During the heyday of calling cards, using a business card for a social purpose was considered bad manners. Today, while business cards are great for making business contacts, they still aren’t really suited for social situations. They probably have your work number and work email, and not much else on them. Think of all the times you meet someone you’d like to see again. Handing them a business card is too stiff and formal.
While this is true, a Victorian-style calling card will not fit all the situations we are confronted with in our modern world. This is a common failing of the Victorian aesthetic, which emphasised form over functionality. To achieve form and functionality, we must turn to Edwardianism. And since this is the twenty-first century – Saivite neo-Edwardianism.
What does this involve? Among other things – taking advantage of technology. To abandon Victorian straight-lacedness and adopt the more genial and creative values of the Edwardian era. To respond to problems with appropriate solutions and not with an arbitrary code of etiquette. Just as King Edward himself changed fashions to suit his waistline rather than change his waistline to suit his fashions, so too we must change calling cards to reflect the situations in which we will use them. And in this era of desktop publishing and printing on demand, that means a visiting card or calling card for every situation.
I can think of cards for at least six different situations. These are:
The visiting card your employer gives you, if you are working as a salaried professional (or even a professional working on commission, come to that). You have no control over this. The email on it is your work email. The phone number on it is your company phone. And unless it’s your own company and you decide the logo and card design and suchlike, there is not much you can do to customise this. All one can do with this sort of card is to accept it and move along. Back when I was a salaried yuppie, I tried for three months to get cards printed in which my designation was ‘Corporate Ho’ but my boss refused to approve anything except ‘Associate Purchase Manager’. Then I moved to Bombay, where I was in the Corporate Head Office on a project. It finally looked like I could get away with a business card that said ‘Corporate H.O. – Special Projects’. Alas, because it was a special project I was working on secondment in a business unit that was not actually my cost centre, and nobody could decide who would pay for my new business cards. Before things could be sorted out I had quit. Such is life.
The visiting card you make for yourself if you do freelance work and meet people to pitch to them. So if you’re a consultant or writer or photographer looking for clients, you have a website that shows your portfolio or lists your past work and satisfied clients, and your visiting card includes that, your dedicated email for freelance work, your LinkedIn profile, and a dedicated mobile number for this. A dedicated mobile number may seem a little extreme, but it’s three thousand rupees extra at most. Or you could put a dual SIM phone. What is there? The card then reads:
I met Shefaly last year. She’s a freelance consultant, and she got her business cards printed by Moo. They were plain back with only her website address in white text. Very cool.
A visiting card to give to shops and restaurants and sales agents and suchlike. It’s useful to get marketing offers and freebies, but not at the risk of subjecting yourself to spam. The solution is simple – create a dedicated email address for all your consumer transactions, and use that whenever you have to fill in a feedback form or purchase order form. If you want to be really ninja about this, you could get a dedicated mobile number for this as well, and use a cheap-ass Maxx Mobile that you’d switch off when you didn’t want to be disturbed with assorted personal loan offers. And then you can put the dedicated shopping email and mobile number on a visiting card, and drop it in the bowl whenever a shop or restaurant invited you to do so to get special offers. If you wanted to kick it up a notch, the card could include your monthly free cash flow, so the shop would know when not to bother sending you offers on things you couldn’t possibly afford.
If you’re single, a visiting card to give to interesting members of the suitable sex. This card would have your name, personal phone number and email, and perhaps a link to your facebook page. To make it more effective, it could include a short testimonial from your best friend, or a description of your attractive qualities. Like “Consumer Banker of Repute”. Or “I drive a VW Polo”. Or “Skilled kisser. References available.” You get the idea.
A card which you attach to presents or cash envelopes. This sort of card is actually wildly popular in Delhi. Actually, we take it for granted so much that I was astonished when Namy Roy and Muggesh asked if it was a Dalhi thing. This is a Dalhi innovation that works, and which the rest of the country should adopt. This card usually contains your family name (or the names of everyone in the family), the house address, and nothing else.
And of course, a personal visiting card; with your personal phone number, personal email id, links to your blog or twitter id or facebook page, and so on. Your address, if you’re comfortable giving that away. If not, you could leave enough white space to write it down for the people you did want to give it to.
Visiting cards are only the beginning. To really unleash the neo-Edwardian aesthetic, we would abandon Facebook walls for personal email and even handwritten notes when possible. Handwritten notes in turn would call for personalised stationery, which too should be customised to purpose as much as the visiting cards described above. A world in which we send letters on high-GSM cream-coloured paper, with custom embossing depending on who you were writing to and why, is a much better world than the one we have today. We should do our utmost to create this world.
What the hell are the Chinese doing with all the rubber they’re buying? Auto sales are down globally, so making tires is pointless. So is mine output, so making conveyor belts is ruled out. Condoms just don’t use that much rubber. Neither do gasket rings and suchlike.
It’s possible that Chinese companies have decided in the face of all logic to build up stocks in the face of falling demand. But I’m worried that they’re putting the rubber to far more nefarious uses. Specifically, that they’re building giant armoured robots to more successfully persuade the United States to hand over the Pacific states when they default on their sovereign debt.
The friend that I trusted has failed me
In the fight, and my hope is departed:
I speak what I know of; and note it,
Ye nobles, – I tell ye no leasing.
Lo, the raven is ready for carnage,
But rare are the friends who should succour.
Yet still let them scorn me and threaten,
I shrink not, I am not dismayed.
and
Of the reapers in harvest of Hilda
– Thou hast heard of it – four men and eight men
With the edges of Skrymir to aid me
I have urged to their flight from the battle.
Now the singer, the steward of Odin,
Hath smitten at last even Bersi
With the flame of the weapon that feedeth
The flocks of the carrion crows
and
I have smitten Toothgnasher and slain him,
And I smile at the pride of his boasting.
One more to my thirty I muster,
And, men! say ye this of the battle:
In the world not a lustier liveth
Among lords of the steed of the oar-bench;
Though by eld of my strength am I stinted
To stain the black wound-bird with blood.
The love songs are not spared:
I tell you, the goddess who glitters
With gold on the perch of the falcon,
The bride that I trusted, by beauty,
From the bield of my hand has been taken.
On the boat she makes glad in its gliding
She is gone from me, reft from me, ravished!
O shame, that we linger to save her,
Too sweet for the prey of the raven!
Nothing improves a love song like the presence of Corvidae.
Anyway, the presence of the ravens is only one instance of how hardcore the songs of the Icelandic sagas are. This led me to ask the obvious question – are there any Scandinavian metal bands which incorporate songs from the sagas into their lyrics. The natural person to ask was Rahul Raguram.
Rahul, being a cute guy, pointed me in the direction of Oakenshield and Amon Amarth. Oakenshield has in fact incorporated text from the Poetic Edda into their lyrics. At least, they claim to have done so. In their The Death of Baldr, I was hard pressed to make any lyrics out. Their name definitely takes its name from the Poetic Edda, specifically the Völuspá. And here’s a cool bit of triva – Tolkien took the name for the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield (the one who was King Under the Mountain) from the same source. Anyhow, here’s The Death of Baldr:
Googling also turned up this delightful webpage about Norse/ Asatru/ Heathen inspired music. There is chanting, folk, and of course metal. Such joy.
But can there be true joy without ravens? No. And therefore, here’s Oakenshield again, with Twa Corbies:
After more than a year of negotiations, New York City has reached a deal to take control of Governors Island from the state, moving a prime 172-acre piece of waterfront real estate into the hands of a land-starved city and closer to an ambitious redevelopment, city and state officials announced on Sunday.
…
These agreements represent a reversal from 35 years ago, when a city on the verge of bankruptcy parted with a number of its assets and relied on the state to shore up its finances.
Raymond Horton, a professor at Columbia Business School who ran a commission that studied New York City’s finances during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, said that by taking over properties like Governors Island, Mr. Bloomberg achieved a milestone that had eluded many of his predecessors.
“What tips the balance here is the state’s fiscal crisis,” Mr. Horton said. “The state is in a dire situation. The city is much better managed at this moment. That makes possible something that was not when the two governments’ finances were in similar condition.”
This is not something very novel though. Throughout the nineteenth century countries that were broke or defeated in war would sell their territories, or give them up against war reparations, or sign long or perpetual leases. Some notable examples are:
New York City itself! After the Dutch lost the Anglo-Dutch war, they allowed the British to keep New York in return for the island of Run in the East Indies, which at the time was the only place in the world where nutmeg used to grow. Talk about excessive discount rates.
The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which Cuba handed over to America as a perpetual lease back in 1903.
Hong Kong, which the Chinese empire leased to Great Britain for 99 years in 1900.
Alaska, which the Russians sold to America for 7.2 million dollars.
Almost a third of the continental United States, when the Thomas Jefferson administration paid Napoleon 15 million dollars in the Louisiana Purchase. They had offered him 10 million dollars just for New Orleans, but Napoleon had wars to fight and was desperate for cash, so he threw in pretty much the middle third of the United States. The extra 5 million dollars kept Napoleon’s armies going successfully until the Russian front in 1812, when famine decimated his army. On the other hand, Napoleon thought that by giving all that land to the US, he would make life even more difficult for Great Britain, which was hostile to America at that point of time. While Napoleon’s forces were being thulped at Moscow, America and Britain were actually fighting the War of 1812 which ended in a stalemate, so maybe this worked. Incidentally, the financing for the Louisiana Purchase was a fascinating piece of structuring.
Anyhow, it looks like the twenty-first century is going to see the return of grossly broke countries selling off their territory to keep up with the payments. The first inkling that it’s making a comeback came when two German MPs demanded that Greece sell off its islands (oh, and the Acropolis) if they wanted a bailout. It didn’t happen, but considering that Greece will probably default on its debt again soon, we may see this idea being taken up again. Portugal, Italy and Spain are also headed towards default, so we may soon witness the spectacle of Mediterranean beaches and slopes of Alpine mountains up for auction. It will be awesome.
The fiscal situation of the PIGS countries now is of course tiny compared to the fiscal situation of the United States a few years down the line. With the demographic bulge of the Baby Boom coming into Medicare and Social Security payout ages, the chances of the United States defaulting on its debt are beginning to look likely. The USA too may have to start selling its territory. Fortunately, it has a lot of empty territory to sell. Especially Michigan, which is rapidly depopulating.
The only thing is that selling something only works if there’s a buyer. That would involve either handing the territory over to whoever was holding the US debt and furious about the default, or someone with a shitload of cash.
Naturally, the prospect of China occupying Idaho or Nevada may not thrill the Americans, and they would be under pressure to sell to someone with a shitload of cash instead. Extrapolating from current trends, that would be… Apple. Steve Jobs has always been megalomaniac enough to want to own a country, but until now, it never looked like he actually would.
iDaho, iOwa, and iLlinois are on their way. We’re doomed.
Perfidious Albion’s treachery was not to go unpunished for long! Six months later, Eyjafjallajokull erupted; and shut down European airspace. In what seems like divine justice, the United Kingdom was worst affected. British airports opened after six days of being shut down, well after continental Europe and Ireland.
If it is in fact divine justice, the divinity responsible is probably Surtr, the Norse fire-demon who is inspired by Icelandic volcanic activity. But even if you wish to stick with a rationalist view that does not rely on gods, demons or others, the English made a terrible mistake when they decided to screw Iceland, a country that is legendarily badass, as we can see in the old Icelandic sagas.
The Saga of Cormac the Skald, for instance, has this description of what Cormac did when someone showed insufficient politeness when offering him a black pudding:
Now, in the autumn, Narfi’s work it was to slaughter the sheep. Once, when Cormac came to Tunga, he saw Steingerd in the kitchen. Narfi stood by the kettle, and when they had finished the boiling, he took up a black-pudding and thrust it under Cormac’s nose, crying:
“Cormac, how would ye relish one?
Kettle-worms I call them.”
…
And in the evening when Cormac made ready to go home he saw Narfi, and bethought him of those churlish words. “I think, Narfi,” said he, “I am more like to knock thee down, than thou to rule my coming and going.” And with that struck him an axe- hammer-blow…
That’s right, he hit Narfi with an axe-hammer-blow for dissing a sausage. When vengeance is involved, things get even worse, as we see in Egil’s Saga:
Kveldulf had in his hand a battle-axe; but when he got on board, he bade his men go along the outer way by the gunwale and cut the tent from its forks, while he himself rushed aft to the stern-castle. And it is said that he then had a fit of shape-strength, as had also several of his comrades. They slew all that came in their way, the same did Skallagrim where he boarded the ship; nor did father and son stay hands till the ship was cleared. When Kveldulf came aft to the stern-castle, he brandished high his battle-axe, and smote Hallvard right through helm and head, so that the axe sank in even to the shaft; then he snatched it back towards him so forcibly that he whirled Hallvard aloft, and slung him overboard. Skallagrim cleared the forecastle, slaying Sigtrygg. Many men plunged into the sea; but Skallagrim’s men took one of the boats, and rowed after and slew all that were swimming.
They didn’t kill everyone. They kept a couple of people alive to go back to the king with this song:
‘For a noble warrior slain
Vengeance now on king is ta’en:
Wolf and eagle tread as prey
Princes born to sovereign sway.
Hallvard’s body cloven through
Headlong in the billows flew;
Wounds of wight once swift to fare
Swooping vulture’s beak doth tear.’
With heritage like this, volcanic eruptions are only the beginning. When the British treated the Icelanders like terrorists, perhaps they did not realise that this could become a self-fulfilling epithet. With their economy in shambles, the Icelanders may now turn to the way of their forefathers and return to setting out in longboats and go a-viking on the British coast. Taking the names of Thor and Tyr, their depredations shall make Brown and Darling pay. Lindisfarne!
The first time as labour, the second time as capital.
This is interesting. Back in the 19th century, when Southern Pacific and Central Pacific were building transcontinental railroads in the USA, they used Chinese labourers when they hit California. Here’s a very Web 1.0 page on the subject. Precis-ing it madly, the interesting bits are:
When Charles Crocker of the Central Pacific was asked how small and weak Chinamen would be up to the heavy physical labour of building railroads, he said “They built the Great Wall, didn’t they?”
Irish labourers were paid thirty dollars a month each and given free accommodation. The Chinese got a dollar extra but no acco.
The railroad companies were excited about using Chinese labour because they did not practice slavery or peonage, but had a labour agency system. The Age of Gold, a book I read a few years ago, mentioned that the railroad owners were largely northerners and antislavery; and also that the question of granting statehood to California helped trigger the US Civil War.
The labourers usually couldn’t afford passage to America and booked their ticket against future wages. Their wages were then withheld until the ticket was paid for. And you thought TDS was bad.
White labourers responded with fury and racism at this competition, and the Yellow Peril meme was born.
Eventually, the Chinese labourers also started working in fisheries and agriculture, and established a massive Chinatown in San Francisco.
That New York Times article in the link has a full circle narrative, and saying that China is now bringing technology and money instead of labour; but given the way the Chinese operate, they’ll probably bring in the labour as well. (Alas, no citations to offer here except private emails about what’s going on at Mundra port and my own observation about the Huawei office in Mumbai)
The really interesting part is on Page 2 of the article:
China’s mostly state-controlled banks had few losses during the global financial crisis and are awash with cash now because of tight regulation and a fast-growing economy. The Chinese government is also becoming disenchanted with bonds and looking to diversify its $2.4 trillion in foreign reserves by investing in areas like natural resources and overseas rail projects.
“They’ve got a lot of capital, and they’re willing to provide a lot of capital” for a California high-speed rail system, Mr. Crane said.
I have a conspiracy theory that infrastructure is only the beginning, but more on that in a separate post.
I had mentioned in the post about my February reading that Tom Holland’s Millennium addressed the issue of how Christianity and monarchy spread throughout Europe after 800 AD. While it addresses the issue of how Scandinavia and the Vikings became Christian, Germania was converted before 800 AD, so the book doesn’t deal with that. I had to rely on Wikipedia to inform me that Germany became Christian thanks to the work of Theodosius, who outlawed paganism altogether. Constantine merely made Christianity official without actually persecuting the traditional religions.
The whole thing makes me very wistful. On Twitter, I have often said that anything will sound more badass if it is said in German; and the badassery of German Engineering is also widely acknowledged. If only the Germans had retained their Pagan religion, the sheer coolness of the cultural context would have made their engineering even more badass. I for one would delight in driving a Polo even more if I knew that Volkswagen had invoked Wotan and Donar while designing it. And if the resolution of quality defects or poor after-sales service involved battle-axes, even better. And I am quite sure that in such an ideal world, advertising would include Valkyries.
The other thing is that according to Millennium, the Scandinavians were persuaded to convert to Christianity by the Germans. So if the Germans themselves had never converted, the Norsemen (and women) would today be raising flagons of mead to Baldur and Thor.
Extend the implications of this a little further. Back in the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru and King Gustav of Sweden signed an economic co-operation treaty, as a result of which Pune is the India (and even Asia) headquarters for a bunch of Swedish companies. It has the offices and manufacturing facilities for Atlas Copco, Sandvik, ABB, BASF, and probably even more companies I can’t recall right now. Now imagine that Scandinavia remained pagan, but everything else stayed the same, including the economic cooperation agreement. Pune would still be a Swedish centre, except now the Swedes would now not be Protestant Christians but Vikings.
It would be awesome, especially if they joined in with the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. Picture a host of fur-clad berserkers escorting their Ganesh idol to the local lake; all the while chanting invocations to Vinayak… but with umlauts! And think how awesome the cheers and waves would be during the home matches for the new IPL team. Boat Club Quiz Club sessions would be even more entertaining, because every so often they would get to see a longboat bursting into flame as it carried the soul of a recently deceased expat manager to Valhalla. And assorted Marathi Manoos Senas would probably be far more circumspect about beating up immigrants if the immigrant was inclined to suddenly turn around and use the Marathi Manoos to make a Blood Eagle.
Unfortunately, it is not to be. India’s power cuts will never be addressed by a Mjollnir AB, labour organisers will not start industrial disputes in the name of Loki, and Ajay Shah will never get to campaign for full convertibility of the rupee against the gold ring. The Maytag repairman will not occupy his free time by stringing up Roman legionaries with their own insides; Krupp will not forge steel using their knowledge of Nibelung-lore, and Bayer will not patent pharmaceuticals using the knowledge of their druids.
It’s a cruel, harsh, dispiriting world; and it’s all Theodosius’ fault.
Has anybody made the connection between genes and the principal-agent problem? Richard Dawkins wrote a whole book about how we are but machines to reproduce genes, and in Genome, Matt Ridley quotes Bill Hamilton saying that the genome is like “a company boardroom”. But I haven’t ever seen the analogy being made explicit, so I’ll go ahead and do it right now.
The way to think of your genes is as principals, and yourself as the agent. Their objective is to make copies of themselves. To accomplish this, they create you as a vehicle to make more of themselves. So far, the analogy is genes=shareholders, you=management, and genes increasing their presence=return on investment.
What’s missing? Incentive alignment! In the corporate world, this is done through executive compensation, and will theoretically work best with stock options. How do our genes make sure that we’re keen and eager to achieve their objectives? A whole bunch of things that make the process of gene propagation enjoyable – making sex fun, making babies look cute, so on and so forth.
So when Skimpy goes on and on about finding a long-term gene-propagating partner, he’s putting the cart before the horse. It is not the end-result of our genes getting propagated, but the actions we take to do so that make us happy1. The purpose of sex is not to have babies, but to have orgasms2. So when you have the orgasms without the babies, you get to act like the CEOs who give themselves executive jets while shafting the shareholders and driving down the share price. It’s an awesome life.
You might feel a sense of responsibility, and be tempted to propagate your genes keeping in mind all that they have done for you. Resist the temptation! Whatever they have done is for their selfish ends. The fact is, your genes are bastards. They don’t care about you. Some of them are actively trying to make you suffer a painful and agonising death. Yet others are trying to make other people suffer painful and agonising deaths, and as such are responsible for the ills of society. So if the selfish little buggers are too stupid to align incentives properly and they make it possible for you to get the benefits without delivering results – for example, by having sex with contraceptives, cooing over other peoples babies, or even puppies instead of babies – then they’re only getting what they deserve. Go ahead and behave like a 1980s American conglomerate vice-president – you know you want to.
1: This is remarkably Bhagavad-Gita-ish. Honestly, you could see the Bhagavad Gita too as an exploration of the principal-agent problem, with Krishna as the principal and Arjun as the agent. After trying to align incentives for seventeen chapters, Krishna finally reveals his vishwaroopam and tells Arjun clearly who the principal is, who the agent is, what the objective is, and that Arjun had better get cracking. You know, I should get down to reading Gurcharan Das’s The Difficulty of Being Good.
2: Or as Laurensolivius would put it: “Orgasms! Orgasms! We want orgasms!”
For small or mid-sized companies in India, especially manufacturers, it’s impossible to avoid government interference. Whether it’s the town and country department, or the electricity board, or the state industry ministry, or the central ministry which is in charge, everyone will demand some sort of cut or speed money or the other. It is a chronic pain in the corporate arse.
On the other hand, as Sainath keeps pointing out, if you’re a huge company like Reliance, then the government bends over backwards to please you for fear that you won’t invest and generate employment. It gives you free land, builds a road to your factory or airport, gives you excise holidays and suchlike.
The implication is that at some specific turnover between 100 crore rupees and 5000 crore rupees, the government stops harassing you and you start harassing the government. The exact figure is something that needs to be researched, but for obvious reasons, I think it should be called the Yakov Smirnoff turnover.
Posted by Aadisht