I’ve just read the most intelligently written post in the Indian blogosphere I’ve ever read. It is by Amit Varma who has some thoughts on fighting poverty.

I don’t agree with his unduly pessimistic conclusion. I’ll write on that sometime, but go ahead and read what he has written now.
[Pessimistic? It looks like an optimistic conclusion to me – ed.

No ed, the conclusion is pessimistic. If our progress depends on our blundered into having elected an “enlightened economist”, then we are in serious trouble. That’s because his position is too dependent on a capricious lady, a bunch of retarded leftists and a host of other unpredictible factors. We can’t predict those factors individually, but we can be dead certain that atleast one of them will kick in and so the probability of the rug being pulled from under him approaches certainty. If we need to find the future of India, we need to look at structural issues, not at personalities. ]

Try to find the weirdest formula that you can feed to Google’s calculator. Post your entry in the comments. My entry is given below.
Google Search: avogadro’s number times the speed of light in furlongs per year divided by pi

India Daily: India may be the first country to explain to the world about extra-terrestrial and UFO contacts. The secret debate is on

Reading this introduction (PDF link) (via Anarcaplib) to the Economic Freedom Report written by Parth Shah brought back a memory to me. In it, he restates the story of how the License Raj causes misery to the cycle-rickshaw pullers of Delhi.

I had read about it some time back, and once I sent a link to the story to a young communist friend of mine (yes, there are still young communists) pointing out that the law causing the misery was a socialist law, written with noble socialist intentions.
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I linked to a Wired article asking what was missing in that article. What I found missing is any mention of the impact of trade-off between safety and commute time. Speed is mentioned only in passing and is treated as if it is an unambiguously bad thing.

Here’s an article talking of “slower traffic, fewer accidents, shorter trip times” in the first page. Huh? How are they going to manage to achieve slower traffic and shorter trip times simultaneously? I go on and read through the next two pages. Not a word.

All decisions involve trade-offs. There is a trade-off between safety and speed. If you want to breathlessly talk of how everyone has been doing everything wrong for the past 80 years and completely ignore any talk of the cons of your ideas, you might as well save your breath because all I’ll hear is “pseudo-science”.

Yes, the movie I referred to here is Casablanca. The dialogues in the movie are among the best I’ve heard – but then, cynicism makes for the best witticisms.

Another thing about the dialogues in Casablanca is that you sometimes get the feeling that they are repeating too many cliches, even when you know that it is not the fault of the movie. The movie originated those quotes and they’ve become so famous that they’ve passed into common usage. The feeling is much more when you are reading Shakespeare or the Bible. It sometimes seems as if half the idiomatic expressions in English come from the Bible, half from Shakespeare and movies like Casablanca making up the rest.

This Wired article about a road designer who thinks that reducing signage and restrictions makes a road safer has been around for some time. Many libertarians have written about it (see Ashish Hanwadikar for example) because they see it as proof of their belief that less rules are better.

But there is something strange about the article. Something is missing. Can you tell me what?

“Hey why are you peeking through the keyhole of my bedroom?”

“Well, it is all your fault. YOU told me that if I ever entered your bedroom you’ll break my legs. What else could I do?”

To understand what I am talking of, read Yazad’s comment at Sandeep’s place.

Of all the slot machines in the casino, she walks to the one next to mine.

What was a nice guy like me doing in a casino? My inquiring readers might want to know.

Well, it so happened that every Desi in California seemed to have chosen the week before Christmas to rush to India. Consequently, I had four days to kill before I could board my plane. A colleague suggested to me that I spend those four days in Las Vegas.

I did not think much of the idea. I did not relish the prospect of gambling. (Especially as I had no money to gamble away in the first place.) Said colleague pointed out that one does not go to Las Vegas only for the gambling. One could also just see the glitz and glamour of the place. I demurred, saying that glitz put me off. I expressed the opinion that though I had no particular quarrel with materialism, I truly felt at home in the lap of Nature. I further stated a desire to see snow and try my hands at skiing, as I had never seen Nature in that particular garb before. The colleague sighed and recommended that I make a trip to Reno-Tahoe, where I could see Nature clad in snow and ski down her lap to my heart’s content. However, he was most insistent that I spend atleast one night in Reno, which, being in the state of Nevada, allowed gambling. I found that there were limits to my power to resist peer pressure.

So it came to pass that I was sitting at a slot machine in Harrah’s gambling away one cent at a time, wondering why it was taking so long for me to run through the five dollar limit I had set for myself, watching waitresses in low-cut blouses (to display 30% of their breasts seems to be the industry norm) and mini skirts serve free booze to compulsive gamblers, taking grim satisfaction in the fact that I was right in my prediction that the glitz would fail to lure me, when, as I have already mentioned, she walked in and sat at the slot machine next to mine.
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Hi all – it has been nice guest-posting here for the past few weeks! But it’s time to hand over the blog, inspite of pleading entreaties of cartel members like Madman, back to Ravikiran…

No doubt, all you unintellectual bumpkin readers are abrim with tears bidding adieu to your beloved and wise Guru who has distributed Gyaan on all subjects from Induction to Goals of Humanity to Managerial Skills of Women.
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The source of yesterday’s tsunami “warning” has been identified.