Here are a few. I would love to claim them as my own but I ripped them off an email that reached me from the depths of the internet.

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island,
but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker,
but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class,
because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race.
They ended up in a tie.

9.Kings worry about a receding heir-line.

The whole series can be downloaded from here. Hope you enjoy them, despite the atrocious artwork. Comments, especially favourable ones, are welcome. As for unfavourable comments, may be you could reconsider? It does make things a lot easier you know…

Son: Mom, I want to play tennis like Novak Djokovic!
Mom: So does Nadal son, so does Nadal.

It was pretty good methinks

Consider a hypothetical case where a man regularly beats his wife. His neighbours decide to petition him saying “Dear Mr. Wife-beater, Please stop beating your wife. We want to have a neighbourhood free of wife-beating”. Will such a petition stop him? I seriously doubt it. More likely that he will tear the letter up and probably vent his anger at his intrusive neighbours by beating his wife some more. Now suppose the petition had said “Dear Mr Wife-beater, We know you beat your wife. Stop it now or we will report you to the police.” This would have probably made the wife beater think about how efficient the police force is, how serious his neighbours are and whether it is worth the risk of continuing his practice of beating his wife. If the petition said “Mr. Wife-beater, Stop beating your wife or the next time you step out of your house, all of us will kick the s**t out of you.”, he would probably reform the fastest, because he perceives the most danger (personal injury) coming from those with the grievance (neighbours) instead of an agent far removed (the police).

The most powerful component of a petition is therefore the consequences that arise from ignoring it. If there are no consequences, the petition might as well be toilet paper. So what dire consequences can the citizens of India threaten their government with? For all its faults, the Indian political setup offers Indians the extremely potent weapon of voting their politicians out of power. I have met many intelligent, educated, well-intentioned Indians who complain bitterly about the corruption and state of affairs in India and get eerily close to cardiac arrest during their fervent discourse. However, an overwhelming majority among these have never voted in their lives and don’t have plans to vote in the future. Those most capable of shouldering responsibility for long term decisions are therefore eschewing it, while those least suited are turned into king makers. I may be (horribly)wrong, but I will stick my neck out and say that a significant percentage of the petition signatories will lie in this category of non (conscientious) voters. We therefore have a toothless petition whose only function is to create the illusion of action.

Most of the non voters are extremely cynical of the voting process due to the well cultivated vote banks etc., but then there is no reason to be optimistic about petitions as well. Choosing to petition rather than vote is like being given a choice of cruise missiles or a teaspoon to fight a war and choosing the teaspoon. Breaking vote banks will take a while, but it is a better and more noble goal to focus effort on. Maybe a citizen driven vote bank, as proposed by Atanu Dey is the answer, but it hinges on the assumption that all voters capable of taking the long-term view make it a point to vote.

I am not suggesting that Anna Hazare is wasting his time. His act is commendable. He is investing time and effort and undergoing physical hardship for something that will probably not benefit him personally to a large extent. He has my respect. Anyone who joined him in the fast or attended a meeting in his support or is a conscientious voter also has my respect. They are signalling their desire to act and that they are willing to give up money, time or comfort to push their case against corruption. If I were a corrupt politician, I would be mildly worried. Anyone whose only contribution to Indian politics has been signing the odd online petition by filling an email address into a website and pressing “send” need to reconsider their position. Unless they plan to vote regularly and conscientiously and hold the government’s feet to the fire, Anna Hazare’s work is pointless and no number of online petitions will change that fact.

My first doubt emerges after considering the components required to service these two markets. Mobile telephony is extremely automated. When someone makes a call or sends a text message, the next human contact in that transaction will probably be the recipient. Everything in between is done by computers/electronics, with no qualms about working 24/7, no need of pay or vacations and who can be replaced, with no serious financial or legal consequences, in 5 minutes if things go wrong. Education on the other hand, relies primarily on smart, driven human beings to perform the role of good teachers. While technology is making inroads, the primary drivers are still humans who are disproportionately responsible (compared to technology) for the success or failure of the system. Juxtaposed with computers, humans are poor workers. They have to be paid, become less productive with long hours, tend to be on the lookout for better career options, demand vacations etc. Consequently it is more expensive and risky to hire and retain them and no amount of privatisation of education will be able to match the success of mobile telephony in lowering costs while maintaining standards.

A second doubt arises from what economists call the price elasticity of demand (PED) which is simply the change in demand of a particular product/service per unit change in its price. Many factors affect PED but a crucial one is the availability of substitutes. In this light, as long as schools remain tied to physical infrastucture, a school building for instance, mobile telephony will always have a higher PED than education. Being in direct competition with other communication methods such as fixed line telephony, instant messaging and email, mobile companies are aware that if prices go up beyond a certain threshold, customers can and will shift to other communication technologies without batting an eyelid. It would take extraordinary cartel building skills to raise prices of ALL forms of communication and hence this will probably never happen.

On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to switch schools. The children attending school will not like to leave old friends behind. The new school may not have the sports/music facilities the child enjoys using. It may be inconvenient to travel to. The school timings may not match work schedules very well. Parents may find part of the curriculum distasteful. The ties to physical infrastructure and the presence of human relationships result in a significantly lower PED for schools and parents may be willing to put up with higher prices/poor service just to avoid these complications. The inability or lack of desire to change will mean that the market will never be as efficient as that for mobile telephony.

The barrier to entry for education is also significantly higher than mobile telephony, again due its physical nature. A “good” school needs a building, maybe some sports fields, possibly computers and science labs. Some music and arts facilities will be nice. “Good” teachers have to be found and recruited. Mobile operators may have to bid for air spectrum and put up some mobile towers and control centres, which is the only physical infrastructure. In today’s world, where the trend is towards separate infrastructure management and service provision, mobile operators may be able to lease air spectrum and physical assets from an infrastructure provider, while schools cannot really share classrooms very efficiently. It is therefore much easier for a new mobile operator to enter an inefficient market than it is for a new school to do so. Obviously this results in a more efficient mobile telephony market.

While I think the example of mobile telephony to promote the virtues of a free market in education is unsuitable, it is hard to debate that a shift to privately run, profit driven schools will not lead to an improvement in standards compared to schools under government control with tightly prescribed rules. Profit driven schools will accomplish what most profit driven frameworks do; high inequality with an average level better than the idealistic scenarios. It would be good to have schools run as charities or non profit organisations, so that they can maintain comparatively lower running costs and maybe allocate more funds for deserving and needy students. Tight government control with rules trickling down from some education minister to a classroom hundreds of miles away does not inspire confidence at all.

Apparently, this is a “System tool” malware (it has the same name as the helpful program). Removal was fairly simple, simply boot into windows XP safe mode with networking then download and run Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to get rid of it. Possibly any other anti malware program will do the job as well, but I am listing this one as I got the name off McAffee forums and it worked.

Hopefully this post will help someone who is stuck with the same issue.

It appears that ASDA (Wal Mart’s branch in the UK) has just launched a dating site. The tagline on the site is…wait for it…”Compare your baskets…find love”. I understand and appreciate that everyone and their uncle wants a piece of the mega business that is online dating, but “compare your baskets…find love”? That had me in absolute stitches.

After startling everyone around me, wiping away the tears and massaging my sides till the pain had died down, I got thinking about how ASDA can implement the dating site on the basis of shopping habits. It is none of my business, but it seemed a lot more interesting than trying to figure out how electrolytic solutions behave when in contact with semiconductors. So here is what I think…

A detailed listing of all purchased items would be extremely helpful. Can you imagine how useful it would be to know shopping habits before asking someone out? Someone who has never bought meat or alcohol will probably not look too kindly on an invitation to the sunday roast at a pub. Before asking “would you like to get a coffee?” it would be very useful to know what sort of coffee they usually drink. If it was one of the organic fair trade ones where a farmer in Colombia gets a house for each bag he sells, it is probably best to suggest a different beverage. If you usually read the Financial times and the Economist, it is probably best to stay away from the person who buys The Sun and Hello magazine, no matter how cute they look.

It is also imperative to have data on shopping habits available for the past 2-3 years at least, to help people separate the liars from the truthful. That way anyone claiming to “enjoy an occasional drink with friends” but buying five bottles of vodka every week will set the alarm bells ringing. Same goes for “athletic” people who buy size 68 trousers, people with “beautiful hair” who buy hair growth stimulants and “tall” women who buy six inch heels. The long term data storage is crucial to avoid rigging the system by doing one shop full of carrots and peas and organic green tea so as to appear extraordinary.

A section on books would be another important source of clues about potential success. A woman buying books titled “How to find your dream guy in 10 days” or “He may be fat and ugly, but he is yours” is probably going through a dry spell and may not resist an invitation for dinner too much. On the other hand, if the person who has caught your fancy has just bought books like “Why men are lying thieving cheating ba****ds” and “Self defence made easy: How to maim and cripple in three easy steps”, it may be advisable to delay approaching them for a while. Unfortunately, I have no clue what sort of clues women can get from men’s literary shopping though. A variation in the quantity of porn magazines perhaps(?)

Finally, they should integrate this system with the loyalty card scheme. That way when you hand over your loyalty card at the end of the shop, the cashier can tell you that your dream man/woman is now finishing their shop a couple of aisles down and maybe you should wander over. It would give a whole new meaning to “check out” counters.

It is possible that ASDA have stumbled onto something big. Every new idea draws some laughs the first time it is suggested. Now I will wait and watch with bated breath if this idea is a success or if it lands up being a “basket” case.

No one who remembers the India from the late 1980s will need the NY times or any other media to tell them that things have improved for a large section of society. This change is primarily driven by greed. Someone’s greed to have more money, more power, more fame or simply more contentment, which drives them to create companies, technologies, schools and charities that serve as conduits for benefits to trickle around to other people in society. Yet it is taken for granted and often, even vilified.

Michel Douglas is often quoted as saying “Greed is good” in the movie “Wall Street”. This quote has been used time and again to show the capitalist system to be made of immoral, money grabbing thugs. However, that quote is incomplete. The complete line is “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”, and the additional words make all the difference.

The difference they make is that the “greed” is not material greed any more, but is whatever that makes the practitioner feel good about themselves. Someone like Patrick Awuah will be “greedy” to setup an first rate educational facility in Africa and produce as many good graduates as he can. This makes him feel good because he is contributing to his home nation’s development and ensuring his children don’t lose touch with their roots. To satisfy his “greed”, he enlists people in the USA for financial aid. The Americans involved are also “greedy”, because they can save on their tax, and they too get the feel-good factor of furthering a noble cause.

I use the word “greed” in quotation marks, because it shows that efforts are driven by people wanting more of something, even if that something may not be material gain. We would do good to create an environment where people are allowed to pursue their “greed” with minimum hindrance. It may be the most elegant solution to a lot of our problems.

Update: I had an opportunity to watch “Wall Street” again and realised that this post too missed out most of Gekko’s speech in the movie. A complete transcript can be found here. It is like a 3-5 minutes lesson in the fundamentals of economics.

I really enjoy reading the classics, sometimes more than contemporary fiction. I enjoy them because in addition to good plots and fantastic characters, they offer a snapshot of life in the bygone eras. Dicken’s description of crushing poverty in Victorian Britain and Twain’s accounts of deep rooted and casual racism may be shocking, but are also very educational. They serve as reminders of how we have improved and what we should avoid falling back to. If I were in charge of a child’s education, I would like them to read these works as they were written, so that all future generations have at least an inkling of humankind’s past mistakes.

Sanitising the classics because some of their contents are today considered offensive reeks of the Orwell’s 1984, where all literature is continually rewritten to mirror government opinions and policies. The aim in 1984 was to create the impression that the current policy is right, has always been in practice and no mistakes were ever made. The disturbing fact is that 1984 is meant to be a dystopia and adoption of literature sanitisation like this suggests that we endorse its practices.