Posts will be sparser as a result.

I had a slightly more tricky problem than Gaurav. The pizza guys in the US ask “Do you need change?” The bill was 11 dollars and I had paid 15. Four dollars looks like too much for a tip even by American standards. I am guessing that I was actually supposed to tell him what he can keep. But I couldn’t be sure, so I said “No”. What should I have done?

“What do they know of X who only X know?”

Do any of you people know what the “original” X was? This was one of those nagging questions that remained unresolved in the momentous meeting of bloggers that took place ten days back. Amit Varma mentioned the quote substituting “cricket” for X and he and Yazad were rather surprised to learn that the original value of X was not cricket. I don’t know what X was originally either, but I’ve heard it in enough contexts to know that cricket isn’t it. The problem is, the statement is true for all values of X. After all, to understand any subject you need the ability to place the subject in context, i.e. you need to go out of the box to understand the box.

As a result of its universal applicability, the statement has been liberally used for different values of X, making it ungoogleable. (For example you can find What do they know of England who only England know?) Can anyone help me find the original X? Please give citations.

Update: It looks like the original quote is “What do they know of England, who only England know?” and the author is Kipling.

I am happy to have waited for more than a week before answering the question, because it gave me a lot of interesting responses.

Everyone seemed to know the capitalist “solution” to the problem, which is to simply sell the available food to the highest bidder. The reason why this is good is not that the right people will get the food – I will not presume that people who can pay are in any way better than those who can’t. The reason the solution is good is that the right people get the money. The high prices will give people an incentive to produce more food next year. Because that is the only way you can salvage any good out of the bad situation. Given what I have outlined, people are going to die this year regardless of what you do. But if you follow the right policies, you can prevent the situation from recurring next year. What I have just outlined is the solution to that problem under capitalism. To find whether it is the best solution or not, we need to compare it against the alternatives.

(See? People, it is possible to discuss complicated problems without using complicated phrases like “allocative efficiency” or indeed ontological)
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Amit Varma has written a good piece about blogs and he has called the discussion on this and Yazad’s site “intelligent, informative and enlightening”.

Thanks all of you, please be on your best behaviour today and continue to keep the discussion intelligent, informative and enlightening okay?

Lakshmi wants to know (6th comment) why Republicans are called “Conservatives” and Democrats “Liberals” and how, if at all those labels can be applied to India.

Unfortunately Lakshmi, it has been some time since the label “conservative” or “liberal” made literal sense anywhere in the world. In the 19th century Europe and USA, a “conservative” was someone who wanted to conserve the existing order. The then existing order was mostly capitalist, but in many respects, it was illiberal. Women could not vote, the poor could not vote, blacks could not vote. Workers weren’t allowed to form unions, there was no welfare, etc.

Those who were opposed to Conservatives were Radicals. But the word “radical” could very easily take on negative connotations (“Hey he is a radical! He wants to overturn our entire way of life!) So those who supported reforms in the existing order called themselves “Liberals”

Now here’s where things get complicated.
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When the country was distracted by the tsunami, the government took the decision to move ahead with the privatisation of Mumbai and Delhi Airports. The communists protested of course, but no one bothered with them because everyone was more concerned about the tsunami than about that bunch of retards. But, look God, if you really want to implement my idea, could you do it without all the loss of life?

Also I am wondering why the retards haven’t said anything about repeal of Press Note 18. Any ideas?

… the change of tagline. It is a temporary change, reflecting the new spirit of this blog. Once I declare a comprehensive victory over the challenger, I will revert to my usual policy of torturing readers till they confess that they like my writing torturing reality till it confesses the truth. In the meantime, vote for me at the Indibloggies..

You folks must know by now that we had a meet yesterday, and by the unwritten conventions of the blogging world, we should all write about it, give our various perspectives and basically make you all jealous that we had so much fun.

I was meeting Dilip D’Souza and Amit Varma for the first time. I know the question on all your minds is, “what happens when four supporters of the free market face off against one left-of-centre guy? Why aren’t the capitalists writing about it? Do they have anything to hide?”

Let me assure you, nothing happened. Dilip turned out to be a rather softspoken guy, not the type who’d get into verbal arguments (I too fall into that category, incidentally)

Amit turned out to be exactly the kind of guy I had expected him to be, which was a big surprise. It has never happened before. He was smart, articulate, intelligent and interested in a lot of stuff. ( I hadn’t expected the long hair, however.) My only regret is that I didn’t pick his brains as much as I wanted to. Somehow he managed it so that he was the one asking questions and I and Yazad debating over them.

Incidentally, Amit links to a good piece on how the personality of a writer shows up differently in his writings and in person. Speaking strictly for myself, this is inevitable. I am a moody person. What you see when you read me is what I am when I am at my best. If you catch me in person when I am my sullen self, you’ll think that I am very different from my written self.
Secondly, everything that is written by me has gone through lots of edits. If there is any crispness you see in my writing, it is because of that. I am a slow (but deep 😉 ) thinker. So when I argue face to face, I tend to miss out points in the heat of the discussion.

To all those who are distressed by Yazad’s post yesterday defending price gouging, let me propose the following thought experiment.

Suppose that there is an island which has absolutely no contact at all with the rest of the world. It is usually self-sufficient, but something horrible has happened this year. It has suffered such a bad drought that food production is only 20% of what it was last year.
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Amit Varma, whose brilliant dispatches from TamilNadu should surely win India Uncut an award for Best New Blog (there! My first endorsement) had a post some time back speculating that Jayalalithaa has designs on coastal land.

I don’t know if that’s true. Given JJ’s record, it may well be. But if I were the Government of India, and if I had designs on coastal land, my methods wouldn’t be as hamfisted as issuing fake warnings against eating fish. Here’s what I’d do.
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It turns out that someone has found a category he can enter me for over at the Indibloggies

The Examined Life is a contestant for the prestigious Best Tagline Indibloggy. I am pitted against Kingsley, who hasn’t blogged for over six months, and a person called Gopi Sundaram, whom no one knows. So please vote for me.

My tagline, if you find it difficult to read the small print, is “Where I torture reality till it confesses the truth.” I hope you accept that it is an accurate description for what I do.

(The Examined Life is currently accepting bribes in return for endorsements in other categories. Please contact me with your offers. )