of the eternal questions while entertaining his distractible mind. A few years earlier, he’d published a historical romance about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, to modest success. His idea now was to inquire after the divinity of Christ by writing a novel about him.
It took four years, but in 1880, Wallace finished his incidental employment. He called it Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It’s one of the great if little known ironies in the history of American literature: Having set out to win another soul to the side of skepticism, Robert Ingersoll instead inspired a Biblical epic that would rival the actual Bible for influence and popularity in Gilded Age America—and a folk story that has been reborn, in one medium or another, in every generation since.

Won an award for communications

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 20:18:00 +0000

So I receive this press release.

I was just going to delete it when I saw something and burst out laughing. Check out the spelling of Communications and Professional.

Good heavens, Lauren Rutter will get into serious trouble…But the irony of a press release claiming being the leader of communications and professional services and making a typo on that was just too delicious not to point out.

Islamic vs. conventional banking: Business model, efficiency and stability

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:38:00 +0000

This paper was quite an interesting one. I quote the abstract:

How different are Islamic banks from conventional banks? Does the recent crisis justify a closer look at the Sharia-compliant business model for banking? When comparing conventional and Islamic banks, controlling for time-variant country-fixed effects, we find few significant differences in business orientation. There is evidence however, that Islamic banks are less cost-effective, but have a higher intermediation ratio, higher asset quality and are better capitalized. We also find large cross-country variation in the differences between conventional and Islamic banks as well as across Islamic banks of different sizes. Furthermore, we find that Islamic banks are better capitalized, have higher asset quality and are less likely to disintermediate during crises. The better stock performance of listed Islamic banks during the recent crisis is also due to their higher capitalization and better asset quality.

Given the financial crisis, this new model has quite a lot of lessons for the modern Anglo Saxon world of banking. I've been keeping track of Islamic Finance for some time now and this has changed quite a lot since the early days.

The profit sharing element has quite an interesting behaviour as they end up being better capitalised with lower loan losses. In other words, they become a sort of private equity type of firm. Interesting, I wonder if these lessons will be learned by the regulators? Or force bad performing loans to be converted into equity like the CoCo’s? Not for the banks but for the firms to which the banks have lent to?

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go

noreply@blogger.com (Bhaskar Dasgupta) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:01:00 +0000

Children

An interesting article on doing a PhD in humanities. 3 down and 4th in planning, I can well recognise this situation. Nobody will pay you to teach others which really don't show clear economic value.

You may not like it but the brutal truth of the matter is that your main piece of education is to ensure you get paid for the value you add.

Take it forward as a teacher. If what you teach isn't valued then you won't get paid. As simple as this. When I became a professor, I got into trouble with my senior colleagues when I would say things like, ' if a student hasn't learnt then the teacher hasn't taught'. That kind of personal responsibility is unfortunately missing in quite a lot of teacher which is the reason why they tend to blame parents, universities, governments, students, porn, you name it.

Bad.

So my advise is to do a good first degree what will give you skills to earn a shed load of money and add huge amounts of value. Then do a graduate degree to boost your earning potential.

Then comes a PhD. Or two. Or if you are mad as me then more. Study for a PhD for pure pleasure and the fun of learning. Otherwise it's a bit dodgy. Of course the situation is better in economics and business PhD's :) but if you want to do a history or English lit PhD then forget it.

Love

Baba

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846

By Thomas H. Benton
Nearly six years ago, I wrote a column called “So You Want to Go to Grad School?” (The Chronicle, June 6, 2003). My purpose was to warn undergraduates away from pursuing Ph.D.’s in the humanities by telling them what I had learned about the academic labor system from personal observation and experience.
It was a message many prospective graduate students were not getting from their professors, who were generally too eager to clone themselves. Having heard rumors about unemployed Ph.D.’s, some undergraduates would ask about job prospects in academe, only to be told, “There are always jobs for good people.” If the students happened to notice the increasing numbers of well-published, highly credentialed adjuncts teaching part time with no benefits, they would be told, “Don’t worry, massive retirements are coming soon, and then there will be plenty of positions available.” The encouragement they received from mostly well-meaning but ill-informed professors was bolstered by the message in our culture that education always leads to opportunity.
All these years later, I still get letters from undergraduates who stumble onto that column. They tell me about their interests and accomplishments and ask whether they should go to graduate school, somehow expecting me to encourage them. I usually write back, explaining that in this era of grade inflation (and recommendation inflation), there’s an almost unlimited supply of students with perfect grades and glowing letters. Of course, some doctoral program may admit them with full financing, but that doesn’t mean they are going to find work as professors when it’s all over. The reality is that less than half of all doctorate holders — after nearly a decade of preparation, on average — will ever find tenure-track positions.

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