Just Shoot Me

All politics is local

2011-04-13T14:22:00.003+05:30

I voted for ADMK for the first time today. For someone whose first political impressions were formed during 1991-96, this is a very difficult thing to do. After all as the newly emerging SUN TV did teach us that JJ is the embodiment of all things corrupt and bad in TN politics. But Mu.ka family's antics have pushed even me, who wouldn't normally touch ADMK with a ten feet long pole, into amma's hands. First world tender-contract corruption is perfectly acceptable (who is pure these days - certainly not me), But to go the african banana republic "my family eats everything" route is too much.

Even with all this, i almost pushed the button for udhaya sooriyan out of reflex. But the proverbial final straw was DMK's candidate - they guy is our current panchayat board president. There is bad blood between us and him - he has been pissing our family off for the last ten years by doing everything in his power to deny our street tar topping, water and street lights for the past ten years and that was enough to convince me to vote ADMK. What 6 hours a day power cuts, the prospect of azhagiri becoming CM and 1,76,000 crores couldn't do, the personal grudge did. All three votes in our house went for ADMK - another first. Even my coddled by karunanidhi-govt servant/pensioner mom has went against DMK today. Doesn't bode well for the ruling party.

If amma wins, we are in for five years of constant culture wars instigated by hindutva right wing assholes (meat ban anyone?). I hope admk doesnt win outright and gaeb10 gets enough MLAs to make a nuisance of himself.

A grand project

2011-04-05T14:22:00.003+05:30

For the past seven months, i have been involved in a gargantuan undertaking - writing about WW2 in Tamil wikipedia. Books and materials on wars are few and far between in Tamil and the few that exist have been written by people with no clue about military history. So i have set out to remedy this by covering WW2 i some detail. yes i know, i am no proper military historian, but i have been reading on this subject for the past twenty years and know enough to write a decent article without mucking things up.

The target is to write a 1000 articles covering all the major issues and happenings. I began in September 2010 and have completed about 200 articles so far. Have finished two major fronts - Western Europe and North Africa. It will probably take a couple of years to finish this project

Bala MAMA

2011-03-21T15:55:00.002+05:30

The results came out today and i am officially a double MA now. The strange thing, i have got "good" marks in the linguistics paper, which i had believed was a definite fail. But int the feminist writing paper, in which i had the impression i had kicked ass, i ended up barely passing. Anyway all water under bridge now. B

TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE 68
SHAKESPEARE 61
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS 57
PRINCIPLES OF LITERARY CRITICISM 53
FEMINIST WRITING 50

Calvin And Hobbes in Tamil

2010-10-26T14:17:00.003+05:30

Sometime back i finished writing the article on Calvin and Hobbes for Tamil Wikipedia. It was begun couple of years back by Sundar. He had completed the difficult parts and i filled up mostly the character descriptions and plot sections.

Writing about Calvin in tamil is more difficult than writing about WW II!. The first hurdle is the encyclopaedic manual of style (If it doesn't feel like watching paint dry, you are doing something wrong) and the second hurdle is to produce a Tamil article that is understandable. I mean, how does one write about choclate coated sugar bombs or Spaceman Spiff and make sense to the Tamil reader at the same time? And then there is the cultural barrier - while's calvin's antics are enough to turn any parents' hair white, they don't come across well in Tamil. A kid who bugs his mother to buy him cigarettes and spouts opinion poll ratings for his dad simply doesn't exist in Tamil mindscape (well maybe in the demented adhigaprasangi world of Manirathnam films). The worst part was translating the theme song for Calvinball. I am no poet (suttalum kavidhai varaadhu) and the translation came out like a cross between Junoon Tamil and Vijay TV's dubbing efforts for hong kong kung fu films:

மற்ற குழந்தைகள் விளையாடும் ஆட்டங்கள் அலுப்பூட்டுகின்றன
விதிமுறைகளும் எண்ணிக்கைகளும் யாருக்கு வேண்டும்
கால்வின்பந்து எவ்வளவோ மேல்
எல்லாவற்றிலும் வித்தியாசம், எப்போதும் வினோதம்
குழுக்களும் தேவையில்லை நடுவர்களுக்கும் வேலையில்லை
என் பேரை வைத்திருப்பதால் இந்த ஆட்டம் எப்போதும் கலக்கும்

I completely understand, if outraged Tamil Calvin fans want to kill me after reading this.

Once more unto the breach

2010-10-21T12:36:00.002+05:30

The results came out today. Aathaa naan paas aayitten!!

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM CHAUCER TO 1660 - 55
RESTORATION & EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - ENGLISH LITERATURE - 61
ROMANTIC & VICTORIAN PERIODS -63
NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH - 58
AMERICAN LITERATURE - 50

Going to attempt the second year exams in December.

World Classical Tamil Conference - Day 3

2010-06-27T09:02:00.003+05:30

Day 3 at the wikipedia stall in the Tamil internet conference went pretty much like Day 1. It was less tiresome as the student volunteers had shaped up well and took over much of the actual work from us. I wasn't able to attend Day 2 because Day 1's lunch gave me a moderate case of diarrhea. The pattern of visitors was similar to that in the first day a)mere sightseers looking for freebies b)people with computers and internet connections, who want to use Tamil in computers c) Some advanced users with specific doubts.

There was another class of people who were very curious about Tamil and computers - Govt employees. With the govt pushing e-governance (and usage of Tamil) hard, most of the govt offices have been computerised and use Tamil for official work. From what i can understand, they have not been given enough training in computers and using Tamil. There were employees from the collectorate, govt school teachers, health department officials, policemen, fire fighters who wanted to learn how to use Tamil in computers. A clerk/typist from the collectorate wanted to know if there were any speech recognition software in Tamil - something similar to Dragonspeech. Unfortunately nothing of that sort is commercially available (there are some research projects but nothing advanced beyond beta version). Another thing people found surprising was the Tamil support available in Nokia mobiles. Most of the handsets dont ship with Tamil enabled. We had to disappoint interested people by asking them to approach their nearest Nokia care centre and install Tamil in their handsets. So everything i saw reinforced my earlier opinion - People want to use Tamil both offline and online as they are more comfortable with it.

There were few "surprise visitors" to our stall. A couple of professors of linguistics dropped in to see what Wikipedia was all about. Just an hour before i had finished writing the article on Francil Whyte Ellis and was able to explain how we can make subjects like those accessible to the laymen. The Professors were happy to see we are writing articles on their subjects and promised to contribute to Wikipedia in the future. They left after gifting us a couple of their books. A pair of marketers from Google, Hyderabad showed up to see the Tamil internet conference. Google did not have a stall of their own, so Paul and his colleague (sorry i forgot her name) were there out of their own initiative to see the conference. They were disappointed with not being able to attend the actual paper presentations (entry only for those with ID cards), but I got an opportunity to lament about the woes of Google translation project in Tamil wiki to them.(The Google Tamil translation toolkit is a crappy software and Google India doesnt have a clue about how volunteer run, consensus driven projects like wikipedia work). They listened very patiently to my pulambal and promised to send the feedback to the relevant team.

I am extremely happy that i was part of such an event. This has made me realise when offered a chance to use Tamil and English in computers a lot of Tamils would chose the former. And it was a chance to meet Tamil wikipedians who have slogged it out to get Tamil wikipedia to where it is now. The things i did not like? First there was the food - Vasantha Bhavan's shitty lunch knocked me out a whole day which i spent mostly in the Kakkoos. The whole ID card situation - none of us volunteers were given IDs, which pretty much restricted us to the Internet conference section. I wasnt able to see anything else - no paper presentations, no panels, no speeches, none. Once i was inside the internet conference dome there was no coming out. Even for peeing, someone with a ID card had to escort us out through the back way and vouch for us to the police guards posted there. I had planned to take photos of politicians/bureaucrats for Wikimedia commons and that didnt happen at all. And there was the lousy internet connection. There were enough jacks available in the stall, but the connection was fickle. The wifi network was feeble and completely useless. The LAN was better but would go off every ten minutes or so. This is supposed to be a "internet conference" and internet did not work properly. Sigh! thats govt for you.

The Hindu's Karthick Madhavan (who has been doing good work covering the conference) has a nice write up on us here (the photo is posed though :-))

Tamil Internet Conference - Day 1

2010-06-24T21:42:00.003+05:30

I just got back from the Tamil Internet conference (part of the Classical Tamil Conference 2010). Man what an experience. I had a blast of a time there.

I was part of the Tamil Wikipedia / Free Open Source Software team manning a big stall there. Thanks to good lobbying/awareness creation by the Tamil Wikipedians and Tamil blogging community, we had been allocated one of the biggest stalls in the venue (bigger than those given for CTS, TCS, HCL, Dina thanthi etc). Ours was the only volunteer run stall and it was a great experience. I am a relatively new entrant to Tamil Wikipedia (though more experienced in English Wikipedia). But living in Coimbatore and working out of home is an advantage while volunteering at an event in Coimbatore. Thus when Ta.Wiki asked for volunteers i signed up. We had a few basic goals - a) Make people aware that they can use Tamil in the web 2) Teach them how to obtain and use Tamil typing software 3) Introduce Tamil Wikipedia and teach them how to use/contribute to it. The FOSS (Free and open source software) group was there to introduce open source software like Ubuntu.

There were a lot of hiccups like they forgot to give us our IDs, the internet going on and off, the inauguration getting delayed etc. But the crowd response made it all worthwhile. To be short : Tamils want to use Tamil in the internet. All the matriculation school/english education mania hasnt reduced people's need for Tamil language content and tools. You should see their faces light up when you mention Tamil can be used in the web. All sorts of people - vernacular media professionals, retirees who chat with their children, college students who want to SMS in Tamil, Govt school teachers who are about to be given computers, Policemen who want to write in Tamil - everyone wants to know how they can use Tamil in the web. A large part of the crowd was the sight seeing, freebee seeking type who was just in for the spectacle. But a large part also seemed genuinely interested to learn how to use Tamil software. The Govt is giving away one lakh CDs full of Tamil software free and there was a long queue for getting that CD (probably a lot of them will get trashed, but even if half of them get used, you can say this conference was a success).

Another thing i noticed is the relief on people's faces when they realise we are not selling something. When they hear i was there to teach them to use some software, most of them ask what the cost is. When they hear we are volunteers doing this for free, there is momentary disbelief followed by congratulations. I had a old man pump my hand saying i appreciate what you are doing. Another point i noticed is - many of the people who already are aware of online transliteration tools like Google and Quillpad, complain that it is very painful to use them. Dont know why. By four we were all worn out and had hoarse throats from all the shouting/explaining. The evening crowd was more of a sightseeing one just there to see what was going on. We wound up the stall an hour before official closing time and left - not much energy left in us to continue.

Today's experience has opened my eyes about the necessity of increasing vernacular content in the web. English remains an alien and uncomfortable language for many of us. I have a thousand qualms about wasting lots of tax payer money in what is essentially a sycophancy show for Karunanidhi. But good things do happen out of political grandstandings like these. While the CM does the whole Bread and Circuses routine, Tamil might actually gain something.

test

2010-06-24T16:29:00.001+05:30

testing from chemmozhi maanadu
செம்மொழிப் பயிலரங்கம்

Back to the Classes

2010-05-27T16:35:00.003+05:30

Two years after dropping out of my MA English Lit course, i went back and have finished writing my first year exams. Being at home and having a recently retired mother to take care of the trading has led to this. I am much (Two whole years) older now and it was to write five full papers of English literature in ten days. Today was the last exam. Results are due out in August. I am fairly certain i will pass easily.

Funny thing about English Literature, is less than ten percent of the students are male. The rest are all females of all ages - from girls in their early twenties to gray haired teachers. I was among a handful of males (all of us men, seem to be in the late twenties/early thirties age group) in the exam centre. Dont men read literature any more?

my newest work

2010-03-09T00:35:00.003+05:30

is here. Was already in a "not bad" shape. Took five days and 3 books to get into the current form. Only flipside is i don't know my limits and only discover them when i have almost collapsed from overwork.

Kaluvura kaiyila..

2010-01-21T16:22:00.003+05:30

Vadivel has a brilliant piece of dialogue in the Thevar Magan which goes like "kaluvura kaila thinganum, thingara kaila kaluvanum". (after his arm gets hacked off in the film). And i have been doing the same for the past three weeks - result of breaking my left arm by falling down in the bathroom. And it has broken exactly in the same place it broke twenty years ago. The worst part about is wearing a cast and answering everyone's questions. Apparently people find it hard to believe that a 28 year old man can fall down in the bathroom. Almost always they blink in surprise and ask the question the second time to confirm - "enna bathroomlaya?". Then they give this disbelieving look like "thanniyadichitu vandiya ottiruppan..bathroomlannu kadhai vidran". Thankfully the more painful days were distracted by my brother's diarrhea. Dude came home after seven long years in seemai , ate something here and had to be hospitalized and drip fed. These first world sissies cant stand a wee bit of E coli. It is good to have someone to laugh at when you are suffering from pain. And i am really really grateful for the gift of immunity from E. Coli, my dear motherland has granted me.

When The Hindu gets inspired by me..

2009-12-07T16:36:00.002+05:30

Today's Hindu has an opinion column on language issue in India by it's Reader's editor - S. Viswanathan. Its well written and convers a lot of ground. And it is basically a rehash of Wikipedia article on Anti Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu. Granted, there is some additional research and the language has been reworked till it is almost unrecognizable. But i still recognize it because i was the one who wrote the Wikipedia article (with help from another editor). A few phrases have been taken verbatim from wikipedia lead section . You wont find them in the current wikipedia article as we are constantly rewriting it to make it a featured article. But they were there a week ago (are still there in the article history). I rewrote this particular article only a couple of weeks ago and I feel sort of proud that a mainstream newspaper has seen it worthy enough to base a opinion piece upon it.

Pudumaipithan

2009-11-14T12:22:00.004+05:30

I have expanded the wikipedia entry for pudumaipithan. A lot of the material was already there, but there were no citations. I have added new material, bibliography and citations. It has come out good (very difficult to get a narrative out of a encyclopedic article). It has lot of room for improvement especially in the areas of literary criticism and literary legacy but i dont think i have enough knowledge to write on those areas. So had to hold off for now. (may be with more research, will expand the article again)

The Conservative War on Coffee

2009-11-02T19:57:00.003+05:30

As i have written before culture conservatives are hilarious. All one needs to do is read old magazines to see what ridiculous stuff they were railing against in the past. And less than a hundred years ago, they were waging a war against Coffee!!!. There is this great book called In those Days there was no coffee by AR Venkatachalapathy on how Coffee came into our lives despite their opposition. This is how some conservatives felt about coffee:

"..இந்நாளில் முக்கியமாய் எல்லா வீட்டிலும் புகுந்து போராட்டம் கொடுப்பது காபி,டீ என்ற விரோதிகள். அவைகள் உணவல்ல. சாப்பிட்டவுடன் கொஞ்சம் உத்ஸாகம் கொடுப்பத்து போலத் தோன்றி, படிப்படியாய் ஜீர்ணக் கருவிகளின் வீர்யத்தைக் குறைத்து, தேகபலம் குறையும் காலத்தில் முன்பின் அறியாத வியாதிகளை வெளிப்படுத்தும் என்று அச்சுறுத்தியது"
- ஸ்த்ரீ தர்மா (Official Organ of the Indian Women's Association), 1926

"..சென்ற பல ஆண்டுகளாக வேறு சில நச்சுப் பண்டங்களும் உணவுப் பொருள்களாய் கிளம்பியிருக்கின்றன. அவை: காப்பி, தேயிலை, கொக்கோ, சாராயம் என்பனவாம்.."
- மறைமலை அடிகள்,1933

"அமாவாசை விரத்த்தை அடியோடு கெடுத்தாயே
ஆனதோர் கார்த்திகை விரதத்தைத் தடுத்தாயே
ஏகதாசி விரதம் இடுப்பை உடைத்தாயே
இன்னும் பிதிர் கருமத்தை இன்னல்கள் செய்தாயே
கொலைகாரப் பாவி ஆசாரத்தைக் கெடுத்த சண்டாளத் துரோகி.."
- இங்கிலாந்து காப்பிக்கும் இந்தியன் பழையதுக்கும் நடந்த சண்டைச் சிந்து, 1914

==
The book is great and full of nice nuggets of history. The foreword and the first chapter are available for preview in google books. Go read it.

PS : This blogger does not imbibe coffee, tea, alcohol and other "drugs" ;-)

At last..

2009-10-27T23:52:00.003+05:30

After procrastinating for nearly two years, i have finally completed my wikipedia article on kula kalvi thittam. It has turned out well - go check it out.

Error Propagation !

2009-10-13T17:54:00.007+05:30

The Anti Charitable Contributions Act 1877 / Anti Humanitarian Act of 1877 is a satire. It was not a real act

==
The "Anti-Charitable Contributions act of 1877" is a Myth. It is not true. The entire act was made up as a satire about famine relief policies adopted by Viceroy Lord Lytton toward the Madras famine of 1876-78.

If you search the internet for this act (also known as anti humanitarian act of 1877), you will find many articles, op-eds, blog posts (like this one of mine from feb 2008) referring to the act as if it were a true act passed by the Madras Presidency. I myself believed it to be an actual law till today. This error was first made by historian Mike Davis and it has caught on and propagated by various columnists and bloggers like me.

The error first occurred when Davis mentioned the act in his book, Late Victorian Holocausts. First published in 2000, this book contains the following sentence ".. by imposing the Anti Charitable Contributions Act of 1877, which prohibited at the pain of imprisonment private charitable donations that potentially interfered with market fixing of grain prices...". (pages 39-40, Paperback edition). Davis' foot notes show that this was taken from a book Called "Famine Campaign in Southern India, Vol 2" by William Digby published in 1878. This book has been long out of print and available only in libraries, so it hasn't been available quickly to recheck.

The second step in the error propagation occurred when George Monbiot, quoted Davis' book and mentioned the act in an Guardian article titled The Turks haven't learned the British way of denying past atrocities in December 2005. From then on, Monbiot's quotes (and by extension Davis') have been appearing in a lot of articles/blogs condemning the free marketers. I for my part dug up the original book in google books and compiled a partial text of the said "Act". Since for some reason google doesnt even have a partial preview for that book, i did not get the fact that it was a satire and not a real piece of legislation. That post of mine is still among the top 5 google results for "Anti Charitable Contributions Act of 1877" and i still get a steady stream of hits to that blog post (It also got linked in a couple of popular Indian blogs). Then in oct 2008, in an unrelated discussion this act came up in Comment is Free and several free market supporters questioned the veracity of this Act. I waded into the argument ("professional" pride ;-)) and defended its existence.

Now a year after it happened, i started to write an entry in wikipedia for this act and i find that the book is now present in the Internet Archive . And when i read the full text, i found that the entire thing was a satire!!!!. Here is what William Digby had to say about this:

"...In many ways the feeling of annoyance and vexation which had been engendered found expression, and amongst other instances may be quoted the following "skit" in which the practice of Government of India of publishing draft bills in the Government Gazette has been Satirised"

Thats right SATIRISED!!!!!. THE WHOLE THING WAS A SKIT!. To cap it all, the Secretary to the Govt has signed it in "Inhumanville" on August 6 1877.

Let me say, i am not disagreeing with anything else William Digby or Mike Davis have written. I still subscribe to their conclusions and like their excellent books. But it is a good case for error propagation when a error made by one authority(Mike Davis), when picked up by another authority figure(George Monbiot), and repeated by amateur readers(like your sorry assed blogger) becomes fact into the times of Google. And it has made it another book called Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics (page 208) by William Bonner and Lila Rajiva.

What shall i do now?. To repent for my sins, i shall first write to Professor Davis and inform him (i guess he already knows, but no new edition of the book has been published since, so no chance for a correction so far). Then i shall hope google's bots do their work and this post comes up always when people search for "Anti Charitable Contributions Act of 1877". (Psst:It is a satire). And a humble apology to all free marketers - the next time i call you names, i will make sure i have got the right evidence.

--
Update : I emailed Prof.Davis and he has acknowledged the error. So hopefully any future edition of the book will not have it.

D9

2009-09-03T09:22:00.002+05:30

Anyone missing good science fiction/action movies ought to watch District 9. A good science fiction movie along the lines of Terminator, Predator, Alien etc.. after a long time.

Deromantizing palayakarars

2009-08-24T12:18:00.003+05:30

Recently i bought "History of Tirunelveli" by Robert Caldwell. The book (atleast the tamil translation) is a dry screed which makes me sleep within a couple of pages. It would have ended somewhere near the bottom of the "never to be touched again" book pile, but was rescued by my mother. Till recently her view of history has been the kalki/sandilyan historical romances singing paens to kings and emperors. And this book turned her historical world view upside down. Robert Caldwell has that effect on you - dude was a evangelist curmudgeon who leaves none spared in his scathing narratives. All the childhood heroes and demigods whose larger than life images have been carefully built up by a thousand movies/dramas, non-detail texts and tireless myth making by jathi sangams are exposed to be nothing more than common thieves, bandits and charlatans.

Anyone who needs a sober reading of southern tamil nadu history, ought to read this book.

Doing Democratic Duty

2009-08-17T10:46:00.003+05:30

There is a vote to be cast tomorrow. My MLA jumped parties and had to resign, now there is a fierce contest between the also rans for the second place - There is no ADMK in the fray and the ruling party wins 90% of all by elections. This would be the last time i vote in this particular constituency (a huge rural one, where suburbs like ours are immaterial) . In the next election, reorganization kicks in and there will be brand new seat to vote for - a smaller one made of suburbs.

The content mind

2009-08-03T11:30:00.002+05:30

is not prone to ranting - thus the paucity of posts. Living at home for the past five months has made me domesticated. But this too will come to pass. I have had much time to do stuff in the past months. I have read a lot - about a hundred books in five months, became a part of an open source community and then came out of it in a schis and i have gained 10 kilos. I guess regular posting will resume soon

The big losers of 2009 elections

2009-05-16T15:34:00.004+05:30

Wen Jiabao:

Now that his Indian sockpuppet Prakash Karat will not get anywhere near the corridors of power, the chinese politburo has lost a valuable (and cheap) agent of influence in India. If they want a replacement of this caliber, the price is going to be too huge. However, they still have N Ram to publish the Xinhua version of truth.

Kongunadu Munnetra peravai:

The big losers here ought to be the kongunadu munnetra peravai (gounder caste party). They have come in the third place in a lot of places in the kongu belt. But the ADMK still won all those seats even without them. Their future looks bleak - they cant ally with the DMK because historically their caste votes against the DMK and the vote wont transfer. And the ADMK wont touch them, now that it knows it doesnt need them to win in West Tamil Nadu. Before the next elections they are going the Makkal Thamizh desam/ pudhiya needhi katchi (if you are wondering who they are, that proves the point) way into the graveyard of caste outfits.

Dr Ramadoss
The trouble with luck is it eventually runs out. The good doctor (and his son, the little doctor) has finally made one switch too many and is now feeling the pain. Look, you run a caste outfit. No amount of posturing on the Tamil Eelam or playing the moral police is going to change that. You rode to power on the "Vanniyar vottu anniyarukku illai" (Vanniyars wont vote for outsiders) strategy. The other castes are not fools to vote for you again and again without something to show for it. And your own base would get bored eventually. All it takes is a wildcard like Vijaykanth to cut into your base and you are exposed as the 5 percenter that you actually are. Good bye and good riddance Doctor. It is a pity to lose the little doctor because he actually got it when it comes to the HIV policy and article 377.

Cho Ramasamy / ADMK / "Padhicha Makkal" types from chennai:

The lesson you ought to learn is - dont believe your own spin. MK is a wily operator. The free TVs and 1 rs rice are popular, the money power is over whelming, the turn out operation is superior and Vijaykanth takes a third of the anti DMK vote. And you still believe that you will win 40??. And you want Amma as the next PM while contesting only 23 seats?. Talk about delusions of grandeur. Whats wrong with you people?. I am tempted to go the old DK way and laugh it off as the crassness of parppaniyam. After all you are the geniuses who bought us the "animal slaughter ban law" in a state where more than 90 percent eat meat. If you cant stop waging class war, atleast be subtle about it.

Me

I am now represented by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the Indian parliament. Sigh!.. of the 16 odd MPs they got, one is from Coimbatore. Seriously this is the party which split from the CPI to support the chinese invasion of 1962!. Sigh again. I sleep soundly knowing that Wen Jiabao effectively controls my representation to the Indian parliament

The Flat Tax magic wand

2009-05-15T21:34:00.003+05:30

One good thing about this whole "Not-Depression" we are in is the opportunity to test the soundness of the various economic doctrines. One such doctrine is the Flat Tax regime. It has been propounded by the "free market" fundamentalists as (one of the) panacea to all the ills of the "socialist" world we live in. The eastern european states coming off the commie yoke, in the 90s drank this kool aid and adapted flat tax regimes of varying percentages. And thus became the poster boys of the flat tax crowd. When everything was well and the credit bubble was alive and kicking, they soared. But when all went to hell, the "Baltic beacon" too has faltered.

Latvia, which has a flat tax of 25 percent, and Lithuania and Estonia, which have 21 percent tax rates, are all in deep economic trouble. They all have huge government budget deficits, a sign that they took in too little in tax revenue to cover their costs, primarily state expenditures to provide a generous welfare state. Conservatives might argue that they didn't slash welfare benefits enough, but there is no dispute that the flat tax didn't provide the expected revenue.

So flat tax regimes are not doing any better than the progressive tax regimes. Everyone is equally in the crapper. The magic runs out when the going gets tough.

Voting

2009-05-11T22:07:00.004+05:30

Elections are here and i am going to vote DMDK. I don't know the name of the DMDK candidate for Coimbatore. Here is the rationale - no matter who wins, the next govt at the center will certainly have atleast 5 or 6 ministers from tamil nadu. And they will prove adept in bringing home the pork (we are certainly grateful to the commission variety corruption). So there is no overwhelming urge to vote for DMK or the ADMK in particular.

This 40 year old boring cycle of DMK or ADMK has to end. It is getting rather stale and we certainly need a different clique/mafia/sychophantic group steeling our money. The MK group and mannargudi group have got enough money now. Its time LK sudeesh and company has a chance to suck the tax payers' blood. Captain got 9 odd percent votes in 2006. That is way better than any other "third alternative" pretenders in TN have got in two decades. If he can take his percentage to anything near 15 percent, he has a good chance at replacing DMK as a prime contender once a certain inevitable event happens. And he is the best shot at ending the "tree cutter syndrome" from the vanniyar belt that has been plaguing tamil nadu for the past decade. And lastly, the most important reason of them all - If we can get captain busy being a full time politician, may be..just may be.. he will stop making movies like Mariyadhai

So vote DMDK. The symbol is "Murasu". Who cares who the candidate is.

PS : Voter roles are online; Booth locations are online; Voter addition is fairly easy (my brother who hasn't been in India in 6 years is still in the rolls); So try and vote. If you think electoral politics is bad, try to think of people who live in Swat or Buner or Pyongyang.

Acts of God

2009-04-16T13:22:00.003+05:30

When i setup shop at home, i had to build multiple redundancies into the hardware - for power, for internet, for software etc. I have primary, secondary and tertiary systems for power, internet, terminals and trading platforms. I was smug that such a layered redundant setup would be immune to any interruption. Yesterday i learned how easy it is to suffer a 25 sigma event. A massive lightening strike fried a major part of my hardware. And this is the second time in two years my laptop(s) have been fried by lightening strikes. Here is another thing learned - however surge proof your electrical network is, the charge that leaks through the phone/Lan lines is enough to do serious damage. In my case even switched off modems and PCs got fried.
Thanks to my earlier paranoia i was able to regain connectivity within 12 hours and restore my infrastructure. But this incident has given me a new respect to black swan events - i am going to add yet another layer of fail safe to my systems.

A rare occurrence

2009-04-03T17:38:00.002+05:30

An indeterminate species of the Lilium family flowered today in my mother's garden.

Entitlement

2009-03-26T19:54:00.003+05:30

Suddenly the world has discovered new super villains aka AIG employees - The Guys who destroyed the world as we know it(TM) and who are (still) getting paid for it. It is hilarious to see people frothing at the mouth about the bonuses AIG employees are getting. I used to work for AIG as a software consultant out of their Jersey City office and boy did their work culture suck!!. There were pretty decent and good people working there but the overall culture was that of a penal colony. They employed multiple software vendors in the same team and pitted vendor against vendor for projects. After a while, this descends into a backstabbing, sabotaging, free for all melee where getting any work done becomes an exercise of Machiavellian proportions.

And thats why i am not surprised when i find the resignation letter of Jake Desantis. When one works for a company, one does not operate in a vacuum. If the equity trading desk made profits, where did its risk capital and seed money came from?. Where did its leverage and margin money come from?. It came from the buffer offered by other divisions of the company . A sub division or a subsidiary can not and will not exist as a stand alone. What this guy is saying is this - All the good things that happened was because of me, and i have no responsibility over what others in the company did. Welcome to the wonderfully self delusional world of entitlement..

If anybody has any sense in America, they would break out the pitchforks and torches and make an example out of AIG.

@Home

2009-03-16T09:43:00.003+05:30

I am living at home after eleven years. I get free food, free internet, free laundry, free everything and i have gained a couple of kilos in a week. I get woken up in the morning and taken for a walk. I also get woken up in the evening and taken for a walk. After three years of living alone in an apartment with a TV and laptop for lighting, i suddenly find myself living with two surprisingly interesting people.

And talking about surprises, i have had more conversation with my dad in one week than the whole past decade put together. For two guys whose relationship was being primarily driven by mutual disrespect we are doing great. I have to seriously reevaluate my take on him. I mean, any guy who can discuss keynesian economics with me ought to be a swell bloke. Proximity sure does brings out the best in both of us. Living at home is definitely agreeing with me..;-)

Heaven..

2009-03-11T19:14:00.002+05:30

The worst thing about my new workplace is that the probability of falling asleep during market hours is very very high.

The definitive iceland bankruptcy article..

2009-03-05T19:54:00.001+05:30

is here...

...David Oddsson, the architect of Iceland’s rise and fall. Back in the 1980s, Oddsson had fallen under the spell of Milton Friedman, the brilliant economist who was able to persuade even those who spent their lives working for the government that government was a waste of life. So Oddsson went on a quest to give Icelandic people their freedom—by which he meant freedom from government controls of any sort. As prime minister he lowered taxes, privatized industry, freed up trade, and, finally, in 2002, privatized the banks. At length, weary of prime-ministering, he got himself appointed governor of the Central Bank—even though he was a poet without banking experience...

Michael Lewis, as usual, kicks ass..

A shift

2009-03-05T07:58:00.002+05:30

Dear Constant Reader,

I am in the midst of shifting from Madurai to Coimbatore - hence the paucity of posts. Going to live with your parents when you are 27 is a bit tough, but where else would i get free food in a recession? ;-).

Regular ranting resumes in a week.

The irony of being capitalists..

2009-02-20T20:16:00.002+05:30

Apparently rich Venezuelans lost $2 Billion to Allen Stanford because they were afraid Hugo Chavez would steal their money through socialism and nationalization:

...After a major banking collapse in the 1990s, Venezuelans started to keep their savings offshore, even before Chavez became president. With many of the wealthy scared that his socialist revolution would one day make them flee the country, they decided that building up savings overseas was indispensable.

"When the time comes to run from Venezuela it's important to have something outside," said Monica Pena, who had invested her parents' inheritance in Stanford because of its high rates and marble and dark wood-paneled offices suggesting respectability...

Meanwhile, somewhere in Caracas, Comrade Hugo is laughing his ass off..

Situation Song

2009-02-18T16:49:00.002+05:30

Situation : GM, Chrysler seek billions more

Song :

பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம் ஏந்தி வந்தேன்
அய்யனே என் அய்யனே
யாம் ஒரு பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம் ஏந்தி வந்தேன்
அய்யனே என் அய்யனே

பிண்டம் என்னும் எலும்போடு சதை நரம்பு உதிரமும்
அடங்கிய உடம்பு எனும் பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம் ஏந்தி வந்தேன்
அய்யனே என் அய்யனே

அம்மையும் அப்பனும் தந்ததா
இல்லை ஆதியின் வல்வினை சுழ்ந்ததா
இன்மையை நானறியாததா
சிறு பொம்மையின் நிலையினில்
உண்மையை உணர்ந்திட

பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம் ஏந்தி வந்தேன்
அய்யனே என் அய்யனே

அத்தனை செல்வமும் உன்னிடத்தில்
நான் பிச்சைக்கு செல்வது எவ்விடத்தில்
வெறும் பாத்திரம் உள்ளது என்னிடத்தில்
அதன் சூத்திரமோ அது உன்னிடத்தில்

ஒரு முறையா இரு முறையா பல முறை
பலப் பிறப்பெடுக்க வைத்தாய்
புது வினையா பழ வினையா கணம் கணம்
தினம் தினம் என்னை துடிக்க வைத்தாய்

பொருளுக்கு அலைந்திடும்
பொருளற்ற வாழ்க்கையும் துரத்துதே
உன் அருள் அருள் அருள் என்று
அலைகின்ற மனம் இன்று பிதற்றுதே
அருள் விழியால் நோக்குவாய்
மடற் பதத்தால் தாங்குவாய்
உன் திருக்கரம் எனை அரவணைத்து உனதருள் பெற

பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம் ஏந்தி வந்தேன்
அய்யனே என் அய்யனே
பிண்டம் என்னும் எலும்போடு சதை நரம்பு உதிரமும்
அடங்கிய உடம்பு எனும் பிச்சைப் பாத்திரம்
ஏந்தி வந்தேன் அய்யனே என் அய்யனே

-(இளையராஜா, நான் கடவுள்)

Vachamulla aappu..

2009-02-16T20:29:00.003+05:30

For long, my most favorite among the asset bubbles was the great Chinese bubble. Apparently prices of everything would go up because the Chinese would buy them. Even the prices of puNNakku and gundoosi were going up because of China stocking up for the olympics. Then came the Dubai/Middle East "real estate/construction/mannar and company" bubble. Apparently the dubaiwallas believed they can build shit and shit would sell. Well bad for them, there is this pesky thing called reality..

...Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out...

We have seen lots of foolish stuff out there.. but building islands that look like a palm tree?

let a thousand friedmans bloom.

2009-02-12T22:12:00.004+05:30

India's unpaid shill Tom Friedman writing in NY Times:

..All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”

please, please, listen to this guy. Since these indians who are supposed to bail out america from her troubles have already made india a heaven, we no longer need them. and while you are at it, take shekhar gupta as a freebie. we won't miss him and the also ran newspaper he edits. It is a win-win deal for India. We get rid of the won't-work-here-but-will-work-there crowd while getting to keep their remittances. And while we are at it, let us impose an emigration tax on these bailout indians - good riddance and we will make money too..

For people wondering how America got into such a mess, just look who is writing their editorials..

AIG's cows

2009-02-10T21:27:00.005+05:30

There a thousand WTF tales in the financial clusterfuck that became the depression we are facing now. But i am most fascinated by the sordid tale of AIG . Maybe it has something to do with the 3 years i spent as a software consultant (aka cyber coolie) for them, but even in the confederacy of dunces they stand out for their stupidity. Apart from the losses their Credit Default Swaps division (CDS) piled up (which i have described as playing russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber), their investment unit did far worse by aggressively lending mortgage backed securities. John Carney explains how it happened by using the cow story here:

You have two cows.

John Paulson borrows one cow so he can sell it for $100. He gives you $10 as collateral.
You buy your neighbors cow for $100, which you finance by taking out a $90 loan from the bank and use John's $10 to make up the rest.
You brag to everyone about your financial health. You have assets--two cows you own, plus one Paulson owes you--worth $300, and liabilities of just $100.
A third of the country goes vegetarian.
You thought your two cows were worth $200 and now they are worth $140.
You express confidence in your financial health. Your assets are now worth only $200--your two cows plus the one John owes you--but your liabilities are still only $100. If necessary, you could sell the assets at this distressed price and pay off all your loans.
You hold onto your cows because you are sure the market is "dislocated." Some day someone will want to eat beef again.
The rest of the country goes vegetarian. Your two cows are now worth $2 each to guys who want to make dog food.
John Paulson buys a cow in the market for $2 and he gives it to you as repayment of the loan. You now have three cows worth six bucks.

John wants his $10 back.
The bank calls. It wants its $90 back.
You call the Federal Reserve and ask for a bailout.

Poor Tom Friedman..

2009-02-03T19:07:00.005+05:30

Apparently Tom Friedman has become an environmentalist. And here is what Matt Taibbi has to say about it:

"...Where does a man, who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated, get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy-inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian....

Vallavan Trilogy

2009-01-29T20:56:00.002+05:30

If you like masala movies, these are the three films you ought to watch :

1) Vallavanukku Vallavan
2) Iru Vallavargal
3) Vallavan oruvan

All three films were released between 1965 and 1967. All were Modern Theatres productions and are great masala movies. I dont believe there is a single original idea in these three but they do have tight screenplays. Way better than over hyped crap like villu or padikkadhavan (seriously who in the right mind pays 100 rs to watch vijay?)

Bye-Election Blues or How i never worried about Thirumangalam

2009-01-27T21:00:00.004+05:30

In Tamil Nadu Bye Elections are (almost) always won by the ruling party. The reason is simple - the electorate is not stupid enough to antogonize the party in power. A snub to the "AaLum Katchi" means inviting payback through neglect and non allocation of funds. Hence they pocket whatever money that is doled out and elect the ruling party candidate.

How good is the above "analysis"?. The relevant data is here to investigate. There have been 67 bye elections in Tamil Nadu since 1952 (68 if you count Thirumangalam). Of those only 8 have been lost by the ruling party (or its alliance partners). And off those 8, there are a lot of "special cases":

1) 2004 - Mangalore was lost by ADMK due to the election being held together with the parliamentary elections. ADMK lost all 40 parliamentary seats and along with them mangalore
2)1999 - Natham was lost by DMK due to the four way split of the vote after TMC parted ways with DMK.
3)1991 - Harbour was lost by ADMK/Congress, as the bye election was held immediately after the assembly elections. Karunanidhi initially won in Harbour, but resigned the seat instead of going to the assembly.
4)1984 - Mayuram. DMK won the seat in a bye election in a squeaker
5)1980 - Anna Nagar. Same as case no 3. MK resigned after a assembly election rout and DMK retained the seat
6)1980 - Usilampatti. ADMK lost the seat to Forward Block.
7)1957 - Mudukulathoor. Congress loses to Muthuramalinga Thevar backed independent
8)1952 - Kangeyam. Congress loses to independent.

So that makes a meagre 12% success rate for "Edhir Katchis" in bye elections. And for 10000 (give or take a few thousand) rupees for a vote, ADMK had no chance with Thirumangalam.

The futility of culture conservatives

2009-01-26T10:02:00.003+05:30

Kalachara Kavalars are hilarious. Enjoy a letter from one such circa 1949..

-
ஆபாசம் அகலுமா?

நானும் என் மனைவியுமாக, தமிழ்ப் படங்கள் பார்க்கச் சென்றதின் விளைவு இன்று எனக்கு படம் பார்க்க 144 - மனைவியால்!!..... காரணம் படங்களில் வரும் ஆபாசக் காட்சி தான்.

படங்கள் ஒவ்வ்வொன்றிலும் நம் நடிகையர் 'மல்லாந்து படுக்கும்' கட்டங்கள் வந்தே தீருகின்றன. என்ன எண்ணத்துடன் இவ்வாறு காட்சிகள் அமைக்கப்படுகின்றனவோ கடவுளுக்குத்தான் வெளிச்சம்! அவ்வாறு எல்லையாகக் கருதப்படும்போது, அத்துடன் நின்று விட்டால் ஆபாசத்தின் அளவுகோல் நீண்டு விடாது. ஆனால் அவர்கள் மல்லாந்து படுத்த பின்னர் இரு கைகளையும் தலைப்ப்றமாக நீட்டிக் கொள்ளுகிறார்கள் அப்போது தான் நீண்ட பெருமூச்சு விடுகிறார்கள். ஆபாசத்தின் எல்லை இங்கேதான் அளவு மீறுகின்றது. மக்களின் கீழ்த்தர உணர்ச்சி கிண்டி விடப்படுகின்றது. படம் பார்க்கும் பெண்மணிகளின் கண்கள் வெறுப்புடன் வேறு திசையை நோக்குகின்றன. அறிஞர்களும் கணவான்களும் இதை எக்கண் கொண்டு பார்க்கிறார்களோ? இந்த கோரக் காட்சி வாலிபர்கள் மனதைப் பெரிதும் கவர்கிறது. இதனால் அவர்கள் தவறான வழிகளில் செல்லவும் நேரிடும். இந்த நிலை மாறாவிடில் 'கலை' என்ற பதத்திற்கே சினிமா உலகில் இடமிருக்காமற் போய் விடக் கூடும். 'மிகவும் கீழ்த்தர உணர்ச்சிகளைப் பரப்பும் சாதனமல்ல சினிமா - கலையை வளர்க்கும் அருங்கலை'. என்ற உண்மையை படத் தயாரிப்பாளர்கள் மனதில் கொண்டாலன்றி கதிமோட்சமில்லை.

பாலசுப்ரமணியன் (பெரும்பன்னியூர்)
"பொதுஜனம் பேசுகிறார்" பகுதி; குண்டூசி இதழ்
டிசம்பர், 1949

Source : தியடோர் பாஸ்கரனின் சித்திரம் பேசுதடி

The last laugh

2009-01-22T21:48:00.001+05:30

You know it is bad, when you get the fucking Economist arguing for nationalizing banks..

Meanwhile, in Iceland...

2009-01-22T13:08:00.003+05:30

There is Rioting... Let me see, They got into trouble, basically because they spent money they didnt have and now they are rioting. Enna idhu, sinna piLLathanama irukku!!!.

My suggestion for them is this : catch all "free market" types you can find and sacrifice them to appease market gods. I know a few who deserve to get their heads chopped.

The poor bearded guy..

2009-01-19T19:40:00.004+05:30

Old-fashioned voodoo economics — the belief in tax-cut magic — has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.

so says the one my mother calls "the poor bearded guy"(dhadi vachuttu paakka paavama irukkararu). I wasn't aware that she regularly reads his syndicated column in The Hindu and she wasn't aware that he got the Economics Nobel this year. I was trying to discredit supply siders / Ayn Rand acolytes to her and was having a hard time until i mentioned Krugman's name. She is the ultimate utilitarian/moral relativist and hence very difficult to convince about the evil banality of anything. But having "the poor bearded guy" in your corner goes a long way in convincing people about the havoc wreaked by supply siders on the world.

idhukku pichai edukkalam

2009-01-15T07:52:00.003+05:30

I know someone from college who is now employed in a Financial company. Today morning i wander over to this guy's blog and guess what he is writing?. He is writing about how everyone in the US congress should read Atlas Shrugged and follow Ayn Rand. Thats right.. Tax cuts - that miraculous Ayn Randian magik potion which along with doing away with regulation was supposed to usher in the john galtian utopia.. or whatever. It is particularly funny, considering the fact that this guy is now getting a salary because of bailouts (ie. "taxpayer money"). There are congressional sessions in which the American Fed Vice Chairman is categorically refusing to state how much TARP funds they have lent to that particular company (i aint kidding).

As South India's leading philosopher kavundamani once said " பிச்சை எடுத்து திங்கற நாய்க்கு லொள்ளப் பாரு, எகத்தாளத்தப் பாரு"

Inverse ETFs

2009-01-14T19:01:00.003+05:30

This is for people who live in America and who have a 401(k) plan. If you are thinking that there are ways to make your 401(k) earn money in a Bear Market by buying Inverse ETFs, you need to remember they are "Path Dependant". Read this carefully to find out how you could end up with a compounding error. It is a simple mistake even someone like Marc Faber has made.

Calvin kicks ass..

2009-01-12T21:53:00.003+05:30

I saw this somewhere and saved it. Click on the picture to enlarge it..

PuraNaanooru II

2009-01-12T07:37:00.003+05:30

I have been trying to write my own "urai" for புறநானூறு. Haven't got much work done so far, but here is another try:
--

புறநானூறு 246
பாடியவர் : கபிலர்

"நாள் கள் உண்டு நாள் மகிழ் மகிழின்
யார்க்கும் எளிதே, தேர் ஈதல்லே
தொலையா நல் இசை விளங்கு மலையன்
மகிழாது ஈத்த இழை அணி நெடுந் தேர்
பயன் கெழு முள்ளூர் மீமிசைப்
பட்ட மாரி உறையினும் பலவே"

(மலையமான் திருமுடிக்காரியைப் பாடியது)

உரை: டாஸ்மாக்கில் ரெண்டு ரவுண்டு இறக்கனதுக்கப்புறம், "இன்னைக்கு சைட் டிஷ் என் செலவுன்னு" சொல்றது ஈஸி, ஆனா மச்சான் மலயமான், நீ ஸ்டெடியா இருக்கப்பியே "இன்னிக்கு ஃபுல் செலவு என்னுதுன்னு" எத்தினி தபா சொல்லிருக்க!.. மச்சி, உண்மையிலே நீ கிரேட் டா..

English உரை: Its easy for anyone to pickup the bar tab, after getting sloshed.. but offering to pay the bill, when one is stone cold sober, that is the trait Malayaman has; and thats why he is such a great bloke.

The perils of creative accounting

2009-01-09T23:46:00.002+05:30

Ayyan Valluvar commenting on Minskian Ponzi schemes, sez:

களவினால் ஆகிய ஆக்கம் அளவு இறந்து
ஆவது போலக் கெடும்.

Loose Translation : The more the number of quarters one fudges the results, the harder one falls..

Asatyameva Jayate

2009-01-07T21:17:00.004+05:30

We all believed it was Satyam bailing out Maytas, but as it turns out it was the other way around. Instead of the 7200 odd Crore Rs that was supposed to be in the balance sheet, there is actually a 2000 odd Crore Rs hole. So Raju was not paying himself that 7000 Crores, he was paying himself nothing to hide the fact that the money didnt exist!

Put simply the company is gone - kaputt - poye poyindhi. There is no cash to pay the next month's salary. And it has 53000(!!) employees. Thats about 5% of the total Indian IT work force. I hope they have some savings to ride out the tough times ahead.

And for those of you who hate regulations - i hope you work for someone like Ramalinga Raju.

A TV deathmatch..

2009-01-06T18:51:00.003+05:30

I would like to see a death match between the Tamil Taliban and the Murdoch underlings. It ought to be fun.

Fantastic voyage

2009-01-05T18:54:00.004+05:30

Over the weekend, i journeyed through places named red enclave, inn of spies, the mistress's abode, the adamant tooth, place of virgins, flock of female thieves!!. No i wasn't playing any fantasy role playing game, i was just going home to Coimbatore. These are translations of the names of the towns on the Madurai-Coimbatore route.

Engines of God - Jack McDevitt

2008-12-31T18:45:00.003+05:30

In the streets of Hau-kai, we wait.
Night comes, winter descends.
The lights of the world grow cold.
And, in this three-hundredth year from the ascendancy of Bilat,
He will come who treads the dawn,
Tramples the sun beneath his feet
And judges the souls of men.
He will stride across the rooftops.
And he will fire the engines of God.

Man goes to space. Finds a lot of dead alien civilisations. Apparently in all known worlds, civilisations rise and fall every eight thousand years. Every eight thousand years, something happens which wipes the slate clean. Among the ruins of one such dead world is the above inscription. What is killing whole worlds in the galaxy like clockwork? What does that mean for Earth? Can such a thing can be stopped if it takes a shot at Earth?. This is the premise of the sprawling science fiction series Engines of God by Jack McDevitt.

The sheer scale of the series is absolutely amazing. Forget character development, forget plot twists, forget writing style. Just the scale and scope of this series is enough for someone who likes to read science fiction. This series belongs to the Xeno-Archeology / Anthrolopological science fiction genre - sort of Jared Diamond in Space. There are six books in this series. This is a must read for anyone who likes science fiction.

PS:
sundar,
when i said this wasn't like Rendezvous with Rama i had read only the first book. Boy! was i wrong!!. The whole third book is a fanboy tribute to the the Rama series. I suspect there are a lot of tributes/homages to Clarke and other science fiction writers, but i read through them fast and have only vague suspicions. The second leisurely read through will reveal more.

bringing Valluvar up to date

2008-12-30T21:42:00.006+05:30

காட்சிக் கெளியன் கடுஞ்சொல்லன் அல்லனேல்
கேனப்பயல் எனக்கூறும் நிலம்.

Unremitting suspicion

2008-12-29T07:39:00.003+05:30

"WRITING about one of the great swindles of the 1930s, J.K. Galbraith pointed to three traits of any financial community that he believed put it at risk of fraud. There was the tendency, he wrote in 1961, to confuse good manners and good tailoring with integrity and intelligence. There was the sometimes “disastrous interdependence” between the honest man and the crook. And there was the “dangerous cliché that in the financial world everything depends on confidence. One could better argue the importance of unremitting suspicion.”

So begins the latest editorial in The Economist on Bernie Madoff. Unremitting Suspicion - thats the key word here. If you are giving your money to someone else, be wary, be suspicious, assume the worst. A healthy amount of skepticism is always good for the investor. If i have learned anything from the finance industry in the past three years, it is not to trust anyone at their word. The whole "our word is our bond" approach just won't cut it anymore.

A plague on your houses..

2008-12-24T18:22:00.003+05:30

for the idiots who worshiped at the altar of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand:

I wish that you will lose your jobs..
i wish that you will lose your savings..
i wish that you will be forced to sell the organs of your dear ones..
i wish that you will lie in the streets dying of starvation, while dogs chew at your entrails..
i wish that you will be reborn in a stalinist paradise and spend your next life in a gulag salt mine.
i wish that the memory of your foul breed would vanish from this very earth..

The Permabear misgivings

2008-12-24T08:35:00.002+05:30

For the last two nights in a row, i have listened to tales of woe. Day before yesterday it was a junior from college, who is now at IIM A reporting the dearth of preplacement offers. Yesterday it was my small business owner uncle about getting the short end of the USD Vs INR trade. Just a couple of more sob stories coming out of the recession.

After a while, being a permabear sucks.

Alone

2008-12-22T08:19:00.003+05:30

Alone
Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone....

The Genius of Tamil..

2008-12-18T23:24:00.004+05:30

is such that same word can be used to translate both ~~"Cooperation"~~ "Cooperative" and "Orgy" ;-)

Q & A

2008-12-17T18:11:00.004+05:30

Q : களவாணிப் பயல் சகவாசம் என்றால் என்ன?. எடுத்துக்காட்டுடன் விளக்குக.

A : Mr. X owns 9% of Company S and controls the management. He also owns about 90% of two uppuma/bongu/dappa companies. Mr.X suddenly decides that company S will buy the two dappa companies, for $1.6 billion. And it turns out Company S, has $1.5 Billion cash in hand. What a miraculous coincidence!!!. So in effect, Mr.X was writing a $1.3 billion cheque to himself with his shareholder's money. So, Dear Constant Reader, the people who can answer this question best are the people who own the rest of Company S. Last heard, they were standing in line to sell their shares of Company S.

Getting weirder

2008-12-16T08:26:00.001+05:30

I have started reading on an interesting new sub genre of science fiction - Xenoarchaeology and it is surprisingly good.

The dependents of the American auto industry

2008-12-12T18:59:00.004+05:30

A few days back, i saw the above table in Paul Kedrosky's blog.

I didn't understand it. A 9x relationship with peripheral jobs seemed too much for a bunch of car makers. I have no experience in the manufacturing sector - spent all my career in service sector : 4 years in IT, 3 in Financial services. So i asked a friend who has worked for an auto ancillary company in Wisconsin to comment on this and he cleared things up for me. I have produced his explanation below:

--
Let's connect the dots:

a) Ford is an Auto company
b) Cummins is an engine manufacturer - some 30% of their business would be ford (30 as an example..but it would be a 2 digit number for sure)
c) Federal Mogul (FM) supplies piston rings for Cummins - 40% (40 - close to reality) of FM's business is Cummins.
d) FM's supplier foundry is a small business - Treat All Metals Inc. Treat all metal's 50% business is FM.
e) There are a lot of machine shops (mom and pop owned companies set in rural wisconsin) dependent on big companies like FM. I'm talking about 50% plus Nuts, Bolts manufacturers - these will depend on a lot of companies like FM
f) Warehouses that service FM are totally dependent on FM, as FM buys up space in bulk

Lets assume, Ford takes away one line of their vehicle - say, Ford Explorer. Cummins can't make engines for the Ford Explorer, FM can not make piston rings for Cummins, Treat all Metals loses the related foundry orders, the machine shops lose their FM business (which is their bulk of business) and the warehouses lose their sole customer.

-
Scary huh?. Thats just one of the big 3. Imagine what happens if all three (GM,Chrysler and Ford) go under. Now please excuse whilst i curl up in fetal position and whimper for my mommy..

Situation Song

2008-12-10T17:50:00.002+05:30

Situation: The Economist offers investment advice

Song:

குறுக்கு வழியில் வாழ்வு தேடிடும் குருட்டு உலகமடா
இது கொள்ளையாடிப்பதில் வல்லமை காட்டும் திருட்டு உலகமடா
தம்பி தெரிந்து நடந்து கொள்ளடா
இதயம் திருந்த மருந்து சொல்லடா
இதயம் திருந்த மருந்து சொல்லடா

இருக்கும் அறிவை மடமை மூடிய இருட்டு உலகமடா
வாழ்வில் எந்த நேரமும் சண்டை ஓயாத முரட்டு உலகமடா
தம்பி தெரிந்து நடந்து கொள்ளடா
இதயம் திருந்த மருந்து சொல்லடா

குறுக்கு வழியில் வாழ்வு தேடிடும் குருட்டு உலகமடா
இது கொள்ளையாடிப்பதில் வல்லமை காட்டும் திருட்டு உலகமடா
தம்பி தெரிந்து நடந்து கொள்ளடா
இதயம் திருந்த மருந்து சொல்லடா
இதயம் திருந்த மருந்து சொல்லடா

(பட்டுக்கோட்டை கல்யாணசுந்தரம், மகாதேவி)

Anti-Terrorism strategy

2008-12-01T20:24:00.001+05:30

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

hee.. hee..

2008-11-25T18:44:00.002+05:30

Give me a leverage large enough,a trading terminal to trade and i will give you a global financial meltdown..

Free Market

2008-11-25T08:11:00.003+05:30

7.7 Trillion Dollars!!!!.. And this does not include the auto makers who are standing next in the line with begging bowls. This is why they call themselves "free" marketers?

I am not biting

2008-11-20T22:55:00.003+05:30

The retest of lows (in nifty, dow etc) for which i was waiting for is here. And i am not buying anything. I have decided to sit this bear market out. Maybe i will bite into something in a couple of years. Till then, i am playing chicken.

The unbearable hilarity of being single

2008-11-19T18:24:00.004+05:30

Every now and then, my dad decides to make an attempt to change my marital status. He has a very standard shtick - stable marriage good, lonely existence bad;everyone gets married so should you etc. A typical "marriage convincing" session from him ends with me a)either laughing uncontrollably at him after reminding him of his screw ups in his life b)or screaming an highly inappropriate stream of invective at him.

A couple of weeks back around deepavali, he called me up and started his routine again. Only this time i noticed something strange with the "marital bliss" examples he was giving me. Out of the six or seven people he cited, i know for a fact one has a mistress (his wife is trying to run the mistress out of town), one is trying to fuck his college going neighbourhood girl (while his wife takes care of his two year old) and one is gay (my dad is not aware of this). Now i am not turning bigoted toward gays and the polygamists, but it does feel strange to have your father try and tempt you toward matrimony using such examples of marital bliss.

Life in Iceland

2008-11-17T21:39:00.001+05:30

apparently sucks. As for me, I live in a third world quasi-banana republic and I am quite grateful for that.

We are all bigots..

2008-11-14T21:17:00.004+05:30

Life in the Tamil caste hierarchy is pretty funny. Everybody has the same philosophy - those who rank above me are bigots and those who rank below me are quota addled welfare parasites. What happened in Chennai law college is something that happens everyday everywhere. The differences are that this time cameras were rolling and the numerical balance was in the dalit group's favor.

Maybe i will get burnt tomorrow along with a bus or maybe not. Since i am a non contributing member to the whole caste hierarchy circus, i hope they will burn the bus only after throwing me out.

Ethirpattu

2008-11-12T17:14:00.002+05:30

பாண்டியன் அறிவுடை நம்பி
(புறம் 188)

" படைப்புப்பல படைத்துப் பலரோடு உண்ணும்
உடைப்பெருஞ் செல்வர் ஆயினும், இடைப்படக்
குறுகுறு நடந்து, சிறுகை நீட்டி,
இட்டும், தொட்டும், கவ்வியும், துழந்தும்
நெய்யுடை அடிசில் மெய்பட விதிர்த்தும்,
மயக்குறு மக்களை இல்லோர்க்குப்
பயக்குறை இல்லைத் - தாம் வாழும் நாளே."

Vs

பட்டினத்தார்
(சித்தர் பாடல்கள்)

".நாப்பிளக்கப் பொய்யுரைத்து நவநிதியம் தேடி
நலமொன்று மில்லாத நாரியரைக் கூடி
பூப்பிளக்க எழுகின்ற புற்றீசல் போல
புலபுலெனக் கலகலெனப் புதல்வர்களைப் பெறுவீர்;
காப்பதற்கும் வகையறியீர்; கைவிடவும் மாட்டீர்;
கவட்டு மரத்து இடுக்கதனில் கால்நுழைத்துக்கொண்டே
ஆப்பதனை அசைத்துவிட்ட பேய்க்குரங்கு போல
அகப்பட்டீர், கிடந்துழல அகப்பட்டீர் நீரே! "

onward the recession

2008-11-11T17:29:00.004+05:30

The first retailer casualty of the recession. Wonder which sector is next in the line?

Thraxas

2008-11-10T17:45:00.002+05:30

Once in a while, one comes across a completely underrated book. One reads it and exclaims - "dude, why isn't this famous!!!". I am rereading such a series - Thraxas by Martin Scott. For people who like urban fantasy/high fantasy/detective thrillers/comedies etc, this is a must read.

Schadenfreude

2008-11-07T23:16:00.004+05:30

I just learned that my room mate in the first year of engineering has become a samiyaar (ascetic/monk/whatever). Last i heard he was in the US of A doing some sort of PhD.

This is the guy who wouldnt pay his share of the newspaper bill (he always claimed he didnt read it) and would then try to claim his share when i sold the old newspapers to pazhaya paper guys!!!. They (there was a whole gang like him) had their own reality - they had a whole racket going on - every day they would borrow " just 10 rupees" for lunch from every tom,dick and harry in the hostel and then disappear for days to their local relatives' places. I would be left to answer the constant stream of creditors turning up at the room trying to get their 10 rs back. And he is now a monk!!. Life... man.. just when you think you have heard it all...

Regular ranting resumes

2008-11-06T21:04:00.003+05:30

Dear Constant Reader,

Due to a long running superstition of mine, i stopped writing anything for the past couple of weeks. It is basically this - if i open my mouth about any team i support in anything - be it sports or politics, they tend to lose badly. I have what is colloquially referred to as a kari Naakku (a black tongue). So i had to hold my tongue till a certain event on Nov 04 had passed. (see still i am not speaking about it). Now that it is over, regular ranting resumes.

Two weeks back, i was talking about 2700 as the line in the sand for Nifty. Well it seems i was wrong by a "mere" 25 percent. Thankfully i didn't put my money where my mouth was, so i didn't lose anything except some of that smug self confidence. I am not worried about the bounce as well - A dead cat has nowhere to go up. It is going to be a bad couple of years of equities. There will be plenty of opportunities to buy stocks at great bargains. Till then i am perfectly happy to park my money at 10% with the Indian Government. In a recession, inertia is a virtue.

Nerds and Emperors

2008-10-20T15:27:00.004+05:30

There are some books which you can read in any frame of mind and come out feeling much better. Robert Graves' I, Claudius is such a book. I read its sequel Claudius the God this weekend. It is not as good as its predecessor but is still a great read. At the end of I, Claudius Tiberius Claudius Drusus Germanicus Nero aka claudius the idiot aka poor uncle claudius aka clau-clau-claudius, after surviving his dysfunctional family, finds himself proclaimed as the emperor of Rome though no fault of his own. In Claudius the God he narrates his (mis)adventures as he sets about to rule Rome as an absolute monarch and restore the republic while he can.

In the first book, Claudius was a nerd pretending to be an idiot to fly under the radar of his family of adulterers,sociopaths, megalomaniacs and murderers. Now he is emperor and God, surrounded by sycophants, schemers, nymphomanic wives and quarreling advisors. In typical nerd fashion, he sets out to make Rome safer from her enemies - both within and without. The narrator here is not a nervous nerd trying to find acceptance with his family, but a whining nerd trying to make himself understood by his unappreciative subjects. Claudius the emperor is always alternating between self congratulation over his achievements and petulance over his subjects failure to recognize them. Ultimately he fails to restore the republic and the monarchy falls to Nero who is as despicable his predecessor Caligula.

The best parts in the book describe the invasion of Britain and the story of Jesus Christ (who is described as a pretender to the messaihhood). The story of Herod Agrippa is a distraction and just makes the narrative longer. What i missed most was the gallows humour that permeated I, claudius. And there is no larger than life villain to replace Livia. It is a good book but not comparable to its prequel.

Sensex Below 10000!!!!

2008-10-17T16:00:00.003+05:30

நிலை மாறும் உலகில்
- ஆபவாணன், ஊமை விழிகள்

நிலை மாறும் உலகில்
நிலைக்கும் என்ற கனவு
வாழும் மனித ஜாதி
அதில் வாழ்வதில்லை நீதி

தினந்தோறும் உணவு
அது பகலில் தோன்றும் கனவு
கனவான நிலையில்
புது வாழ்வுக்கிங்கே நினைவு

பிறக்கின்ற போதே
இறக்காத மனிதன்
வாழ்கின்ற சாபம்
அவன் முன்னோர் செய்த பாவம்

நிலை மாறும் உலகில்
நிலைக்கும் என்ற கனவு
வாழும் மனித ஜாதி
அதில் வாழ்வதில்லை நீதி

why regulation is a necessity.

2008-10-14T20:27:00.002+05:30

i was going through a month old article on how AIG went under and came across this paragraph:

AIG was on one side of these trades only: They sold CDS. They never bought. Once bonds started defaulting, they had to pay out and nobody was paying them. AIG seems to have thought CDS were just an extension of the insurance business. But they're not. When you insure homes or cars or lives, you can expect steady, actuarially predictable trends. If you sell enough and price things right, you know that you'll always have more premiums coming in than payments going out. That's because there is low correlation between insurance triggering events. My death doesn't, generally, hasten your death. My house burning down doesn't increase the likelihood of your house burning down.

Not so with bonds. Once some bonds start defaulting, other bonds are more likely to default. The risk increases exponentially.

Credit default swaps written by AIG cover more than $440 billion in bonds 2. We learned this week that AIG has nowhere near enough money to cover all of those. Their customers-those banks and hedge funds buying CDSs-started getting nervous. So did government regulators. They started to wonder if AIG has enough money to pay out all the CDS claims it will likely owe.

What they did was the equivalent of writing naked puts on all the stocks that exist in the universe!!.(Even a lobotomized monkey with two weeks stock market experience would tell you writing naked puts on everyone and his uncle is the equivalent of playing russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber) and did they keep the money from the premiums to meet the inevitable defaults?..no they paid record bonuses and spent most of it!!! With such geniuses running the show, no wonder they nearly dragged down the world's financial system with them. Last heard they were treating themselves to some tax payer sponsored manicures after the fed bailed them out!!.

The sad case of Iceland

2008-10-13T16:16:00.002+05:30

BusinessWeek has a good article on the Iceland bankruptcy.

This Wikipedia Article also gives good information on what went wrong.

For those of us who have read about past bubbles and busts, there is nothing new here. We have all seen this before. When you hand the reins of the economy to people whose ideology makes them believe regulation is a bad word, they are bound to do this kind of things. This has happened before and will happen again.

Bottoming out..

2008-10-11T20:52:00.006+05:30

In the previous post, i was thinking about a bottom. I think Friday's trading action sort of confirms that there is not much downside left. I was saying 5%, but let me revise it to 10 % on either side of 3000 Nifty. I think there will be increased volatility in such a badass market (the world hasnt seen one such as these since the 1930s depression). So 2700 in Nifty will be the worst case line in the sand. I personally believe it won't be that bad, 3000 would be a better bottom.

Had enough!

2008-10-09T18:45:00.003+05:30

I think we have had enough of the price wise bear phase. I don't see much downside (say max 5% or so) from here. But that doesn't mean there is going to be a V shaped recovery either. I believe the time wise bear phase is just beginning and we are going to be stuck here for another year or so.

The valuations of Indian markets have become mouth watering to me. But still can't bring myself around to buy equity.

You heard it here first..

2008-10-08T01:42:00.005+05:30

All ye suckers, who bought ULIP (unit linked insurance plans) by the truck load, remember it is your money that has bought the shares being sold by FIIs. It is you who have been left holding the bag. It is your money FIIs are now withdrawing to wall street. In three years time, your Market plus policies would probably go the way of all Assured return schemes of UTI. (hint: no one saw any return, assured or not).

when countries go bankrupt

2008-10-06T20:21:00.003+05:30

It is not a company that is near bankruptcy this time, it is a whole damn country

For those who wonder what would happen if libertarian wunderkids ran everything.. read and weep

And as for the next college kid you see with a Ayn Rand book in his/her hand, contemplate homicide. And if you were a college kid who read Ayn Rand books.. i pity you.

==
Personally, i made some of my biggest trades in the past couple of days. I am not exactly rolling in money, for having moved much of my money into safe low yield fixed deposits. But it doesnt hurt to be a permabear now.

pattinathar was a laid off i-banker.

2008-09-30T22:29:00.006+05:30

"..உடுக்கக் கவிக்கக் குளிர்காற்று
வெயில் ஒடுங்கி வந்தால்
தடுக்கப் பழைய ஒரு வேட்டி
உண்டு சகம் முழுதும்
படுக்கப் புறந்திண்ணை எங்கெங்கும்
உண்டு பசித்து வந்தால்
கொடுக்கச் சிவனுண்டு நெஞ்சே
நமக்குக் குறைவில்லையே! "

---பட்டினத்தார்
on hearing that his mega-financial firm went bankrupt overnight.

conspiracy theory

2008-09-29T23:08:00.002+05:30

The MaRan brothers and mu ka azhagiri are actually in cahoots. They saw what happens when you screen sappai films like kuruvi. They realised there is no way in hell, kadhalil vizhundaen.. a ultra sappai movie is going to run beyond 10 days anywhere in tamil nadu. Hence the drama in Madurai. As philospher goundamani would have said marketingla idhellam sadharanamappa

they will be back

2008-09-23T18:47:00.004+05:30

like a bad dream, the assholes are explaining why they are assholes again and again.

"This is a black week. Those of us who have supported financial capitalism are open to the charge that the system we championed has merely enabled a few spivs to get rich. But it helped produce healthy economic growth and low inflation for a generation. It would take a very big recession indeed to wipe out those gains. Do not forget that in the debate ahead."

yeah, its the debate that is important... so what if we blew up things to hell..

Read the whole article, it is pathetic whining from crack addicts asking for change so that they can get the next fix. Meanwhile the woman free market assholes love to hate, is cautioning people not to write them off and that they will be back to their nefarious ways before you can say bailout..

"..During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.."

i can't sleep..

2008-09-17T21:54:00.006+05:30

i am way too much excited tonight to sleep.. these are the facts

1) i am long on silver and short on nifty
2) Silver is up 15% and dow is down 4%
3) such things happen when, 80% of my portfolio is sitting in a 10% pa fixed deposit.
4) uppu vikka pona mazha varudu, maavu vikka pona kathadikkudhu..

mea culpa

2008-09-17T21:54:00.002+05:30

On, March 8 2007, someone wrote this..

'...I believe the market will go into a big sideways for this year between 3500-4500. We are swimming in a sea of unstable liquidity (the yen carry trade circus is but one danger we are sitting upon), waiting to blow up. But i dont believe a meltdown is in the offing because : earnings growth wont slow except for a)recession in us b)big time monsoon failure in india. So not much upside left since valuations are already high (though not at 1987/2000 levels) and no meltdown in the offing, i see a great sideways movement not seen since last quarter of 2003 and early 2004. year 2007 will be the year of consolidation.... '

The idiot who wrote the above drivel was right about the 'unstable liquidity' part and wrong about almost everything else.... this guy was predicting a big sideways.. movement. And exactly a year ago on sep 18 2007, helicopter ben started the fed rate cutting spree. Nifty went to 6300 and then free fell to 3800. And i lost a couple of lakh rupees in my Nifty Option Straddles. yes, that idiot was me and this was the price i paid for finding my personal black swan. ;-)

--
PS: lately i noticed, all my posts have been dissing people about their stupidity, so for a change, i decided to write one about my own. But i am no hedge fund manager and i dont get paid to blow up other people's money. Alas, i wish i was employed in wall street.

Reality has a socialistic bias

2008-09-16T20:50:00.004+05:30

“For long we have lamented that there are too many controls in our nascent stage of development, perhaps they were necessary. In India I don’t see too much of an impact....”

-akhil gupta, deputy ceo, bharti airtel
commenting on the financial meltdown..

What he really means is this - thank god that the beauracrats led by yv reddy didnt allow us to do all those exotic derivative trading when we wanted to. if they hadn't stopped us, we would be toast today. Maybe regulation is not such a bad word at all.

--
I was going around feeding people the "there are no atheists in foxholes/there are no libertarians in recessions" line. But i did find some Indian libertarians who are giving the whole 'this is not a true free market system' line. Hee Hee.. i have been hearing the same thing from marxist apologists since the soviet union went bust.

The storm hits

2008-09-15T07:47:00.004+05:30

Over the weekend

1) Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy

2) Merrill Lynch sells itself to Bank of America to avoid Lehman's Fate

3) AIG is in trouble and looks like going the Bear Stearns way.

The bear market is here to stay. No more cheap money to go around. How much Indian equity these troubled companies own and how much they will have to sell is not clear. What would happen, if they try to liquidate their Indian holdings?. And who will replace them as owners of huge chunks of the Indian large caps?

PS: i have to go check up what the indian "free market" crowd is doing these days..

america kaaran ... america kaaran than...

2008-09-11T08:22:00.003+05:30

karunanidhi waived $1.4 billion
P Chidambaram wrote off $17 billion;

Hank Paulson stiffs the American Tax payer with Trillions.....

PS: as philosopher goundamani would have remarked : ayyo.. oru trillionukku ethana zero nne enakku theriyadhaee...

Socializing Risk..

2008-09-10T16:10:00.004+05:30

I like the life free market types live in the united states of America. When markets go up, they get to preach about the strength and inevitability of the markets and generally make rude sounds about welfare socialism. And when shit hits the fan, they have their hench men nationalize the mess they have made and make tax payers pay for cleaning it up.

But in India, the free market types are thwarted in their attempts by an even more sinister cabal of socialist type bureaucrats. There is this certain economist who appears in CNBC often and whose writings dot the pink papers now and then. Our guy was clamoring for a rate cut of 300 basis points in April and now seems to have gone quiet. With a >12% inflation, someone would try to lynch him if he repeats this sentiment now. But imagine if these types had control of the north block and the RBI. Like i have said earlier, such times make me glad to live in the same country as Prakash Karat and D Raja.

Aspirational phone.. my ass..

2008-09-09T11:19:00.003+05:30

...The product has so far received a lukewarm response from Indian consumers. According to industry estimates, both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar have not been able to sell more than 1,500 phones during the first week of launching the product....

thats the state of iPhone three weeks into its launch in India. So they price the iPhone 3.5x it's dollar price and expect it to become a Veblen Good. Apparently there aren't that many suckers in India. At this rate Apple won't be able to recover the money it spent on the launch parties.

It is sweet revenge for someone like me who has been doing a unofficial ko pa se act for iPhone for the past year and has been pissed at the price.

Two books and a New Season of BSG

2008-09-02T11:34:00.004+05:30

August was spent in a haze of books and TV shows. It seems i read around 40 books in August alone - most of them science fiction series fiction.. but hey that's more than a book a day. Two of them particularly stand out. The first one is Reaper's Gale (Book 7 of the Malazan series). This is a series which is still going strong in it's seventh book. The second one was David Weber's By Schism Rent Asunder. This is the second book in the SafeHold series. Both are books i have been waiting to get my hands on for about a year now and were enjoyable.

And then i saw Season 4.1 of Battlestar Galactica. This is one series that is getting better and better. Though i don't like the way it is going. It is beginning to feel like vikraman's vanathai pola. Everyone and his uncle is turning out to be a good guy. What happened to plain old villainy?.. sniff..

What i didnt catch was the whole Beijing Olympics circus. Watching Athens 2004 via NBC spoiled my opinion about the olympics thing and the schizophrenic coverage by the Indian media just reinforced my opinion. After wathching all the chest thumping about emerging China, let me make one of my dubious predictions - China will go the Romania(who?)way into obscurity. Dictatorships usually don't keep up the funding once the whole potemkin show gets over.

The mother of all bubbles

2008-09-01T17:47:00.004+05:30

Dear Constant Reader,

To commemorate the completion of five years of useless ranting through this blog, i am back briefly with this post. I am still suffering from some sort of communication exhaustion!! and am being content with not speaking to anyone i know for a couple of months.

While i was out incommunicado, the whole Beijing Olympics thing has come and gone. I am not a big fan of sports festivals (being a lazy couch potato) and personally think the whole olympic thing is boring. But this olympics being over has given me the oppurtunity to flog an old hobby horse - the incredible china bubble. I am posting a weekly chart of the Shangai composite index below. See the bubble and spare a thought for the chinese middle class which ended up playing sucker for this crash of 65 percent.

running on fumes

2008-07-28T21:45:00.003+05:30

Dear Constant Reader,

I am sort of running on fumes for the past couple of weaks; hence the paucity of posts. Will be back by the weekend.

Idiocism

2008-07-17T16:07:00.003+05:30

I am not a stranger to Idiocy. I used to be a socialist in my younger days - the type which thinks all rich people are somehow guilty and hates all the shoppers at Spencer Plaza with a passion. I even wrote an "article" in my college newspaper denouncing the vices of capitalism and free markets. For such a species as mine , there was no worser enemy than co-students who read Ayn Rand (or pretended to) and thought regulation was the worst possible thing in the universe. Thats part of the reason, why i am happy at the thought of the looming recession/depression - my erstwhile idiological enemies were wrong too!. They have had the control of the world's financial system for the last two decades and look at the mess they have made out of it.

melancholy

2008-07-15T15:35:00.003+05:30

In my limited experience as an active trader i have personally experienced four bruising corrections so far - Oct 05, May 06, Dec 07 and Aug 08. I was a passive viewer during the crash of Apr 04 and a novice pink paper reader during the dot com crash of 2000 and 2001. But what is happening now is my first real life bear market. And it is absolutely frightening.

Meet the barbarians..

2008-07-09T22:44:00.003+05:30

Is it me or do these two appear a tad too similar..

1) Conan the Cimmerian

Mongol General: .... Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

- Robert E Howard, Conan the barbarian, AD 1982

--

2)Karunakara Thondaiman

"...தம் கணவருடன் தாமும் போக வென்றெ
சாதகரைக் கேட்பாரே தடவிப் பார்ப்பார்
என் கணவர் கிடந்த இடம் எங்கே என்றே
இடாகினியைக் கேட்பாரைக் காண்மின் காண்மின்... "

- Jeyamkondaar, kalingathu paRani(Chapter 13, Verse 481), AD 1110

karadi! karadi !

2008-07-07T20:17:00.002+05:30

Businessweek suddenly discovers that gravity exists in India. Maybe it is time to go Bull..mmmm

Speculation is the Disease

2008-07-04T13:26:00.002+05:30

A week ago i wrote Speculation is just a symptom in the Crude Oil price rise. Now i am veering toward the view speculators are the culprits after reading this. appo ithana Naal KaLavaNi paya sagavaasam than vachirundana!

A private note

2008-07-01T22:15:00.002+05:30

Dear new constant reader from Stockholm,

Do i know you? For some reason i believe you are a classmate of mine. If so, drop me a mail at sodabottle AT gmail.com.

-
Bala

Just Shoot Me

All politics is local

A grand project

Bala MAMA

Calvin And Hobbes in Tamil

Once more unto the breach

The results came out today. Aathaa naan paas aayitten!!

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM CHAUCER TO 1660 - 55 RESTORATION & EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - ENGLISH LITERATURE - 61ROMANTIC & VICTORIAN PERIODS -63NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH - 58 AMERICAN LITERATURE - 50

World Classical Tamil Conference - Day 3

Tamil Internet Conference - Day 1

test

Back to the Classes

my newest work

Kaluvura kaiyila..

When The Hindu gets inspired by me..

Pudumaipithan

The Conservative War on Coffee

At last..

Error Propagation !

D9

Deromantizing palayakarars

Doing Democratic Duty

The content mind

The big losers of 2009 elections

The Flat Tax magic wand

Voting

Acts of God

A rare occurrence

Entitlement

@Home

Heaven..

The definitive iceland bankruptcy article..

A shift

The irony of being capitalists..

Situation Song

Vachamulla aappu..

let a thousand friedmans bloom.

AIG's cows

Poor Tom Friedman..

Vallavan Trilogy

Bye-Election Blues or How i never worried about Thirumangalam

The futility of culture conservatives

The last laugh

Meanwhile, in Iceland...

The poor bearded guy..

idhukku pichai edukkalam

Inverse ETFs

Calvin kicks ass..

PuraNaanooru II

The perils of creative accounting

Asatyameva Jayate

A TV deathmatch..

Fantastic voyage

Engines of God - Jack McDevitt

bringing Valluvar up to date

Unremitting suspicion

A plague on your houses..

The Permabear misgivings

Alone

The Genius of Tamil..

Q & A

Getting weirder

The dependents of the American auto industry

Situation Song

Anti-Terrorism strategy

hee.. hee..

Free Market

I am not biting

The unbearable hilarity of being single

Life in Iceland

We are all bigots..

Ethirpattu

onward the recession

Thraxas

Schadenfreude

Regular ranting resumes

Nerds and Emperors

Sensex Below 10000!!!!

why regulation is a necessity.

The sad case of Iceland

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM CHAUCER TO 1660 - 55
RESTORATION & EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - ENGLISH LITERATURE - 61
ROMANTIC & VICTORIAN PERIODS -63
NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH - 58
AMERICAN LITERATURE - 50