This blog has been having a holiday because, well because it’s the holidays! But seriously, I am busy reading and writing. Reading stuff on a new Kindle. And on the web. Writing a bit on the side and thinking a lot. Here are a few pieces that I particularly liked.

Ronald Coase, the author of “The Nature of the Firm” (1937), turns 100 on December 29th, reports The Economist. Wow! If you have not heard about Coase — which is likely if you are not an economist — you have a treat waiting for you.

A wonderful side-effect of blogging is that readers help you with your education. Long-time readers know of my obsession with urbanization as an instrument of development. So whenever an article on the importance of cities and urbanization appears in the popular media, I get a dozen emails from people telling me about it. One such piece is the NY Times magazine Dec 17th piece “A Physicist Solves the City” by Jonah Lehrer about Geoffrey West. Thanks to all who send me stuff to read and I sincerely appreciate your help …

I have never met anyone who sincerely wishes other people harm. I believe this experience of mine must be common to all of us. We have never met anyone who wishes to vaporise others by lobbing a megaton nuclear weapon at them.

The other day a friend asked me, “I have often heard about India being a third-world country. What exactly is the third world?” It struck me that most of us are ignorant about what that exactly means. I said to my friend that “third world” was an euphemism for “desperately poor extremely underdeveloped starving nations utterly misgoverned by unimaginably corrupt kleptocrats.”[1] And, I added, as a consequence, the third world is a world of human-created misery.

Jonathan Swift, author of the English classic Gulliver’s Travels (1726), had pithily observed that “when a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” I would be going over the top to pass Julian Assange on that genius test but seeing the army of powerful people and institutions arrayed against him, I am getting more convinced that Wikileaks has changed the world in ways that are only dimly understood today. I am careful to distinguish between the man …

This is exciting. Jeopardy is a favorite quiz show. Long-time reader of this blog, Raghuveer, will be on Jeopardy Dec 29th. Mark your calendars! (The last time I was in Washington DC in September, I met Raghuveer and his family.)

Apparently according to this test, my brain works quite like that of the vast majority of humans. Take this quick test to check your thought pattern. Do tell what happened in a comment but please don’t spoil the test for others by revealing your answer. Just say whether you are with the majority or not. It would be interesting to see how the numbers stack up. Thanks much. (Caution: Don’t read the comments if you want to do the test and not prejudice yourself.)

It’s funny how India produces world-class economists but is an impoverished third-world country with an economy that languishes at the bottom of the barrel. Not ha-ha funny but ironically funny. Still, as Indians we can hold up our heads with pride that in our tribe we have economists such as Bhagwati, Srinivasan, Dasgupta, Bardhan, Basu — and of course Dixit.

Sometimes they are held for moderation. Patience is called for. Else one will have to put up with the embarrassment of multiple comments.

We pretty much know how despicable Dr Manmohan Singh is. I struggle inexpertly to express my contempt for him on these pages. The contempt I feel for him arises from the certain knowledge that much of what the hundreds of millions of poor & middle-class Indians suffer (and will continue to suffer) can be laid at his door.

Seeing people unable to express themselves coherently is distressing to me. It is cute to see a very small child struggling with language but in adults incoherence is disturbing. Some people’s inability to spell and punctuate properly makes me wonder whether they are inherently stupid or whether their schooling was inadequate.

That’s my conclusion. YMMV. Ashok Malik wrote a piece in Hindustan Times, “Modi Operandi.” While the title is too clever by half, you should check it out. An excerpt below the fold.

Hans Rosling is a favorite academic/activist of mine. He is delightful to watch because of his infectious enthusiasm for his subject — that the world is getting better. Here’s a brief video that presents the evidence for that proposition. (Thanks JP for the link.) Enjoy.

The Transportation Security Authority of the US is getting more absurd in the security theater they play at. Only the big items hit the news, not the humiliation that the average flyer has to go through.

In a comment to a blog post, “Stupidity at the Core of Human Misery,” Eric asked about books that explore the current state of the Indian economy. Here’s what I feel about the popular literature on India’s economy.

The Copernican Revolution.
In the Western tradition, the idea that the sun revolves around the earth — geocentrism — is known as the Ptolemaic model. It was a notion that led people to explain astronomical observations such as the movements of planets with convoluted arguments and constructs. In 1543 Copernicus provided an alternative hypothesis — heliocentrism — which placed the sun at the center of the solar system, and was later confirmed in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. From geocentrism to heliocentrism was a “paradigm shift” (a term much abused …

Today I came across a document which said in part, “Code of ethics to be signed by Every Minister that will prevent them from benefitting during their term in the Government.” I could not but be touched by the naivete of the author. Forget about the poor structure of that statement, but imagine what magical powers that mentality which gave expression to that idea ascribes to oaths!

“We are star dust, we’re golden . . . ” are the words of a very old song. Watching this video reminded me of it.

Dr Subramanian Swamy is pulling no punches in his fight against corruption in India. He appears to be the only high-profile politician who has taken up cudgels against Antonia Maino, aka Sonia Gandhi, the woman who appointed Dr Manmohan Singh the prime minister of the Congress-led UPA government. I wish that there were others in the media and in politics who had the chutzpah to take on the unholy bunch that is wrecking India. Dr Swamy says that Sonia Gandhi is the “Gangotri” of corruption in the country.