US to Japan is 8,812 miles and will take about 35 days 18 hours, according to Google maps. Then Japan to China, a distance of 2,552 miles will take only an additional 2 days 11 hours. Note that your speed is much much higher in the Japan to China segment. Puzzling, no?

Well the reason is simple. In the US to Japan segment, you have to kayak across the Pacific ocean. Step 27 of the directions

27. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean 2,756 miles

and then

42. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean 3,789 miles
Entering Japan

But when you go from Japan to China, you have

117. Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean 486 miles

The lesson is simple. Kayaking across the Pacific ocean takes a very long time. I think you should use jet skies instead. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

{Thanks to my friend Rajan Parrikar for the inspiration.}

Post script: Manmohan Singh says he knows all about the 2G — Sonia-G and Rahul-G. He thought they were talking about Sonia-ji and Rahul-ji.

This happened some years ago.

Saddam Hussein was sitting in his office wondering who to invade next when his telephone rang. “Hallo! Mr. Hussein,” a heavily accented voice said. “This is Paddy down in County Cavan, Ireland. I am ringing to inform you that we are officially declaring war on you!”

“Well, Paddy,” Saddam replied, “This is indeed important news! Tell me, how big is your army?”

“At this moment in time,” said Paddy after a moment’s calculation, “there is myself, my cousin Sean, my next door neighbour Gerry, and the entire dominoes team from the pub-that makes 8!”

Saddam sighed. “I must tell you Paddy that I have one million men in my army waiting to move on my command.”

“Begorra!”, said Paddy, “I’ll have to ring you back!”

Sure enough, the next day Paddy rang back. “Right Mr.Hussein, the war is still on! We have managed to acquire some equipment!”

“And what equipment would that be, Paddy?” Saddam asked.

“Well, we have 2 combine harvesters, a bulldozer and Murphy’s tractor from the farm.”

Once more Saddam sighed. “I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 16 thousand tanks, 14 thousand armored personnel carriers, and my army has increased to a million and a half since we last spoke.”

“Oh dear!” said Paddy “I’ll have to ring you back!”

Paddy rang again the next day. “Right Mr. Hussein, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne! We’ve modified Ted’s ultralight with a couple of rifles in the cockpit and the bridge team has joined us as well!”

Saddam was silent for a minute, then sighed. “I must tell you Paddy that I have 100 bombers, 20 squadrons of MiG 19 attack planes, my military complex is surrounded by laser-guided surface-to-air missile sites, and since we last spoke, my army has increased to two million.”

“Faith and begorra!”, said Paddy, “I’ll have to ring you back.”

Sure enough, Paddy called again the next day. “Right Mr.Hussein, I am sorry to tell you that we have had to call off the war.”

“I’m sorry to hear that” said Saddam. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Well,” said Paddy “We’ve all had a chat, and there’s no way we can feed 2 million prisoners of war.”

The Irish have a wicked sense of humor. Check this out. An 8-year old girl named Becky and her prank phone calls. She is adorable and quick with her tongue. I love the Irish accent. Be warned that what you hear is seriously cute.

REDMOND, WA—In what CEO Bill Gates called “an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors,” the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.

. . . With the patent, Microsoft’s rivals are prohibited from manufacturing or selling products containing zeroes and ones—the mathematical building blocks of all computer languages and programs—unless a royalty fee of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant. [Source: ONN]

See, that’s the problem with monopolies, as any economist will tell you. And since I am an economist, I am telling you.

This is very disturbing news. Micro$oft is evil and they should not be that evil.

But never mind. All these 1s and 0s is so last century. Scientists at IIT have discovered that by using larger numbers such as 2s and 4s (note that 3s for some reason don’t work) they can get more numbers into the computers. So I am sure that Micro$oft’s patenting of 1s and 0s is not going to halt India’s march to become the technology superpower that people in the Indian government claim that it will be.

Of course, the government of India should immediately sue Micro$oft because India invented the 0 in the first place. So M$ can patent the 1s but not teh zero. Which means that Indians can then use 0s, 2s, and 4s in their computers. That will make Indian computers even more compact. And instead of $35 tablet laptop PCs, the Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) in India will be able to make a computer for $1. Soon enough when you buy a samosa, you will get a HRD tablet laptop PC free with it.

Please write to the govt of India to patent teh ZERO!! Write to air-head apparent to get his supporters in tribal areas to protest the patenting of numbers.

Do it NOW!!!

Post script: Sorry, that news item from ONN is old news. Trouble is that my inbox has lots of mail and only now I am caught up with items from March 1998. I expect that by 2050, the date at which India will be a superpower, I would be caught up with my email inbox. Thank you for your understanding.

It starts off with a bang:

The simple Surya Namaskar that has been practiced in India for years has recently found a whole lot of takers.

Practiced for years? You don’t say! Wow!! And “a whole lot of takers?” As in a couple of hundred?

The idiots don’t understand the distinction between centuries and years. They may as well have written, “. . . has been practiced for hours and weeks . . .” Silly morons.

Then the article goes on to make claims it is a cure-all: it keeps you physically fit, mentally fit, emotionally fit; it stimulates the cardiovascular system, the digestive system, and the nervous system; it helps the “endocrinal glands like the thyroid, parathyroid and pituitary glands, function normally”; gives peace of mind and improves concentration.

OK, but I want to ask, does it also help you defy gravity?

The article certainly defied common sense. It ends with “If you have trouble sleeping at night, the Surya Namaskar will help you fall asleep without using any external stimulants.”

Oh now I get it. Like all normal people, I have been taking stimulants to help me go to sleep. I cannot do without a couple of double cappuccino espressos and a few cans of Jolt to quickly put me to sleep.

Thanks to Surya Namaskar, I can avoid the stimulants — because Surya Namaskar is the perfect substitute for stimulants and will gently ease me into sleep.

OK, enough of the silliness. The fact is that the paper is a rag. One commenter on that article notes the saving grace of that article: “At last one article in life and style that doesn’t stink of porn.”

No pr0n in the TOI? Someone at the editorial desk must have been sleeping on the job.

Google Gulp and Your Privacy From time to time, in order to improve Google Gulp’s usefulness for our users, Google Gulp will send packets of data related to your usage of this product from a wireless transmitter embedded in the base of your Google Gulp bottle to the GulpPlex™, a heavily guarded, massively parallel server farm whose location is known only to Eric Schmidt, who carries its GPS coordinates on a 64-bit-encrypted smart card locked in a stainless-steel briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. No personally identifiable information of any kind related to your consumption of Google Gulp or any other current or future Google Foods product will ever be given, sold, bartered, auctioned off, tossed into a late-night poker pot, or otherwise transferred in any way to any untrustworthy third party, ever, we swear.

There are many indications that there are stupid people among us. One of the most compelling proofs lies in your spam folder. They are the ones which have fascinating titles such as “You have won $300 million”, “Your Inheritance Payment from the IMF”, etc.

The senders of these emails would not bother if there weren’t enough stupid people in the population who respond to them. Seeing the hundreds of phishing and Nigerian scams, one can guess that the number of people who fall for these schemes must be non-trivial. Estimates of amounts lost to the so-called “Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud” put the figure at $1 million every day for the US alone.

The emails start off with something like the following

Dear Sir,

Confidential Business Proposal

Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Nigerian Chambers Of Commerce And Industry, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 (forty seven million, five hundred thousand United States dollars) into your accounts. The above sum resulted from an over-invoiced contract, executed, commissioned and paid for about five years (5) ago by a foreign contractor. This action was however intentional and since then the fund has been in a suspense account at The Central Bank Of Nigeria Apex Bank.

We are now ready to transfer the fund overseas and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as civil servants, we are forbidden to operate a foreign account; that is why we require your assistance. The total sum will be shared as follows: 70% for us, 25% for you and 5% for local and international expenses incidental to the transfer.

The transfer is risk free on both sides. I am an accountant with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). If you find this proposal acceptable, we shall require the following documents:

(a) your banker’s name, telephone, account and fax numbers.

(b) your private telephone and fax numbers —for confidentiality and easy communication.

(c) your letter-headed paper stamped and signed.

Stupidity, gullibility and greed. What’s scary is that these stupid people who respond to such evident scams go out and vote.

However, sometimes it is amusing to read those letters for the gems they contain. Here are a few samples lines snipped from various emails in my spam folder:

. . . My name is JANET SYLVIA BESTMAN (MRS), I am a British woman of 52 years of age married to a Nigerian JOHN EMEKA BESTMAN (MR) who is presently late. . .

. . . although we have not met or entered into any kind of contract with you before as to know the extent of your honesty, but based on the recommendation, I personally want to believe that you are honest . . .

All emails of this variety involve dishonesty and death. It is usually the widow writing about her dear departed husband who used to be a dictator or an arms dealer or a banker. One letter however upped the ante on the death front: your death.

Your name appeared among the beneficiaries, who will receive payment of your
contractual sum and has been approved already for weeks. You are requested to
get back to me for more direction and instruction on how to receive your fund.

However, we received an email from one Mr. Virgle Lee Samples who told us that
he is your next of kin and that you died in a car accident last week.

He has also submitted his account for us to transfer the fund to him we want to
hear from you before we can make the transfer to confirm if you are dead or not?
Please if you are still alive, kindly furnish us with below information: so that
I can give you the contact of the paying bank in London .

Now that’s what I call a lethal combination of death, dishonesty, greed and gullibility.

Related Post: The Indian $10 Laptop. Feb 2009.

[via Fantasising Zombies.]

Thanks, Rudradev, whoever you are.

Scriptures throughout the ages predict man’s reincarnation and rebirth. During the transition period to your next life, 2i Limited is offering safe keeping for any asset you wish to deposit. . . Begin by believing and just do it. The great end of life is not just knowledge but action so act now and save for your reincarnation.

Ever wondered why Nigerian scammers continue to operate? Because there are enough stupid people to make it worth the while. I bet you that the Reincarnation Bank people will get deposits. Of course their website has instructions for depositing but no instructions for withdrawals. Neat, eh? [Via: Pharyngula.]

I think I should put a storage device on the market. “Write Only Memory — 1 TB capacity. Only $19.99. Buy a dozen and save even more.”

The astonishing gullibility of some people never ceases to amaze.

Update: After I posted this, I see that in the comments on the Pharyngula thread someone else also proposed the Write Only Memory. Ah well.

PS: I don’t think it will be long before the government of India bans this blog. There are too many things here which are embarrassing for the Indian government. Recall that the government of India banned Salman Rushdie even before the mullahs in Iran got their act together. The Indian government is holier than the mullahs of fundamentalist Islam. After all, how else can India be a “secular” state if it cannot pander to Islamic fundamentalism, eh?

Google has to be the most technologically advanced company on earth, if not the whole universe. They have the capacity to bring you emails before they are sent.

Here’s the screen capture of an email that Google delivered to me about 2 minutes before it was sent. I had to wait for 2 minutes and then the counter said “0 minutes ago” — for the world to catch up with gmail.

I tell you, wonders will never cease as long as Google is around.

[Hat tip: Jayant]

It’s true, isn’t it, that we need less government solutions to government created problems. If only, lord if only, the government would get out of interfering in society.

On a lighter but related note, I am reminded that sometimes the explanation for an error makes the action less excusable. The story goes that the court jester was in a playful mood. Seeing the king bending over, he runs up and places a swift kick in the royal derriere. Livid with anger, the king demands, “What the hell do you think you are doing, you fool?” The jester says, “Oh pardon me, your royal highness. I thought it was the queen.”

Source.

[Thanks to Jayant for the link.]

I find the bit about “grazed” donuts really funny because I have known a lot of Japanese people. Too bad he “exprained” it. Also the bit about getting a couple of immigrants to do the dirty work — shows that his father does have a sense of humor. Have fun.

Post script: Thanks to Amit for pointing out the typo in the name. It is “Nainan” and not “Nianan” as originally posted.

Here’s the view of a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, PK Iyengar, expressed in an article in The Pioneer. He says that India’s freedom to test will be curtailed. This is, in his opinion, undesirable as testing is essential for India to maintain a credible nuclear deterrence.

Arun Shourie makes the case that the Americans are bound by their Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Hyde Act, and that the 123 Agreement does not in any way invalidate them. (I don’t have a link to Shourie’s article, and so I will post his article below the fold until such time that I have a link.)

My view is that India should not sign the agreement. I find the arguments by Iyengar and Shourie persuasive. Just for argument’s sake, let’s assume that it is a bad agreement and India pays dearly for it down the line. What is the penalty that those who pushed India into such a bad deal face? None at all. Mr Singh and boss will never have the pay for the follies, just as their predecessors whose gross stupidity has caused untold misery on hundreds of millions of Indians got away with no penalty (and indeed they are celebrated as great visionaries and leaders.)

I think that the prime minister is not a deluded fool and knows fully well what the 123 Agreement will do to India. That forces me to conclude that he is dishonest in his insistence that it is good for India. But then it is not the least surprising to find dishonest politicians in India. That’s Indian democracy for you — and therein lies the only consolation for me: the people choose unwisely and it is they who will suffer the consequences of their choices.

It’s all karma, neh?

“But there is nothing new”

Arun Shourie

“But why now? Why on the eve of the NSG meeting in Vienna?” – the cry went up. Entirely predictably: when they can’t deal with the facts of a disclosure, the embarrassed always demand, “But why now?”! Should we not, on the contrary, be grateful that, at least at this penultimate hour, someone has awakened us to what the Government is bartering away in Vienna? Is there an inauspicious time for being awakened to the facts? “The secret letter has been revealed by a known opponent of the nuclear deal,” they say – as if the fact that the person disclosing the document is a known opponent of the deal, in some way dilutes the veracity of the text! And this from a newspaper that discloses secret documents every other week!

“But there is nothing new in the US Administration letter to the Congress,” say the spokesmen of the Government, and its apologists in the media. Actually, that very fact, as we shall soon see, makes things all the worse. Indeed, the American Ambassador, Mulford, has been more specific: he has said that the letter that the Administration sent to the US Congress contains nothing that has not already been shared with the Indian Government. In a word, the Government has known all these facts all along, and has yet continued to assert its falsehoods to the contrary for months on end. The US Administration letter, in fact, reveals more: on point after point, it reveals that the Indian Government, while asserting falsehoods to the contrary here in India, has not just been in the know of what the Americans were extracting, it agreed with the construction the Americans had put on the clauses in question.

“Falsehoods” is the right word, make no mistake.

“The Hyde Act does not apply to us,” Government spokesmen have been insisting. “We are bound by the 123 Agreement alone.” Indeed, as recently as July 2 this year, the Prime Minister’s Office asserted, “the 123 Agreement clearly overrides the Hyde Act and this position would be clear to anyone going through the provisions.” That is patent nonsense. Article 2 of the 123 Agreement provides that in implementing it, the two countries shall be governed by, among other things, their “national laws”. What are the national laws of the US in this regard? The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Hyde Act. Does the Hyde Act apply or not?

But clauses apart, even a fool can see through the lie in that: does the Hyde Act apply to the Americans or not? That is all that is required for the consequences listed in the Act to follow. Suppose we test. What are the Americans bound to do in return by law? Both by the Hyde Act as well as the original Atomic Energy Act of 1954, they must immediately cease all nuclear commerce with India. By both these Acts as well as the Guidelines of the NSG, they must ensure that every other member of the NSG also ceases all nuclear cooperation with India. In a word, by the laws that apply to them, the Americans have to bring upon us the full weight of sanctions. What comfort is it that the sanctions fall upon us by laws applicable to them and not applicable to us?

That simple and brutal fact is compounded by the 123 Agreement. In Question 3, the US Congress asks the Bush Administration, “Does the Administration believe that the nuclear cooperation agreement with India overrides the Hyde Act regarding any apparent conflicts, discrepancies, or inconsistencies? Does this include provisions in the Hyde Act which do not appear in the nuclear cooperation agreement?” In turn, the Bush Administration says that the 123 agreement “is in full conformity with the Hyde Act,” that it is “consistent with the legal requirements of both the Hyde Act and the Atomic Energy Act” – both of them, incidentally, require that, to take just one example, the agreement be terminated forthwith the moment India conducts a test, even for “peaceful purposes”.

The Prime Minister has said over and over again that the cooperation shall be “full”, that it shall cover all aspects of the full nuclear cycle. In particular, that India shall have full access to “sensitive technologies”. Anything less, Manmohan Singh has said again and again, shall be inconsistent with the statement he had signed with Bush, and India shall not accept such a dilution. Persons like me have pointed out from the beginning that this just cannot be the case, that the Americans have an unambiguous policy in this regard, a policy that has been reiterated personally by Bush as well as by the US Congress – namely, that countries like India shall not be given access to technologies for enrichment, reprocessing or heavy water production. Manmohan Singh has gone on repeating, “Full means full”.

And as proof, the Government’s propagandists have been pointing to Article 5(2) of the 123 Agreement. This clause in fact is just a sleight of words. It says that these “sensitive technologies… may be transferred to India under this agreement pursuant to an amendment to this agreement.” Even then, the clause clearly records, the transfer “will be subject to the Parties’ respective applicable laws, regulations and license policies.” Hence, three conditions: (a) “may be”; (b) “pursuant to an amendment to this agreement”; and (c) “subject to the Parties’ respective applicable laws, regulations and license policies.” In spite of this, the Government’s propagandists have kept repeating that India has won access to these sensitive technologies

In its answers to not one but six questions (Questions 4 to 9) from the US Congress, Bush’s Administration says six times, that the sensitive technologies will not be transferred and that there is no proposal at all to amend the 123 Agreement!!

Similarly, Government spokesmen have maintained that our right to reprocess spent fuel has been recognized. Indeed, Manmohan Singh himself has said that our reprocessing rights have been recognized so much so that they shall be “permanent”. The answers to questions 26 and 29, as indeed Articles 11 and 12 of the 123 Agreement itself, indicate that we shall be able to reprocess the spent fuel only in a facility (a) set up at our cost; (b) under IAEA oversight; (c) and only in accordance with “arrangements and procedures” to which the US agrees. As for the right being “permanent”, the answer to question 44 gives the lie. The answer does not just reiterate that the “arrangements and procedures” under which the reprocessing may be done shall have to be agreed to by the US; it says, “the proposed arrangements and procedures with India will provide for withdrawal of reprocessing consent.” Permanent?

Manmohan Singh has insisted all along that India shall not accept any oversight or inspections other than what it shall agree to under the “India specific safeguards” in its agreement with the IAEA. Persons like me drew attention to the stern and absolutely unambiguous statements of Condoleezza Rice; to the Report of the joint committee of the US Congress; as well as to the provisions of the Hyde Act, which specifically provided that India shall have to accept “fallback safeguards” – that is, should, in the judgement of the IAEA or the US, the IAEA be unable to perform its inspections adequately, the US shall have the right to institute inspections and other measures of oversight through other agencies – its own or those of some other international bodies. Even as it was asserting the contrary, Manmohan Singh’s Government, agreed to have these additional inspections and restrictions through Articles 10 and 16(3) of the 123 Agreement. All that was done was that instead of the US inspectors being called “inspectors”, they were called “experts”. Through these clauses, India agreed to ensure for them the fullest access to sites and data that they wanted to inspect.

In its answers to questions 10 to 13, the US Administration has reiterated four times that, yes, there shall be these additional fallback safeguards and inspections. Not just that, the Administration tells the US Congress that, in addition to pledging that it is accepting IAEA safeguards and inspections in perpetuity, the Indian Government “fully appreciates that paragraph 1 of Article 10 of the Agreement does not limit the safeguards required by the Agreement to Agency (that is, IAEA) safeguards.” In a word, while we were being told the exact opposite – “We shall not allow American inspectors to roam around our facilities” – the Manmohan Singh Government had accepted that very roaming around.

Manmohan Singh and his spokesmen have said times without number that the US has assured India of “uninterrupted fuel supplies”. They have pointed to Article 5(6) as proof to say that the 123 Agreement enshrines this commitment. I had pointed out at that very time that the Article is just face-saving farce. Manmohan Singh had told Parliament that the Americans had assured him that they would ensure “uninterrupted fuel supplies”, and that this would be provided in the 123 Agreement. In the event, the Americans did not budge an inch. They refused to incorporate any assurance to this effect in the 123 Agreement. At the last minute, to pleas that something just had to be done to save face of the Manmohan Singh Government, they agreed to cut and paste his statement saying that in the 123 Agreement such an assurance shall be incorporated. But this was the 123 Agreement! What was to be provided in this 123 Agreement was left to some future 123 Agreement!

Yet, the people here were sought to be fooled – we have got the Americans to promise us “uninterrupted fuel supplies”. Indeed, the insinuation went further – it was almost as if fuel supplies could not now be stopped under any circumstances. In answer to question 15 and again in answer to question 18, the US Government states that only if fuel supply is interrupted for no fault of India, shall the US assist in resuming it. Thus, if some US firm fails to live up to its commitment to supply fuel, or if there is some disruption in global markets, the US will chip in. But if, for instance, we test; or we default in the account we keep of uranium we import, mine and use; or if we default on any of the numerous conditions prescribed in the 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act, the agreement with the IAEA, as well as under the Guidelines of the NSG, and, as a result, fuel supply is stopped, the US will most emphatically not step in to restore fuel supplies.

Similarly, while we have been fed the fiction that the US has agreed to our building “strategic reserves” of fuel so that our reactors are not subjected to the Tarapur experience, twice in this document – from answers to questions 19 and 20 – we learn that there is no assurance to this effect. That India can secure fuel only, as the Obama amendment in the Hyde Act provides, for “reasonable operational requirements”. Not just that. The replies reveal that what this phrase – “reasonable operational requirements” – implies is not clear at all!

Manmohan Singh has repeatedly asserted that, in the event fuel supplies are interrupted or other difficulties are created, India has the right to take “corrective measures”. What is this magic bullet? we have wanted to know. Of course, there has been no answer. The US Congress asked Bush’s officials the same question. What does the Indian PM mean by “corrective measures”? The suggestion has been that, if things don’t turn out to our satisfaction, we can always withdraw our reactors from safeguards.

The answer to question 25 and again the answer to question 42 show how empty a boast this is. The Indian Government has not described what the expression means, the US Government says. We expect India to live up to the letter as well as the spirit of its commitment that it shall adhere to the safeguards “in perpetuity”. Furthermore, says the US Government quoting the precise words to which persons like me had drawn attention in Parliament, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has told the US Congress that “We have been very clear with the Indians that the permanence of the safeguards is the permanence of safeguards without condition.”

When the text of the 123 Agreement became public, I had drawn attention to the minatory Article 16. This provides that, should India, in the judgement of the US, step outside its commitments, even if the Agreement is terminated, even if it expires, even if India repudiates it, the US shall have the right to get back every bit of nuclear material, every bit of non-nuclear material, every reactor, component, every ounce of fuel it has supplied under the Agreement. This position is reiterated in answers to questions 41 and 42.

Manmohan Singh keeps repeating, and so do the managed parts of the media, that India’s right to test remains unaffected. The US Congress as well as officials of the US Government have made it absolutely clear times without number that the moment India tests, even if it is for peaceful purposes, the 123 Agreement will be terminated, and all nuclear commerce will stop. These consequences shall follow immediately. This position is reiterated in this document not once but four times – in answers to questions 16, 17, 37 and 38.

But it is not only in regard to tests that the Government has woven falsehoods. The answers make two further things explicit. First, a test by India is not the only circumstance which triggers these consequences. It is just one of the circumstances that will invite the termination of the Agreement and the stoppage of all nuclear commerce. Other circumstances will be, such as a “material violation of the 123 Agreement, or termination, abrogation, or material violation of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.” Notice the “such as” that I wrote in the preceding sentence: these are not the only circumstances that will trigger the consequences. The answer refers to them with vital prefatory words, “for example“. Second, as the answer to question 38 puts it, that this is the import of Article 14 of the 123 Agreement is clear and well understood by India as much as by the US.

The final blow, the one that comes in response to the last question, number 45, is devastating as it shows how blatantly the Manmohan Singh Government has been lying. The Government has been maintaining that in the 123 Agreement, if nuclear commerce with India is stopped, the US Government has pledged that it will assist India to get the supplies, etc., from other members of the NSG. This sort of an assertion could be made only on the belief that everyone concerned is an idiot. Yet, not only has it been made, it has been swallowed and spread by sections of the media.

The Hyde Act binds the US Government to ensure the opposite – namely, that, if it terminates the 123 Agreement and stops nuclear commerce with India, it shall ensure that India cannot get the supplies from any other member of the NSG. That position is reiterated, and the pledge that the US Government will indeed ensure this is repeated in answer to question 45. The US Government has drawn attention of the Congress to the Guidelines that exist in the NSG, and pledged that they will apply in case the US stops nuclear commerce with India.

Paragraph 16 of the NSG Guidelines, the US Government says, “provides that suppliers should (1) consult if, inter alia, one or more suppliers believe there has been a violation of a supplier/recipient understanding; (2) avoid acting in a manner that could prejudice measures that may be adopted in response to such a violation; and (3) agree on ‘an appropriate response and possible action’, which could include the termination of nuclear transfers to that recipient.” If the NSG agrees to the exception for India, the US Government assures, this Guideline “would apply in the case of any nuclear transfers by a Nuclear Suppliers Group supplier to India.”

And yet the falsehoods continue.

The nuclear deal is by now clothed in two layers of sin. The layer of the cash-for-votes sin. And the ever thickening layer of falsehoods.

I can only plead with much sadness in my heart to the media: do not lend yourself to spreading such falsehood.

– Arun Shourie, 6 Sept. 2008

Related post: About the nuclear energy deal.

So here’s some news of the weird that fits the bill. It comes from the University of Central Florida. (You have to take what you get — even if that is half-way around the world in some godforsaken state.)

‘Body Of Christ’ Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student, reads the headlines.

Many people don’t know it but some Christians, especially the Catholics, have a cannibalistic ritual. They eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood. You can’t make this sort of sh**t up. It’s called transubstantiation. They believe that the bread and wine literally turn into flesh and blood. Pretending that that is true is bad enough but then they proceed to eat it. Doing anything else other than consuming it and passing it though the human digestive system is considered the gravest of sins. Go figure.

So here’s the short summary of the events. A UCF student takes the cracker (the body of Christ) and instead of eating it, saves it to show to a friend. Church officials try to take it back from him. He goes home and preserves it in a ziplock bag. The faithful start a campaign against the student and threaten him with violence. PZ Myers at Pharyngula posts a commentary saying it’s a frackin’ goddamn cracker.

PZ wrote:

I find this all utterly unbelievable. It’s like Dark Age superstition and malice, all thriving with the endorsement of secular institutions here in 21st century America. It is a culture of deluded lunatics calling the shots and making human beings dance to their mythical bunkum.

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.

And now PZ is getting death threats from Catholics and some are merely writing to his school’s president asking that PZ be fired (PZ is s a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota.)

As a comment on Pharyngula puts it

1. Poor kid takes home uneaten eucharist to show his friend.
2. Church and catholics go batshit crazy.
3. PZ thinks this is ridiculous and says so, also says he may do some things to a cracker.
4. Church and catholics go batshit crazy.

Monotheists are stupidly insane. They riot over teddy bears named Mohammed and over someone not eating a cracker in church. But in between all their murdering and plundering, they do provide some comic relief from time to time.

Update: ‘Body Of Christ” Returned To Church After Student Receives Email Threats. Nice bit of intimidation there. Right out of the book they call the Holy Bible.

That video has had an astounding over 52,000,000 views and has a 5-star rating from over 200,000 reviewers.

Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, is famous throughout the entertainment industry for being more than just a little self-righteous. At a recent U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, he asked the audience for total quiet.

“Well, fookin’ stop doin’ it then, ya evil bastard!”

[Source.]

Talking of Bono reminds me. Here’s Jeff Sachs talking about his book “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet” with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show:

Then the giant Empire State Building climbing George W. Bush apeman could reach his large primate hands into the Presidential Room and grab Hillary and run off with her while Mrs. Clinton is screaming “Bill, Bill, save me Bill, save me”. All the while the Cloverfield Monster and Godzilla would then be fighting up another Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and knocking buildings over so then Secretary of Homeland Security Defense Ronald Dumsfield would call in a preemptive Shock and Awe Counterstrike in order to scare the two large Rexosaurises back into the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico where they will never be found again because that counts as a Sanctuary City for Illegal Underwater Monster Immigrants that try to come across the Atlantic Oceanic Border from Cuba.

Because.

Someecards are funny. I like the way they put a tiny label on top of the ads. The top banner ad says “Some advertising” and the side banner ad “Some more advertising.” And at the bottom of the page:

Someecards.com is possibly to probably the best site on the Web for free, funny ecards. We have greeting cards for every occasion – from important to utterly pointless. Send greetings for apology, birthday, baby, breakup, congratulations, encouragement, farewell, flirting, friendship, get well, sympathy, thanks, thinking of you, wedding, workplace, and holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We suggest you e-mail them to friends, family, coworkers, loved ones, liked ones, and anyone else with fingers.

[Off to Mumbai. See you there today.]

[Click on image for link.]

An invitation.
Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

[Sorry, this should have gone up yesterday.]

Here’s the full text of the TV broadcast:

It is not only in Britain that spring, this year, has taken everyone by surprise. Here in the Ticino, on the borders of Switzerland and Italy, the slopes overlooking Lake Lugano have already burst into flower at least a fortnight earlier than usual.

But what, you may ask, has the early and welcome arrival of bees and blossom to do with food? Well, it is simply that the past winter, one of the mildest in living memory, has had its effect in other ways as well. Most important of all, it’s resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop.

The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer. There is always the chance of a late frost which, while not entirely ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavour and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets. But now these dangers are over and the spaghetti harvest goes forward.

Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair.

Another reason why this may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil, the tiny creature whose depradations have caused much concern in the past.

After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to dry in the warm Alpine air. Many people are very puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced in such uniform lengths. This is the result of many years of patient endeavour by plant breeders who suceeded in producing the perfect spaghetti.

Now the harvest is marked by a traditional meal. Toasts to the new crop are drunk in these boccalinos, then the waiters enter bearing the ceremonial dish. This is, of course, spaghetti—picked early in the day, dried in the sun, and so brought fresh from garden to table at the very peak of condition. For those who love this dish, there is nothing like real home-grown spaghetti.

Here’s a list of Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes from the Museum of Hoaxes.

Wikipedia reports that NPR does an April 1st broadcast: “Every year National Public Radio in the United States does an extensive news story on April 1st. These usually start off more or less reasonably, and get more and more unusual. A recent example is the story on the “iBod” a portable body control device. It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as “Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People.” Ummm, soylent green!

One of my pet peeves is the idiotic mixing of English and Hindi words in advertising copy which is cropping up everywhere on billboards and in print. Perhaps it is considered cool. But it is cool in only the way that displaying abysmal stupidity and illiteracy is cool–which is to say it isn’t. What it advertises is that that both the writer and the readers don’t quite know either of the languages and perhaps don’t even know that they don’t know the distinction between the two. I call it “rajivspeak” in honor of the man who was a master in this regard.

A few years ago, I was lamenting the poor grasp some people have of even one of the basic languages of India to someone. He wrote back saying, “I had the pleasure of watching Rajiv Gandhi give a speech in Hindi to the hapless denizens of Malda district in Bengal. The populace is linguistically challenged, period, at the best of times. And not just with respect to Hindi. They had to face up to Rajiv’s stuff, which if memory serves me right, went along these lines:

country ki economic situation detriorate hotey jaa rahi hai. Five year plan ke allocations properly distribute nahin huey, jissey problems exacerbate ho gaye. hum poori tarah vigilant rahenge ki plans ka proper implementation ho. agricultural subsidies jo hain, unhey hum appropriate tareekey se apply karenge aur vested interests ko mil kar confront karenge. humein dekhna hai ki jab hum firmly united hain aur hamarey interests ko firmly defend karte hain to duniya ki koi bhi power hamein subvert nahin kar sakti . . .

Imagine what the effect of the speech must have been on the hapless peasants squatting in the midday sun. They must have been shell-shocked. Remember that these people neither knew Hindi very well, nor had the faintest acquaintance with English. In fact, Rajiv Gandhi himself must have learnt some of the polysyllabic words in the not too distant past. Words such as investment, subvert, subsidy, etc.

Perhaps he was supposed to speak at the Rotary Club of Calcutta later on that evening and he thought that he would simply translate his speech prepared for that august body into “Hindi” (and why not, considering that he was in Bengal) and enlighten the worthy citizens of Malda district.

I can imagine that Rajiv’s chamchas must have found his speech riveting and must have congratulated each other on their good fortune at having such a learned, wise, and wonderful leader to do chamchagiri for.

Sir,

In your otherwise beautiful poem “The Vision of Sin”, there is a verse which reads,

“Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.”

It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.

I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read:

“Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1,1/16th is born…”

I am, Sir, yours, etc.

Big yuk-fest for the mechanic, but he left himself open to a rebuke from the wordsmith along these lines:

Dear Mr Babbage,

If I had sucked several thousand pounds out of the government teat, by telling them that I was building an automatic calculator, without delivering so much as a pile of rusty cogs, I would be a bit more conscious of my own foibles and a bit less ready to poke fun at the works of others. Particularly as vacuum tubes won’t be invented until 1906. So stick that in your big red engine and take the difference of it.

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Lord Tennyson.

One can easily imagine the roar of protest, and the rapid return of fire from Babbage:

To Tennyson,

Listen funny boy, the analytic engine is based on sound principles, unlike your blasted poetry. If I wanted to hear from the organ grinder, I would speak to him, not the monkey. I’ve got a good mind to come round there and duff you up, proper.

So stick it in your ear.

How could the poet resist slamming back a reply of his own:

to Babbage the wanker,

There once was a man named Babbage
Whose head was green and shaped like a cabbage

Unfortunately, you do not inspire me further. If I see you on the street, I’ll whack you with a stick Then me and my mate Wordsworth will “do” you good.

This is why today there is still not a proper accommodation between art and science.

[The above is from a posting on alt.folklore.urban from years ago by someone. He said he found it in a book (not cited) at his own garage sale.]

The Earth is Flat: Debate on Iraqi TV.

Mind you, not all Iraqis think that the earth is flat. There is at least one physicist in Iraq (whom we see in the above video) who thinks that humanity figured out that the moon is round when American astronauts landed on its surface. Until then, he apparently thinks, that it was not entirely certain and only when the Eagle landed, was it fully understood that the moon was round. During that visit, apparently, the astronauts figured out how large the moon was, what was its mass, and how strong its surface gravity was.

Seriously though — how on earth does one become a physicist and not know that the mass of the moon is not a sixth of the earth just because the moon’s surface gravity is a sixth of the earth’s? One can excuse the old man in the video — his ignorance can be explained by the fact that his understanding of the world is derived from the Quran (the Muslim holy book and the basis of Islam, one of the the three major monotheistic religions). But this physicist guy should have known that the relative to the earth, the moon is approximately a fourth in diameter, one fiftieth in volume, and one eightieth in mass. Not 1/6th but 1/80th. That is a huge error — an order of magnitude error. That error most likely arises from his misunderstanding the difference between mass and weight.

The picture above shows the relative sizes of the earth and the moon. These days there is really no excuse for ignorance of facts. Use the google, Luke. Here’s one handy dandy page for facts on the moon, where I found the above picture.

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle: “ME.”

[Someone's avatar.]

Obviously she’s in the spotlight because she is pretty, and most certainly better looking than 99.99 percent of the population. But nature perhaps balances it out in her case by making her dumber than 90 percent of the population. It’s her beauty that brought a bit of fame, and her lack of brains that gave her a whole lot of notoriety. That’s the luck of the draw. And I suppose there’s a bit of envy of her looks that prompts the fun that one has in seeing her babble. But here’s a video response that has a very pretty face:

Clearly Miss West Carolina is not only very pretty but also articulate. And if she wrote the script as well, I say that she’s a pretty smart cookie. There’s a case of beauty and brains. I think Miss W Carolina is much much prettier than Miss South Carolina. (Miss South Carolina need not reach for her map to locate West Carolina on it.)

That pretty much sums up how the stock market swings between fear and greed, the abrupt change from panic to irrational exuberance. And here are The Long Johns (John Bird and John Fortune) on turbulence in the financial markets. As one of the Johns so astutely observes, “You have to remember two things about the markets. One is, they are made up of very sharp and sophisticated people. These are the greatest brains in the world. The second thing you have to remember is that financial markets — to use the common word — are driven by sentiment.” I won’t spoil the fun for you. Just watch the video and fall off the chair laughing.

That’s why I don’t mess around in the stock market.

(Hat tip: Jan Manik)

Woman 2: “My son says that is called the ‘recycle bin’. He tells me when I don’t want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there.”

Woman 1: “Why in the recycle thingy? Can’t you just erase it?”

Woman 2: “Oh no, Word wouldn’t work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages.”

Woman 1: “Why?”

Woman 2: “Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That’s why it’s called the recycle bin.”

The British steal everything from India, don’t they? Clearly, this is a ripoff of what actually happened in a meeting with Lalu Prasad Yadav.

A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life

CAIRO, June 11 — First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.

For the past few weeks, the breast-feeding and urine fatwas have proved a source of national embarrassment in Egypt, not least because they were issued by representatives of the highest religious authorities in the land.

Ah the joys of monotheism!

I wrote back promptly asking if among the illustrious alumni of the much celebrated IITs there wasn’t someone who knew the distinction between the numeral “4″ and the word “for”? Methinks their reach exceeds their grasp.

[I have written previously about PanIIT here: Inspire, Involve, and Transform -- Part 1, and Part 2.]

– Roger Woddis [Source. Hat tip: Nihar.]

That bit of popular wisdom comes to mind when one considers POTUS George W Bush. Clearly the man is not to blame. Nearly half of the US voted for the man. Twice. Bush is not the problem; he is only the most visible symptom. The neo-conservatives that run the US are representative of a significant percentage of the US population. If the leader of the pack is as dumb as a rock, then the pack has the collective intelligence of a rather huge pile of rocks. Here are some bumper stickers poking fun at the stupidity of Americans, using Bush as a proxy.

* Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

* If You Can Read This, You’re Not Our President.

* My Kid is an Honor Student. My President is a Moron.

* George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight

* America: One Nation, Under Surveillance

* They Call Him “W” So He Can Spell It

* Bush: God’s Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap

* We Need a President Who’s Fluent In At Least One Language

* We’re Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

* When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46

* The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

* One Nation Under Clod

* Bush Never Exhaled

* At Least Nixon Resigned

Speaking of war: I cheered the invasion of Iraq and kept applauding for a long time afterward. I lauded the war effort as glorious and noble — and, on the last day of November 2003, I even likened the U.S. occupation of Iraq to the magnanimity of the Marshall Plan.

And if U.S. troops had been able to kill enough Iraqi troublemakers early enough to quell the resistance, I would have remained an avid booster of the war. There’s no business like war business — that’s why I recycled my clever slogan “Give war a chance” from the 1999 air war on Yugoslavia to the 2001 military assault on Afghanistan.

But I like winning. That’s why I kept praising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he looked like a winner, and now I keep deploring him because he looks like a loser.

Overall, I get to boil down the world to metaphors of my own choosing. If I were one of the anti-corporate-globalization people and I used the same kind of simplistic metaphors, I’d be the object of derision and scorn. But I’m not — so get used to it!

Never let it be said that leading U.S. pundit Thomas Friedman has to live with the consequences of his punditry. I think great thoughts, and I’m seriously glib about them, and that should be more than enough if the world is smart enough to grasp the opportunities that are low-hanging fruit of the digital age. I can’t expect everyone to get it, but at the very least they should try.

Perpetual motion machines of the first, second, and third kind? Not going to happen.

NOTE: That “monkey” actually is an ape: I am guessing a Lar Gibbon.

And truth be told, Bush is the worst disaster to hit the world, not just the US.

Windows Commands in Hindi:

Khidkiyan version shoonya bindu shoonya ek (0.01)

Phile = File
Kholo = Open
Bandh Karo = Close
Naya = New
Khatara = Old
Bachao = Save
Aise Bachao = Save as
Paise Bachao = Save money
Bhaago = Run
Chaapo = Print
Dekh Ke Chaapo = Print Preview
Paise Deke Chokri Dekho = Pay Per View
Phirsay = Edit
Kaapi = Copy
Kaato = Cut
Kato = Stupid Houseguest
Chipkao = Paste
Payshul Chipkao = Paste Special
Goli Maaro = Delete
Nazaara = View
Bakwaas Nazaara = View From My Apartment
Hatyaar = Tools
Hatyaar Khamba = Toolbar
Uh Buh Kuh Duh Thik Thak = Spell Check
Isko Kya Kehte Hain = Thesaurus
Khuli Chaadar = Spreadsheet
Iska Bhi Naam Nahin Aaata = Database
Futaas Ki Goli Kha = Exit

Postscript: I got the above from the Usenet years ago; the credit goes to some anonymous creative person.

The IIT-Joint Entrance Exam may soon be easier to crack. The Union HRD [Human Resource Development] ministry feels the examination is too tough, causes immense stress to candidates, and needs to be toned down immediately.

The ministry has formed a committee … to modify the IIT-JEE pattern.

Clever, isn’t it? In related news, another ministry has expressed concern about the fact that hunger is a problem to some few hundred million people and something needs to be done immediately about it. So a committee is being formed which will revise the daily caloric requirement from the current approximately 2000 Kcals per day to about 1000 Kcals. This would reduce the number of hungry people by about 80 percent.

News of these developments did not go unnoticed among those in charge of Mumbai’s local trains. The local trains are severely overcrowded, with compartments designed to accommodate 50 commuters routinely carrying 300 during rush hours (which is pretty much most of the day.) So they are forming a committee of bureaucrats which will examine the proposal to re-label the compartments to say “To accommodate 100 passengers” instead of the current label which says “To accommodate 50 passengers”. This, it is felt, will reduce the overcrowding in Mumbai locals by increasing the carrying capacity of the locals.

The President Mr APJ Kalam, it should be recalled, had some time ago expressed his dissatisfaction with India being called a developing nation and had recommended that India should consider itself a developed economy.

I personally take heart from all this. I am not fabulously rich, but it is about time that I was. So I have formed a committee of my closest friends who are considering the proposal to declare me filthy rich. I hope they get their act together soon and make the declaration already because I want to be filthy rich now.

To recap: Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman “had Lufthansa business class.” When he reaches India—Bangalore to be specific—he immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: “Gigabites of Taste.” Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: “No, this definitely wasn’t Kansas.”

After golf, he meets Nilekani, who casually mentions that the playing field is level. A nothing phrase, but Friedman has traveled all the way around the world to hear it. Man travels to India, plays golf, sees Pizza Hut billboard, listens to Indian CEO mutter small talk, writes 470-page book reversing the course of 2000 years of human thought. That he misattributes his thesis to Nilekani is perfect: Friedman is a person who not only speaks in malapropisms, he also hears malapropisms. Told level; heard flat. This is the intellectual version of Far Out Space Nuts, when NASA repairman Bob Denver sets a whole sitcom in motion by pressing “launch” instead of “lunch” in a space capsule. And once he hits that button, the rocket takes off.

Read the entire article but be warned: it is funny. Thanks Prashant. It is the wonders of internet that gives one access to the writings of far off people from the comforts of one’s home.

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam...

[by Monty Python]

I still remember a silly bit of nonsense that I had learnt as a kid. Why is a fire-engine red? The answer, delivered rapidly, goes like this: Fire-engines have four men and eight wheels. Eight and four make twelve. Twelve inches in a ruler. Queen Elizabeth was a ruler. She sailed the high seas. Seas have fish. Fish have fins. Finns fought the Russians. The Russians are red. Fire-engines are always rushing. Therefore fire-engines are red.

For all the curious who have asked quo vadis, here is the plan. I wander about India from now on: New Delhi, Nagpur, Bangalore, Hyderabad. Then I wander in the East coast of the US in March, and then roam around the West coast in April. I will be back (god willing and weather permitting) in India in May. If you bump into a wanderer in any of these places, it could quite possibly be yours truly.

I do not like thee Doctor Dey
The reason isn’t hard to say
Although you are so far away
I do not like thee Doctor Dey.

Not terribly original, as it is based on the rhyme “I do not like thee Doctor Fell…”. Still it is good to know that one is liked and all that.

Here’s one of my favorite jokes. I came across it years ago on the usenet.

Two Arabs boarded a shuttle out of Washington DC for New York. One sat in the window seat, the other in the middle seat. Just before takeoff a fat, little Israeli guy got on and took the aisle seat next to the Arabs. He kicked off his shoes, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, “I think I’ll go up and get a coke.”

“How long must this go on?” he asked. “This enmity between our peoples….. this hatred… this animosity… this spitting in shoes and peeing in cokes?”

Shariputra asked The Blessed One, “What is the chief lesson that one can learn from a careful study of economics?”

Avalokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion, etc, responded (because the Tathagata often lets others have a go at mundane questions) by saying, “O Shariputra, a careful study of economics reveals to a son or a daughter of a noble family the First Minor Noble Truth.”

Shariputra, the son of a noble family, then asked, “And the First Minor Noble Truth is exactly what?” Then Avalokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva etc etc said, “The First MNT is that Incentives Matter.”

Beholding incomprehension written large on the face of the noble Shariputra, the Compassionate One continued. “Aggregate human behavior in the realm of Samsara is very predictable. At its very core, that is what the study of economics is–the study of aggregate human behavior. Given the right incentives, people who are bound to the Wheel of Becoming, who have not yet gone across, behave accordingly.

“If you want them to be good, then reward them for good behavior and they will behave well. If you want them to stop bad behavior, then give them negative reinforcement and they will reduce their bad behavior. The former is called the carrot approach and the latter is called the stick approach. That’s about the sum of it: carrots and sticks.

“Noble Shariputra, if you consider this for a moment, it is quite simple really. People are motivated by selfish desires in the realm of Samsara. Of course, in the realm of Nirvana, motivation and incentives don’t matter because one has gone beyond, gone completely beyond the Wheel of Becoming.”

Shariputra began to see the light. He then asked, “Avalokiteshwara, I sort of understand that now. But, what is the principle mechanism which coordinates the behavior of the masses so that their aggregate behavior is socially beneficial even through their individual behavior is selfishly motivated?”

Avalokiteshwara, the BMBIC, replied thusly: “Shariputra, SoaNF, the mechanism is called the market and that is the Second Minor Noble Truth: Markets Work. Seemingly enlightened behavior emerges from apparent individual selfish actions–actions that bind one to Samsara and the escape from which was outlined by the Blessed One, the Tathagata, the One Who Has Gone Beyond, in his major work The Four Noble Truths which you may recall if you were paying attention the last time. But we will not digress into them right now because we are discussing the Minor Noble Truths of Samsara.”

Shariputra, clearly the bright-eyed curious student forever questioning the Avalokiteshwara, the BMBIC, said, “But do the markets always work? Are there any conditions under which markets fail and therefore don’t deliver the goods that one would expect? Under which set of conditions do the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics hold? Indeed, what are the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics?”

Avalokiteshwara, with a very weary look but patiently still answered, “O Shariputra, check the World Wide Web and google for those answers in about 2500 years. In about 2500 years, a bunch of bright guys would have mathematically proved the FTs of WE. If you are really interested, get yourself a few credits of economics courses. For now, let me give you a glimpse of what you will learn.

“You will learn that market failures are common because the conditions under which the fundamental welfare theorems hold are rather strict. Information imperfections, for instance, is one of them. But when information technology advances sufficiently, then markets will become more efficient. Of course, the markets will become bigger also. So the information requirements will also increase. All this increase in market size will be due to globalization and globalization will create its own discontents.”

Shariputra was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Yabbut, in the real world, markets fail. Is there some remedy, however imperfect?”

Avalokiteshwara spoke thus: “O Shariputra, SoaNF, it is the role of an enlightened government–the state– to gently correct for some of the failures. I think that the best governments must use light-handed regulations to fix market failures. Of course, in the real world, government failure is often more harmful than market failures. But that is an imperfect solution in an imperfect world. Why so? Because goverments are not a collection of Buddhas, enlightened beings who have transcended their desires. Governments are not comprised of Bodhisattvas, those enlightened beings who vow to delay their own departure until all sentient beings have attained Nirvana. Quite to the contrary, actually. Governments are collections of equally deluded people generally.

“Talking of people, don’t forget that today we have only 300 million people in the whole planet. In about 2500 years, you will have 6000 million all of whom will be interconnected in a complex web of commerce (some of it on the Internet.) An important side-effect of increase in the number people and increase in market size is that governments will have to increase. In a primitive economy, say the Robinson Crusoe economy, government size can be zero. But in a modern economy, the more complex the market and the economy, the more government is needed.”

Shariputra said, “What you are saying, if I understand you correctly, is that an ideal government would be able to intervene in cases of market failures but that in the real world, ideal governments are as rare as unicorns. And further, that the market usually delivers the carrots and sticks that drive people to behave well but in case the market fails to do so, then the government has to get into the carrots and sticks business. But, according to you, the problem is that governments themselves need carrots and sticks so that they can continue to govern well. Isn’t that a bit of a problem?”

“Quite so, O Shariputra. Use the same principles and apply them to governments. Just like market participants are rewarded for bringing good stuff to the market, so also government employees should be rewarded for delivering good governance and if they fail to do so, they should be given the stick without delay.

“See we are sitting in Bihar, the state that will in about 2000 years become one of the most misgoverned pieces of real estate on the planet. If you take the leaders of the government of the state of Bihar and force them to live for a year under the conditions that the bottom 10 percent of the people of Bihar live, they will quickly come to their senses. It is simply because they who misrule don’t get subjected to the pain of those whom they cause pain to, that they continue to misrule. String up the corrupt bastards and you will soon fix the problem.”

Shariputra was shocked. Avalokiteshwara, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion was advocating summary execution? He could not believe his ears. “O Avalokiteshwara, how can stringing up corrupt officials be a compassionate thing to do?”

Avalokiteshwara, the BMBIC: “O Shariputra, son of a noble family, do you send your children to school and does it not cause them pain at times? But you still do that because of your compassion. You cause them pain now but they will grow up to be worthy citizens and thank you for educating them later. So also, by stringing up the corrupt officials, you are hastening their journey to buddhahood. Not just that, by shortening their present stay in Samsara, you are helping them by not allowing them to accumulate more negative karma. And finally, if they cannot continue their corrupt ways, millions of ordinary citizens will lead more human existences once the corrupt ones have departed this mortal coil. So you will string up say half a dozen of the biggest offenders. Big deal. But that will put the fear of God (imaginary being that many deluded people think exists and who they believe takes a personal interest in their silly matters) into them, to use an expression and deter many from getting started down the road to perdition at all. In short, governments will again be staffed with people who are into doing good stuff, not by people who are in there just to make a fast billion and stash it away in some Swiss bank account.”

At that point, the Blessed One, the Tathagata raised a flower in his hand and said, “Very well said, O Avalokiteswara. You have expressed some of the Minor Noble Truths for now. We should continue to examine this very fascinating subject later. But now it is time to pick up our begging bowls and head off for something to eat. The people of Rajagriha turn in early these rainy days and once they shut the doors, we cannot seek alms and we will have to go to bed hungry. You don’t really want that, do you?”

Hearing the Buddha bring this session to close was a great relief and everyone–the gods, the asuras, the monks–rejoiced.

Thus have I heard.

Internet Hawker Puts Brittney Sex Video Up For Sale

A few weeks ago it was confirmed that the newspaper has paid editorial-page content that masquerades as honest reporting. I wonder how much they get paid for peddling pornography on the front page.

{See also India’s Primary Concern.}

Thus have I heard that the Tathagata once said while sitting under the bodhi tree:

Hard work and hard thinking are substitutes, O Bhikshus. The harder you think, the less hard you have to work. Conversely, O Bhikshus, the less you think, the harder you have to work. Therefore, if you find someone working very hard at some trivial task, you will find that that person has not bothered to put any thought into whatever the **ck he or she is doing. Thus the Tathagata asks you to examine whatever the **ck you design very carefully so that all sentient creatures that are involved in the process will not have to work hard and can have some spare time to contemplate the universe and attain Buddhahood just like the Tathagata did.

So there you have it. Straight from the Tathagata’s mouth. You may ask why he keeps referring to himself in the third person. Atanu doesn’t know. Must have something to do with the fact that when you are a Buddha, you are allowed to refer to yourself in the third person. Atanu always says that. And then you ask what is with that “**ck”. Well, Atanu thought that he would clean up the Tathagata’s language a bit and replace the “heck” with “**ck”.

Thus have I heard that the Tathagata continued:

The Tathagata would urge you to examine, by way of illustration, you phone bill and your gas bill. Scan your bank statement. Notice how astonishingly brainless the whole shebang is. You will note that the more brainless it is, the harder you will have to work to pay your bills or to contact your bank. Surely, O Bhikshus, enlightenment will miss those people by a mile, if not more.

I take the Tathagata seriously. I examined my MTNL phone bill and my Citibank account statement. The Citibank statement was brainless as pointed out by the Buddha. It said on the back, “Reach us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week” and below that it showed an icon representing a phone with the legend “Call Citiphone”. No phone number was mentioned. Lots of fine print followed. I desperately scanned it for a phone number. Finally, right at the bottom of the page, after lots of totally pointless text, in very very fine print, it noted the number for Mumbai as “(022) 9628962890″. I called that number and was promptly told that it was not accessible.

I examined the MTNL phone bill. It was crammed full of strange information in big bold print such as:

“CONSOLIDATED STAMP DUTY PAID BY ORDER NO.
Mudrank 0415/745/CR143/M1 dated 20-02-2004″
“SERVICE TAX REGN. NO. :- AAA CM 0828 RST 001″

On the back, it listed the names of five suburbs you could pay your bill by cash or check. It did not give any addresses; just the names of the suburbs. Thankfully, it did mention the times: between “10:00 hours and 16:00 hours.” It is the customer’s job to find out where their offices are. Included with the bill were a couple of glossy inserts.

One of the glossies said:
easy payments
BILL PAYMENT CENTER
Convenience is now closer to home!

What was the great convenience, you may ask. They had machines at some locations in Mumbai where you can go and enter your phone number, scan the barcode on your bill, stick in your check, and get a receipt. High tech solution to a trivial problem but one that involves traveling by car, train, or bus. I expect that it would take a person about two hours on average to pay the phone bill. It has not occured to the designers of this sainted system to allow people to put their checks into an old-fashioned envelope, stick a stamp on it, and mail it to then.

I examined my Mahanagar Gas bill. Same story. You have to travel somewhere to pay the bill in person. You cannot mail in a payment. Cost of mailing a payment: Rs 2. Cost of having to pay in person: Rs 30 for tranportation plus 2 hours of time. I estimate that there are at least half a million gas customers, 5 million MTNL customers, and a few odd million other customers of various services that require payment in person. Let’s round the total number of bill payment per month in the city of Mumbai to 10 million. In a year, about 120 million bill payment transactions have to take place. Let’s do the numbers.

Transportation costs: 30 times 120 million is Rs 3.6 billion, or Rs 36 crores. Time cost: 240 million hours, or 30 million 8-hour working days. Or about 2 full working days for every man, woman, and child living in Mumbai paying utility bills. An estimate of the money cost of the time: assume that working adults spend time in paying bills and that the average productivity of Mumbai adults is Rs 50 an hour. So 50 time 240 million hours works out to Rs 120 billion or Rs 1,200 crores.

Here is the punch line: it is a numbers game. It may appear that I am going on about a trivial thing: the ability to pay utility bills by check instead of in person. But because of the numbers of people involved, it adds up rather quickly. That represents economic waste — waste that a poor country such as India cannot afford. Mumbai’s transportation systems are overloaded beyond imagination. Requiring people to travel to pay bills is asinine to put it mildly. No doubt the idiots who design the system don’t have to travel and stand in line to pay the bills perhaps. But why don’t the millions of customers complain? Because, I suspect, that they are hard working people. Unthinking certaintly but they are not lazy.

Two things keep getting reinforced in my head the more I observe India. First, the economy is not focused on how to get things done with the least effort. Maximizing effort is another side to the whole issue about employment. The focus is not on production, it is on employment. Because so much of the effort is totally pointless and wasteful, we don’t have sufficient production. Another way of stating “less production” is “more poverty”. We are poor because we don’t produce enough because we are busy doing things which could easily be avoided.

The second, the people in India have not paid sufficient attention to what the Buddha said. The Tathagata was a very sharp guy. He did not become enlightened for nothing. (This ‘nothing’ is not to be confused with the concept of shunyata or emptiness which is central to Hinduism and Buddhism.) We should heed what the man said. For instance, check out Einstein & Buddha: THE PARALLEL SAYINGS which “is an inspired effort to meet the 21st-century challenge of developing a synthetic world view” according to a reviewer. I close this one with a favorite quote from the Buddha.

Multitudinousness of objects have no reality in themselves but are only seen of the mind and, therefore, are of the nature of maya and a dream.
— Buddha

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Let me repeat that — it is The Times of India. And it is on the front page top left-hand corner every single day, the place that is reserved for the most important bit of the day.

India is shining? I think it is really poor.

{See also Peddling Pornography.}