No matter what the outcome of tonight’s semi-final is, the final will be an all monarch affair. The Rajasthan Royals will go up against one form of Kings or the other (though I’m hoping it’s the Super variety).
Is it to much to hope for a team named the Punjab Parliamentarians or the Sennai Strict Constitutionalists?
Leave a Comment » | 
Arbit Fundaes, MSM | Tagged: absolutism, chennai super kings, constitution, cricket, democracy, divine right of kings, indian premier league, ipl, jaipur, kings xi punjab, lalit modi, mohali, monarchy, parliament, parliamentary government, rajasthan royals, republic, restraint, separation of powers, sports, strict constitutionalism, super kings rule all | 
Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
According to an IIT-Madras prof, the impact of global warming raising temperatures by 4-5 degrees will be:
The scale of migration would be equivalent to the Partition ten times over. It would displace 375 times the number of people needing rehabilitation from the Sardar Sarovar project.About 75 million people from Bangladesh would migrate to India as climate change, rise in sea levels, drought, shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability takes a toll on coastal states and regions.
75 million extra Bongs! The horror! They will vote for the CPI-M, go on Bangla bandhs, and swamp quizzes with unworkoutable questions. This must be prevented. The problem is:
One study estimated the minimum cost of protection against one metre sea level rise would be about $500,000 per km but even that wouldn’t be able to protect 20-50% of the vulnerable population.
$500,000 per Km of coastline is an obscene amount. And with 580 Km of Bangladeshi coastline, the total cost works out to Rs. 1160 crore, and there’s still no guarantee it’ll work.
Fencing the border, on the other hand, takes only 440 crore rupees. The trouble is that fences are notorious for not working. They can be cut. Fence guards can be bribed. People can tunnel under them. For the fence to work, you need to reinforce it.
The ideal way to reinforce it would be with motion-sensor-equipped rocket launchers that would fire rockets with HE warheads every time someone came near the fence. Unfortunately this is expensive. It would also require uninterrupted power supply to the fence, something the eastern states of India are notorious for not having. No, reinforcing the fence will require something more low-tech and more low-cost.
Landmines suggest themselves. After all, NGOs are always going on about how the terrible thing about landmines is that they’re so cheap that laying a minefield costs practically nothing. This sounds excellent and most promising. Unfortunately, it turns out that landmines aren’t that cheap. Each landmine costs $3.
Three dollars doesn’t sound like a lot. But consider the calculations. Suppose you lay minefields along the entire border. And the minefield is at least 250 metres deep. And you keep a mine in every square metre. That means, protecting a kilometre worth of border works out to $3 x 250 m x 1000 m, or $750,000 a Kilometre, much more than the cost of protecting the coastline. To make things worse, there’s much more border than coastline. The cost just doesn’t work out. And knowing the Bangladeshis, they’d just send cows or donkeys or babies across the minefields until all the mines exploded and then they’d stroll across. No, mines aren’t worth it.
The inescapable conclusion is that it just works out cheaper to fortify the Bangladeshi coastline. Much as my racist nature delights in the thought that one day it will be possible to go to the Bangladeshi border, and point and laugh while Bangladeshis on the other side of the fence go ‘glub glub glub’, my free market fundamentalist instinct forces me to realise that it’s a waste of money. It’s tragic that racism and free market fundamentalism have to come into conflict, but such is life.
But honestly, you can’t get away from the fact that the Bangladeshis will invade no matter what if global warming happens, and we will then be stuck with all the Bongs without the Bongland. This is the exact opposite of the ideal situation – Bongland without the Bongs.
I have a plan to achieve this. It runs like this:
Global Warming is not a disaster. It is an opportunity for the Maadoos to abandon their dry and barren ancestral home, and move to a new homeland which is rich and fertile. The Marwari nation shall triumph, and South Asia will finally gain an international financial centre.
10 Comments | Racism | Tagged: banga, bangla, bangla bandh, bangladesh, bengal, bongland, border fence, climate change, cultural nationalism, dykes, free market fundamentalism, global warming, glub glub glub, good fences make good neighbours, homeland, immigration, infestation, international financial centre, invasion, landmine, maadooland, marwar, marwari, minefield, netherlands, new marwar, promised land, Racism, the great escape, unworkoutable, west bengal | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
Anybody remember how in the 2004 general elections, the Congress put character attack on Atal Bihari Vajpayee by spreading rumours that he ate beef using the immortal slogan ‘गाय हमारी माता है, अटल बिहारी खाता है’?
I realised only today how easily that slogan lends itself to LOLspeak. It becomes ‘Atal Bihari had a mother… but he eated it.’
Leave a Comment » | Arbit Fundaes, Language, Public Policy and Politics | Tagged: atal bihari vajpayee, beef, cow, i made u a cookie but i eated it, lol, lolcat, lolspeak, अटल बिहारी खाता ह, गाय हमारी माता है | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
The New Indian Express is relaunching (which I suppose will make it the New New Indian Express). They are running an ad campaign to announce this fact. The campaign has intentionally or unintentionally become an In Soviet Russia joke. Look!
In South India, New Indian Express reads you!
Leave a Comment » | Arbit Fundaes, MSM | Tagged: death to the hindu, in south india, in soviet russia, new indian express, new indian express reads you, slashdot, we read you, yakov smirnoff | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
While in Calcutta, I went for a litquiz with Aishwarya and Pradipta. Despite four self-overrules in the prelims, we qualified; and despite a Bong-funda heavy first half, we ended up winning the quiz. I think the margin of victory was at least three questions, and probably four or more. Apparently, it’ll be reported in the Telegraph’s equivalent of Bangalore Times and stuff.
Pradipta informs me that this is the first time in years that anyone has ever beaten the runners-up (a team called the Inmaniacs), and that this will therefore cause ripples of shock and awe across the Calcutta quizzing circuit (such as it is). This was of course prophesied long ago by davenchit:
The Jin in the time of Genghis Khan were noted for their many defensive walls- rotting, all but useless against true foes, these were symptoms of inner decay. The infrastructure of Calcutta resembles that of the Jin- reflections of past glory. Reckless drinkers, weakened by the Irish influence, they are ripe for conquest. Securing this key littoral will complete the preparation for the final assault: Bangalore.
Indeed, the shock that is currently reverberating through the cul-de-sacs of the City of Dretful Night is comparable to the
wounds North India suffered after the initial Turkic and Persian invasions, the crippling blows to society faced by Great Britain after the Viking raids, and the sack of Rome by Attila the Hun. A mere raid has exposed the society’s decay and corruption; annihilation and conquest cannot be long away. Soon, Bombay and Bangalore’s quizzers will overrun Calcutta, grabbing pole positions in every quiz that takes place, crushing the locals, and hearing the lamentations of their women and children. The old order of sleazy pubs and Ambassadors shall be shattered, as new watering holes and real taxis spring up to serve the needs of Calcutta’s new masters. The Pax Quizzica shall return Kolkata (faugh!) to the state which it was always meant to be: Calcutta for the Marwaris!
Leave a Comment » | Quizzing, Racism | Tagged: attila, attila the hun, Bangalore, bombay, calcutta, city of dretful night, davenchit, genghis khan, jin, kolkata, north india, quiz, Quizzing, starmark, the telegraph, viking | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
The next step the Kansa Society must take has become clear. No, it’s not the t-shirt.
Dinner with the girlfriend, while excellent (mostly because it was with the girlfriend) was tragically beset by wailing kids. These, it should be pointed out, were not even babies but misbehaved five-year old children. This ravaging of what should be a pleasant and romantic dinner by Bengali brats calls for a solution.
The solution, the girlfriend pointed out, is to adapt one of the great triumphs of the modern feminist movement: the Blank Noise Project Unwanted Gallery. The Unwanted Gallery, for those of you who do not know, is a brilliant concept. If someone harasses you, you photograph them with your handy mobile phone camera, and upload the picture to the gallery. This is strong for the following reasons:
So there. But as we shall see, these fundaes can be used not only as a weapon against sexual harassment, but also against evil parents who bring their spoilt children out, to devastate the peace and tranquility of shared public spaces. Just as there is a rogues gallery of eve-teasers, the Kansa Society can create a Rogues Gallery of misbehaved children. Any time a screaming kid is seen in public – whether in a train, a plane, a cinema, or a restaurant – public spirited Kansa Society members (or indeed, anybody who sympathises with the ideals of the Kansa Society) can photograph the juvenile, send the photograph to the Kansa Society, and rest assured that the misbehaving child will spend the rest of its days knowing that its crimes have been exposed to the world at large. Slowly but steadily, public misbehaviour by children will become stigmatised, and parents will learn not to bring them out into public. A Utopia will be created, all thanks to the Kansa Society.
It is time for the Brat Noise Project to take wing.
Leave a Comment » | Kansa Society | Tagged: blank noise project, brat noise project, david brin, Kansa Society, negative externality, public space, rogues gallery, sexual harassment, sousveillance, street harassment, the girlfriend, the transparent society, unwanted | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
You can approximate how fraud an MBA’s job is by looking at which Microsoft Office1 product he2 uses the most.
Excel indicates the least fraudity, because the MBA here is working with real data and numbers, and is close to the truth of a particular situation. These are the consultants who do actual number-crunching, market research junta, and quants (though of course quants will be using cooler stuff than Excel).
Word is more fraud, because it abstracts real information (numbers) into words, but is not quite as fraud. And given that there’s a lot of tacit knowledge floating about in organisations that it not easily converted to numbers, there are chances that the MBA is actually communicating real information when working in Word. As a commercial banker of repute, I am in this position.
PowerPoint is the pinnacle of fraudity. The MBA who works mostly in PowerPoint is doing nothing but converting real information into easily digested bullet points that lose all nuance. These MBAs are usually found in things like internal consulting and sales strategy. They convert the Excel sheets made by people doing real work into PowerPoint presentations made to clueless senior managers who refuse to analyze the data themselves.
1: There are other office suites besides Microsoft Office, but these are MBAs in the corporate world we’re talking about here. We can safely assume that the IT department has bought MS Office.
2: It could be he/ she, but again, this is the real world we’re talking about and in practice male MBAs outnumber female MBAs five to one (and that’s at IIMB). The female MBAs who do exist are of course equal to the males when it comes to putting fraud.
10 Comments | Arbit Fundaes, MBA | Tagged: banker of repute, bullet point, excel, fraud, internal consulting, microsoft, number crunching, office, powerpoint, powerpoint poisoning, sales strategy, spreadsheet, spreadsheet jockey, tacit knowledge, word | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
She takes photographs of Batman buggering Two-face while Penguin looks on with sadistic relish:
Note the strategic positioning of the jar of Vaseline. Also, Batman is so brutal that the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh will have to be called in once he’s done.
I’m not too sure about the significance of If God Was a Banker being there in the background.
4 Comments | Arbit Fundaes, Books Movies and Music, Personal | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
Apparently, Bombay colleges are appealing to their students to refrain from making ethnic jokes, what with the inflamed situation:
Several colleges — probably the city’s most multicultural hubs — have informally cautioned students to go easy on community remarks, which would otherwise mean nothing more than harmless jokes and jibes.
“The students are very young and have no malice. Since we have a huge mix of students, it is important to be careful,” said MB Madlani, principal of Raheja College, Santacruz. “Teachers have informally talked about the issue and our students have responded maturely.”
This is all well and good. Especially because this appears to be a sensible discussion of risks rather than a blanket ban, which is quite surprising for Indian education. But what to make of this quote?
Sociologist Nandini Sardesai said the caution is demographically defined. “Colleges in areas like Parel, Shivaji Park and Dadar should be more cautious. India, including Mumbai, has a tendency to be communal at every level, be it religious or regional.”
I am enraged. How dare this so-called sociologist draw these invidious distinctions between the various regions of Mumbai? Where does this Colaba-prancing, Marine Drive-promenading, Cathedral-types socialite get off claiming that Goregaon types1 are more prone to violence than she is? This is regionalism of the worst sort. Someone should advise her to avoid unnecessary remarks.
1:For the benefit of new readers, IIM-B racism splits Maharashtrians into Cathedral Types (those who live in Bombay south of Mumbai Central), and Goregaon types (everyone else).
2 Comments | Charlatans, Racism, Weirder Than Fiction | Tagged: cathedral types, colaba, dadar, ethnic joke, goregaon types, hindustan times, maharashtra navnirman sena, marine drive, mns, mumbai, mumbai central, nandini sardesai, parel, political correctness, raheja college, raj thackeray, regionalism, santa cruz, shivaji park | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
RJ Malavika is getting married as I type this.
If it’s a KT wedding and not a Tam one, I suppose it’s not too late to pull a Benjamin Braddock. Except that I’m happily committed to the perfect girlfriend, and Hari the Kid is in Seattle. So it goes.
4 Comments | Racism, Radio Indigo | Tagged: bejamin braddock, breakfast wedding, elaine robinson, hari the kid, kt, lunch wedding, Radio Indigo, rj malavika, tam, the graduate, wedding | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht