Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Pragati

I am pleased to announce the arrival of a new publication titled “Indian National Interest Review — Pragati” (which in Hindi means “progress”). I reproduce here in full the superbly crafted editorial of the first issue.
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Ancient Cities, Modern Slums

Isn’t it astonishing that around 2,600 BCE, when most of the world was living in tiny little human settlements, the Indus Valley civilization had well-planned cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro?

“Some of these cities appear to have been built based on a well-developed plan. The streets of major cities such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were paved and were laid out at right angles (and aligned north, south, east or west) in a grid pattern with a hierarchy of streets (commercial boulevards to small residential alleyways), somewhat comparable to that of present day New York. The houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves, and had their own wells, and sanitation. And the cities had drainage, large granaries, water tanks, and well-developed urban sanitation,” the Wikipedia article on urban planning says.
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Gmail on Paper!

Whatever are they going to think of next? Three years ago on April 1st, they announced 2 GB of free mail. Now this. Free paper mail. They will mail you a copy of any number of emails that you wish to save on hardcopy. Google is going to take over the earth 🙂

PS: It’s an April Fools’ joke.

PPS: Praveen C informs us that Google is also offering free broadband service called TiSP.

Happy April Fools

Happy April Fools’ Day!

For a fascinating account of April Fools’ day, see the Wikipedia article.

There are smart people with a sense of humor and as their targets there are billions of gullible people. The existence of organized religion is proof that there are billions of gullible people. But organized religion is not funny. It becomes funny though when ridiculed. Rowan Atkinson is the master of ridicule and humor. If you have not seen him as Bean, you have a treat waiting. (Don’t bother with the stupid Hollywood “Mr Bean” movie. It’s a pale imitation of the real Bean.) Even better, check out the Blackadder series. Wickedly funny.

Here’s a short clip of Rowan Atkinson on the Amazing Jesus of Nazareth.

Thank god that some humans have a sense of humor. The Anglosphere particularly appreciates a good joke. One cannot imagine anything comparable in the Islamosphere. If someone in some remote corner of the world were to poke a bit of fun at their idols, the Islamosphere would go an a worldwide rampage and before you know it a few dozen people would be dead. They do need to lighten up a bit.

Have fun!

Rambling on about Education

I think when it comes to education we need to go back to the basics. We have made the system needlessly complex and it has not surprisingly failed.

A few years ago, at the university, all of us in the student housing co-op were required to attend a presentation by a HIV+ man. At one point he took out a small polythene bag. It had about 70 pills and he said that he took them daily for avoiding getting sick. The pills would make a substantial snack. So why so many? Well, there was this one yellow pill which boosted his immune system. But that made him nauseous. So the red pill was to suppress that. The three green ones were to compensate for the side-effect of the red pill, though. But if you take the three green ones, you had to take the 8 white pills to give you back the vitamins that the green ones made you lose. Now the large blues pills were required for the upset stomach that the white ones gave you when you had them in combination with the yellow pill, the one that you actually needed. The story went on till about 70 pills had been accounted for.
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The Pale Blue Dot

Also Sprach Carl Sagan:

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
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RISC Presentation at ISB

Here is the slide set I used at ISB on the 9th of March. The background reading material starts off with “Inclusive Economic Growth.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=29302&doc=risc-presentation-at-isb-8961

Air Indian — Part Duh

So then the two state-owned Indian airlines are going to merge (according to this rediff report — hat tip: Tejaswi) and the merged entity will be called — umm, let’s see now — “Air Indian,” the title of a blog post last month on the merger.

I have written earlier about the stupidity of changing the name “Indian Airlines” to the even more generic “Indian,” repainting a few dozen airplanes spending tens of millions of dollars, knowing full well that in a matter of months the whole exercise will be repeated when the name is changed yet once more. Time to revisit that piece.

Like I say, India is not poor for nothing. It takes concerted cumulative stupidity over decades to bring a large economy to its knees. Behold the bureaucrats and marvel at their madness.

Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems

Two fish were swimming along a stream when they come upon a third fish which remarks, “The water is absolutely fine today.” The two carry on without a reply. Later upstream one of them says to the other, “What the heck is water?”

Talking fish is not the point of the little story, of course. I find it remarkable that we often miss what we take for granted, and don’t question what we are perpetually immersed in. What explains the unreasonable success of cities is not something that we ponder casually, even though virtually every one of us lives and earns one’s livelihood in one.
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Why Free Speech

Why support free speech, asked Gaurav in a comment on a previous post here. The short answer is: because we are not infinitely wise, our rationality is bounded; because we are not equally wise; because ideas matter, and because markets work.
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