Watched Namesake this week. Loved it. Strongly recommend.
Somehow it doesn't feel quite right to review this film. It doesn't feel like some pretty little lemon souffle that has been put out in front of me for my delectation. It feels too visceral, too personal, too close to my own life, to my own family for an analytical review.
Some little things I loved (don't read this list if you plan to watch the film):
- Ashima reciting Wordsworth. The care with which she pronounced o'er instead of over
- Ashok explaining the difference between a dak naam and a bhalo naam
- The sacred fire at the hotel. If the American hotel didn't allow fire on the premises, were they really married?
- From the credits. Jhumpa Mashi played by Jhumpa Lahiri
- From the credits. Gogol played by Kal Penn. Nikhil played by Kalpen Modi
Sunday 14 October 2007
Thursday 11 October 2007
What's special about Cambridge?
"My classmates from Cambridge believed the sky was their limit. And they were willing to work their tails off to reach that limit. My classmates from the University of Birmingham believed they would get what they deserved. And they waited for their just rewards to come to them."
This comment by a colleague who attended undergraduate programs at both Cambridge and the U of Birmingham. The context was a bunch of friends from work at the pub on a summer evening talking about what they got out of an education.
This comment cuts deep. I heard it last summer and it's still in easy-access memory. The start of the recruiting season just brought it to the top of my mind.
The most talked about and researched aspects of an elite education are selection, training and access. Yet, quite possibly, the most important value derived from an education is in shaping these deeply-held, pre-cognitive notions of identity and destiny. These deeply-held notions of self are what shape behaviour, and therefore learning, and therefore achievement.
A sense of one's identity and destiny need not come from education. But the only equally powerful source of that sense of self, of that source of integrity, is probably family.
This comment by a colleague who attended undergraduate programs at both Cambridge and the U of Birmingham. The context was a bunch of friends from work at the pub on a summer evening talking about what they got out of an education.
This comment cuts deep. I heard it last summer and it's still in easy-access memory. The start of the recruiting season just brought it to the top of my mind.
The most talked about and researched aspects of an elite education are selection, training and access. Yet, quite possibly, the most important value derived from an education is in shaping these deeply-held, pre-cognitive notions of identity and destiny. These deeply-held notions of self are what shape behaviour, and therefore learning, and therefore achievement.
A sense of one's identity and destiny need not come from education. But the only equally powerful source of that sense of self, of that source of integrity, is probably family.
Monday 8 October 2007
The spirit of cricket
Extract from the cricinfo story about today's ODI between India and Australia: "With Kartik bowling and the ball spinning away from the right-handers, it was pretty hard to score boundaries," Ponting said. "I spoke to Hodge later and he said he thought Kartik bowled very well. You have to give credit where credit's due."
Ricky Ponting found it in his heart to praise the opposition? And he picked Murali Kartik - one of my favourite India players - to praise? There still is hope in this world.
As captain of the world's best team, Ponting has to set the bar for on-field behaviour. He has been doing a terrible job so far, and the game as a whole is poorer for it. Hopefully Ponting can find the middle ground of being graceful and playing hard.
Ricky Ponting found it in his heart to praise the opposition? And he picked Murali Kartik - one of my favourite India players - to praise? There still is hope in this world.
As captain of the world's best team, Ponting has to set the bar for on-field behaviour. He has been doing a terrible job so far, and the game as a whole is poorer for it. Hopefully Ponting can find the middle ground of being graceful and playing hard.
Sunday 7 October 2007
Tax farming?
Paul Krugman thinks the Bush Administration using specialist collections shops to raise tax revenue is a scandal. His key point is that the collections shops charge 20% commissions, while it costs to IRS 3% to collect. Does that actually mean something bad is happening?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/tax-farming/
This is a topic I'm close to professionally. Using collections agencies to raise taxes is completely consistent with responsible governance. Comparing this practice to tax-farming is just wrong; mis-leading economic analysis. He is making a mistake that he has probably told thousands of undergraduates to avoid: he is confusing the average with the margin.
A better economic analysis would recognize that:
(i) The most skilled collectors out-perform the average collector by a factor of about 3x. This is not surprising. The most skilled economists, baseball players and computer programmers are more productive than the average by even bigger factors.
(ii) The most skilled collectors tend to migrate to organizations where they get paid more for their skill. This is also not surprising. So, the best collectors tend to move to specialist collections shops. And the IRS is left with a pool of ever-less-skilled collectors.
(iii) Most people don't need collectors to make them pay taxes. The IRS needs collectors to deal with just a small slice of the population.
Given these very believable assumptions, it could be more effective and more efficient to use professional third-party collectors. Collectors on 20% commissions would work only with a thin slice of delinquent tax-payers. And would more than pay for their higher costs by collecting more money then the IRS collectors.
Clearly, it takes management skill to make this skills-matching happen. But if the author really wants to claim that something bad is happening, he needs to show that this perfectly plausible story is not playing out. Until then, comparisons with the Romans or with the ancien regime are just rhetorical smoke and mirrors.
Of course, Krugman could still be right about the scandal.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/tax-farming/
This is a topic I'm close to professionally. Using collections agencies to raise taxes is completely consistent with responsible governance. Comparing this practice to tax-farming is just wrong; mis-leading economic analysis. He is making a mistake that he has probably told thousands of undergraduates to avoid: he is confusing the average with the margin.
A better economic analysis would recognize that:
(i) The most skilled collectors out-perform the average collector by a factor of about 3x. This is not surprising. The most skilled economists, baseball players and computer programmers are more productive than the average by even bigger factors.
(ii) The most skilled collectors tend to migrate to organizations where they get paid more for their skill. This is also not surprising. So, the best collectors tend to move to specialist collections shops. And the IRS is left with a pool of ever-less-skilled collectors.
(iii) Most people don't need collectors to make them pay taxes. The IRS needs collectors to deal with just a small slice of the population.
Given these very believable assumptions, it could be more effective and more efficient to use professional third-party collectors. Collectors on 20% commissions would work only with a thin slice of delinquent tax-payers. And would more than pay for their higher costs by collecting more money then the IRS collectors.
Clearly, it takes management skill to make this skills-matching happen. But if the author really wants to claim that something bad is happening, he needs to show that this perfectly plausible story is not playing out. Until then, comparisons with the Romans or with the ancien regime are just rhetorical smoke and mirrors.
Of course, Krugman could still be right about the scandal.
Friday 5 October 2007
The populists are winning
Got into a discussion on Greg Mankiw's blog. Mankiw's post was about how even Republicans are turning protectionist.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/populists-are-winning.html
Politicians understand that protectionism makes nations poorer. They also understand that lumping blame on foreigners is easy.
The real question that needs answering is: how do politicians make free trade a vote-winning position? Even when times are not all that good.
___________________________
An interesting response to my comment was: "the responsibility for educating the public lies with those companies and those workers who would be harmed by restrictions on trade."
___________________________
It's a good thought, and is a beginning. But it's not going to win the war for the good guys who want all of humanity to live better lives.
The first problem is rhetorical. Corporations claiming the free trade will be no more credible than snake-oil salesmen claiming to cure erectile dysfunction. The fact that, in this case, the corporations are telling the truth will not matter.
The second problem is that most corporations are not for free trade. They like nothing more politicians shielding them from the tough world of real competition. Read Raghuram Rajan's "Saving Capitalism From the Capitalists" for a nice riff on this topic. One of the Bush government's failings is that it does not distinguish capitalism from the capitalists. Sweetheart deals for buddies who own companies is corruption, not capitalism.
The third, and possibly the deepest reason why this does not work is that corporations generally will not have the resources to do this important work. Most companies fail. Or just about survive. And even the few wildly successful ones like Walmart or Microsoft will become vulnerable. Because of capitalism. Talk to people who worked at Microsoft when Netscape had an 80% share of the browser market to know what that felt like. General Motors bosses haven't been shy about lobbying Washington for tariffs or handouts.
When the going gets tough, corporations inevitably look to friends inside the Beltway to help them out. Companies are fair weather friends of capitalism. Can't be trusted.
So who will fight the good fight?
Universities. It is not a coincidence that we are talking on an economist's web site. Ambitious academics looking for political appointments can have surprisingly convenient views. But in general, academic's standards of intellectual honesty are higher than those of businesses.
And politicians. Al Gore has done his share of 360 degree pandering. But he did sell NAFTA with passion and conviction when it mattered. John McCain took on the might of Mississippi catfish farmers to fight for Vietnamese farmers who can supply the same catfish cheaper. Tony Blair (on the left) and Kenneth Clarke (on the right) have sold the case for the Polish plumbers who might breathe some life into Britain's building trades. Vaclav Havel in the old Czechoslovakia and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, India, have tried to sell a case for trade to their people. Anders Borg, Sweden's 39 year old pony-tailed finance minister is selling his people radical market oriented messages like "make work pay", if welfare is too generous people have less reason to work.
It can be done. The case for trade has to be made in the public sphere. It has to be digested and accepted by the public for trade and its soul-mate, democracy, to co-exist. Unfortunately, this takes more political skill than pandering to xenophobia.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/populists-are-winning.html
Politicians understand that protectionism makes nations poorer. They also understand that lumping blame on foreigners is easy.
The real question that needs answering is: how do politicians make free trade a vote-winning position? Even when times are not all that good.
___________________________
An interesting response to my comment was: "the responsibility for educating the public lies with those companies and those workers who would be harmed by restrictions on trade."
___________________________
It's a good thought, and is a beginning. But it's not going to win the war for the good guys who want all of humanity to live better lives.
The first problem is rhetorical. Corporations claiming the free trade will be no more credible than snake-oil salesmen claiming to cure erectile dysfunction. The fact that, in this case, the corporations are telling the truth will not matter.
The second problem is that most corporations are not for free trade. They like nothing more politicians shielding them from the tough world of real competition. Read Raghuram Rajan's "Saving Capitalism From the Capitalists" for a nice riff on this topic. One of the Bush government's failings is that it does not distinguish capitalism from the capitalists. Sweetheart deals for buddies who own companies is corruption, not capitalism.
The third, and possibly the deepest reason why this does not work is that corporations generally will not have the resources to do this important work. Most companies fail. Or just about survive. And even the few wildly successful ones like Walmart or Microsoft will become vulnerable. Because of capitalism. Talk to people who worked at Microsoft when Netscape had an 80% share of the browser market to know what that felt like. General Motors bosses haven't been shy about lobbying Washington for tariffs or handouts.
When the going gets tough, corporations inevitably look to friends inside the Beltway to help them out. Companies are fair weather friends of capitalism. Can't be trusted.
So who will fight the good fight?
Universities. It is not a coincidence that we are talking on an economist's web site. Ambitious academics looking for political appointments can have surprisingly convenient views. But in general, academic's standards of intellectual honesty are higher than those of businesses.
And politicians. Al Gore has done his share of 360 degree pandering. But he did sell NAFTA with passion and conviction when it mattered. John McCain took on the might of Mississippi catfish farmers to fight for Vietnamese farmers who can supply the same catfish cheaper. Tony Blair (on the left) and Kenneth Clarke (on the right) have sold the case for the Polish plumbers who might breathe some life into Britain's building trades. Vaclav Havel in the old Czechoslovakia and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, India, have tried to sell a case for trade to their people. Anders Borg, Sweden's 39 year old pony-tailed finance minister is selling his people radical market oriented messages like "make work pay", if welfare is too generous people have less reason to work.
It can be done. The case for trade has to be made in the public sphere. It has to be digested and accepted by the public for trade and its soul-mate, democracy, to co-exist. Unfortunately, this takes more political skill than pandering to xenophobia.
Blogger Econometrics
Greg Mankiw thinks he has had 3,000,000 visitors to his blog.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/3000000.html
This was my comment on his blog...with a helpful link to direct some traffic to my blog:
Sitemeter also measures the time each visitor spends on your site. Fifteen of the last twenty visitors had spend zero seconds. And the other five had spent less than a minute.
Sure, this blog is great. And fellow bloggers like me spend a lot of time here. But 3 million visitors is a huge over estimate of your effective reach.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/3000000.html
This was my comment on his blog...with a helpful link to direct some traffic to my blog:
Sitemeter also measures the time each visitor spends on your site. Fifteen of the last twenty visitors had spend zero seconds. And the other five had spent less than a minute.
Sure, this blog is great. And fellow bloggers like me spend a lot of time here. But 3 million visitors is a huge over estimate of your effective reach.
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Learning from Jews
Indian-Americans looking to Jews for inspiration. I love this parallel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/us/02hindu.html?ex=1349064000&en=fcef565a371c4cfe&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
The Indian diaspora becoming powerful advocates for the Indian state is a big story. Absolutely. But the even bigger story is about identity.
Jews have also been astonishingly successful in retaining a deep sense of Jewish identity for over 2000 years, even while integrating with and absorbing from the cultures they're embedded in. Being able to maintain this hyphenated identity over many generations is the key. If this dual identity is maintained, the political influence and the cultural creativity will naturally follow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/us/02hindu.html?ex=1349064000&en=fcef565a371c4cfe&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
The Indian diaspora becoming powerful advocates for the Indian state is a big story. Absolutely. But the even bigger story is about identity.
Jews have also been astonishingly successful in retaining a deep sense of Jewish identity for over 2000 years, even while integrating with and absorbing from the cultures they're embedded in. Being able to maintain this hyphenated identity over many generations is the key. If this dual identity is maintained, the political influence and the cultural creativity will naturally follow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)