By a remarkable coincidence, two of my readers sent me two links, both of them from the most excellent blog Marginal Revolution and both of them deal with the impact of competitiveness on performance.
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About my post on how our forex reserves are hurting us, Nitin sends me a Rediff link which says that it is also helping the US, because every dollar we keep in the reserve is a loan to the US (in the same sense that keeping a rupee in the bank is a loan to the bank).

Quite right. I got into a long argument the last time I made such an statement, It is a long story and deserves to go down as one of The Examined Life classics. I was fisking a truly awful piece by S Gurumurthy which essentially claimed that a) The US is surviving on the savings of other countries like India and Japan, b) That is a horrible thing to do and hence c) We should save [and because he pointed out that saving by India is equivalent to investing in an undeserving country like the US, we should continue to do the same stupid thing even more]

That was when I started realising that most people’s knowledge of Economics rested on a very shaky foundation.

Yazad has a persuasive list of reasons not to vote. I agree with a lot of them. Voting as a right is meaningless unless you have the right not to vote. The claim that those who don’t vote have no right to crib later implies that those who did vote for the party in power are also responsible for all the foolish things they do while in power. Claiming that unless you vote you don’t have any right to enjoy the fruits of living in democratic society makes sense only if you also agree that those who didn’t vote (or indeed those who didn’t vote for the party in power) can withhold their taxes, because their party is not in power and they don’t have a right to enjoy what benefits comes from living in society.
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Sandeep says that the Vajpayee succession issue isn’t settled in Advani’s favour after all, and it could be – heaven help us – Joshi the lunatic. Well I agree that Joshi is a strong contender after Advani, but after Vajpayee? No way.

I want to explain why I am saying this, and also want to make a few complicated points, so bear with me as I go on a detour.
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As you all know, Osama bin Laden’s family has disowned Osama. To emphasise the fact, now they call themselves Osama bin Laden.
If you haven’t figured it out, here is a clue.
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Please stop using “would” when you mean “will”. For example, you shouldn’t say. “I would be coming for dinner” when you mean “I will be coming for dinner”
Thank you.

Yes I know that everyone is asking who comes after Vajpayee, but I don’t think that is in any doubt. It will be Advani. Yes I know that BJP has a strong second line of leadership and there is no reason in theory why it shouldn’t be someone from there and yada yada yada, but that is because your theory isn’t looking at the mechanics of the succession. Briefly, there are two possibilities.
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Well Ravages, I did have the idea of a Recursive Googlebomb once, i.e everyone link Recursive Googlebomb and the first result for “Recursive Googlebomb” will be a link to a search for a recursive googlebomb on google. The phrase will therefore define itself. Unfortunately, I am dead sure Google won’t index search results.

Exit polls are supposed to be much more accurate than Opinion polls. Then how is it that the various exit polls are predicting such differing results in yesterday’s elections? Aajtak is giving 93/140 to the NDA while NDTV-Indian Express guys are giving 75/140. What is happening?

I think what is happening is that they are getting the vote percentages reasonably correct, but
a) they use different models to translate percentages into seats and/or
b) an error in vote percentage gets magnified when it gets translated into seats and/or
c) because of the nature of the elections, it is possible that those errors don’t get cancelled out in other states.

For example Aaj Tak found a 3% swing in favour of the BJP in Gujarat. NDTV found a 1% swing away from the BJP. Assuming that they are calculating the swing from the same base, a 4% difference is not a big deal statistically, but it gets translated to 23 vs. 18 seats for the BJP a difference of 27% (or 21% if you take 23 as the base) That’s what I meant by b). Now the problem is that 4% means a lot in Gujarat, but it means nothing in Orissa, because there the margin of victory for the BJP/BJD alliance was huge. So the problem is the error you made in Gujarat doesn’t get cancelled out in Orissa. If you have been unfortunate enough to make a mistake in 2-3 sensitive states, you are gone.

Sorry, but I just had an attack of geekiness.

I wants my Gmail too!

Just to come to another cartel member’s rescue on the question of gun control, here is another question.

We don’t have to go all the way upto Switzerland to see the effects of lax gun control. There is a community in India that has special rights to carry guns (I think it was the British who made relaxed gun control laws especially for them).

1. They are an extremely martial race.
   
2. When a son is born in their community, they celebrate by firing guns. When a daughter is born, they ring a bell
   
3. They are known for their beautiful and athletic women.
   
4. They have the highest crime rate in India.
   
5. Pt no 4 is false. Chances are, you wouldn’t even have heard of them in relation to crime.
   

What am I talking about?

The post below is a reference to “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”.

Question: What is the saying referring to?