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.

A white elephant is something that is beautiful, aesthetic. But is of little profit besides that, and is on the contrary quite costly to maintain. Why then would so many, with inadequate resources, seek white elephants?
Could be an overarching sense of aesthetics.
Or else, merely a desire to be perceived as great and aesthetic.
Common to either is the great cost.
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I think that the horrifying disaster that struck our country is sufficient reason to interrrupt my break. I want to contribute to the relief of course. But what I am thinking is:

1. It is better to contribute to a private NGO than to the government – needless to say.
   
2. I want to contribute to an NGO that will spend its money efficiently, i.e. doesn’t spend too much on “administrative expenses” (i.e. salaries for its managers).
   
3. I want to contribute to the longer term rehabilitation, rebuilding and prevention. Immediate relief is important of course, but with the glare of publicity, I am sure there will be attention focused on the short term, but when our attention wavers, I am sure that the longer term activities will get neglected. I want to do what little I can to reduce that problem.
   
4. I would particularly prefer to contribute to someone who will focus on things that others are likely to miss. I mean, I am sure everyone will focus effort on building houses, repairing fishing boats etc. But is there someone who is perhaps working on innovative approaches to help people withstand disasters? Is there someone who will work on rigging up an early-warning system that relies on low-tech? My money will go there. Once again, the “normal” things are important. It is precisely because you people are contributing so generously to the normal things that I am thinking that perhaps I have the luxury of looking for other ways to help.
   

Readers are invited to respond in the comments giving names and descriptions of such off-beat NGOs that fit the criteria above.

I also want to do what I can to monitor the efforts of these organizations over the longer term. This will obviously have to be a collaborative effort. Any ideas?

A distributed way of approaching the goals question is to talk about rights. Rights are entitlements to an individual to do or not do something, that is recognized by the entire society. Since these entitlements might intersect, and there might be clashes between the members of society, there is a system of rules and customs – law – for arbitration.

This post is about rights. Entitlements. Now typically these entitlements derive more from moral/ethical rather than efficiency standpoints. For e.g. in earlier times, women were not entitled to vote. Even murder and thievery are considered “morally repugnant” as opposed to merely societally inefficient.
This is dangerous.
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I think I am doing a grave injustice to the tradition of this blog by the deplorable lack of bad jokes. In my defence, I was glib in the belief that I was having the same effect of making people go mad and tearing out their hair, with just my articles. But I feel that that has been insufficient.
Ok…
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