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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Hitchens on Free Speech and Monotheism

The matter of the freedom of speech and expression is not just at the heart of economic growth but also of development. I make no apologies about my unconditional and eternal support of free inquiry, speech, and expression. If the exercise of free speech offends someone, then that person belongs to a lower order of existence than that of a human. I have written about the absolute necessity of the freedom of speech. Among the many reasons for my distaste for monotheism is that it prohibits free speech, free expression and free inquiry. By its very nature, monotheism is totalitarian and dictatorial and hence it is anathema to me.
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Fanatics and Development

Hopeless ignorant masses need some sort of refuge. In many materially and culturally impoverished parts of that world, religious fanaticism affords that refuge. Monotheistic intolerant faiths such as Christianity and Islam are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evoking the fanatical response. Combine a dangerous belief in a homicidal cruel monomaniacal god with general cultural and material poverty, and you have the perfect recipe for generalized murderous violence. Although the advanced industrialized countries are nominally Christian, their general prosperity moderates their belief in the monotheistic Christian god. But in many parts of the globe, a combination of Islam and material deprivation invariably results in headline grabbing violence.
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Reasonableness

Brand Blanshard wrote eloquently about American education in his essay “Quantity and Quality in American Education.” The essay was published nearly half a century ago but the message is universal. Thanks to Anthony Flood for making it accessible. It is a long and thoughtful essay, worth reading in its entirety. The last bits resonate most forcefully with me, and so I present this extended quote for your reading pleasure and intellectual delight.
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The Urbanization Leap

Economic growth is an imperative if the widely discussed goal of development has to be achieved by India. There are a number of well-known causative factors that lead to economic growth. Among them are an educated and healthy population, reliable and adequate infrastructure, a free and fair market-driven economy, and the availability of public goods such as law and order, political freedom, efficient governance, etc. These causative factors have complex interdependencies and have to be present–simultaneous in time and co-located in space—for economic growth, and consequently, development. Even after a fairly superficial analysis it becomes apparent that these factors of economic growth can be most efficiently provided in – and are usually associated with – cities.
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Beware the Ides of March

Julius Caesar was warned by a soothsayer to “beware the ides of March.” The ides of March is today, the 15th of March. Good ol’ Julius disregarded the warning and on this fateful day in 44 BCE he fell dead, assassinated by his friend Marcus Brutus. As Shakespeare wrote, it was the most unkindest cut of all. (“most unkindest”? Bill, Bill, when will you learn how to write English!)
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