Don 2. And hopefully the last.

Don2.

The Khan in what looks suspiciously like cornrows. Also him kicking the everloving shite out of many, many baddies. Who else bought that? Ya' know what, I am going to be all systematic an' jazz and write out a list of all that was not well. Here goez:

1. Cornrows. Cornrows and shades and rivergoing powerboat (have you no consideration for the fishes, what with your 400 hp motor an'all?)
2. Fighting. Like serious fistfighting. But what would look convincing if done by Brad Pitt and even more so if done by Hrittik, looks uber fake when done by the Khan. Granted, Farhan, the wunderkid diro does much to make it look even summat realistic. But it fails. The Khan should spend less on botox and ask Hrittik to lend him some sixpacks.
3. Car chase through the strasses of Berlin. A Toyota SUV chasing a late model Hyundai. In Berlin. In effin' Germany. In the land of bimmers and mercs and audis. Is that sacrilege? Yes it is.
4. The plot. With gaping holes like a fishing net. Still, this was better than Ra-One.
5. Irani fighting. Uncool.
   

There were many things which were right with this fillum.

1. Priyanka Chopra. That official uniform with the shoulder holster. Hawtness. Try asking Amisha Patel to pull that off.
2. The car chase. Again. Wasn't too bad as car chases go. Even ended up with a medium sized pileup in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Seeing as how Indian movies are all about the armchair tourism bizness, this one did quite well.
3. Irani acting. Very cool.
4. I am conflicted about this one. Whenever a SWAT or GSG9 type of team heads out, the blokes are all in bulletproof Kevlar flask jackets and shite. The dames are in tank tops. So, here Ms. Chopra, in her substantial hawtness, has about half the body armour she should be wearing. On the other hand, tank top. See, tough call.

The verdict - if you like the Khan, go see it. Otherwise, don't bother. Also, when will they make films which are do not revolve around a superstar? And in that same breath, thank goodness, this did not have Salman.

Ship names

Aah, whimsy strikes again. Inevitably, whilst in the can. And this time, brings a quartet of names. Names suitable for Shipminds (Culture). Or bands. Or cars. Here goes:
1. Mrs. Darcy
2. The Princess of Blandings
3. The Bespoke Semicolon
4. Occam's Salon

Economics and ecologies

This is something that other people, far cleverer than your truly have thought of - however, it is always worthwhile to put some random thoughts down. Consider an economy as an ecology. Most economies will begin as primitive ecosystems - where meagre resources (basic chemicals) will be traded amongst almost lifeless entities. And economies, just like ecosystems, given the right mixture of resources (nutrients) and conditions (an energy surplus, moderate stability in the environment) will evolve. As they do, more complex traits will emerge. At some point, the barter system of trade will become something more sophisticated. A common currency of trade might emerge. In the living world, this is, mostly chlorophyll derived carbohydrates. There will, of course be primary producers, like farmers - or in the biological case, plants. Almost everyone else will use the primary product (crops/carbohydrates) and act as middlemen. At the same time, there will be continue to be niche markets and niche ecologists, such as the lovely anaerobic bacteria which help in fermenting any number of things we love to eat and drink. Think also of the tenacious little buggers (like my old friend Thermus thermophilus) surviving absolutely extreme conditions in volcanic springs like any Glen Beck viewing survivalist who wants nothing to do with trade treaties.

And as every economy grows, it creates a surplus. With a sufficient surplus, there comes the opportunity to do more than merely eke out a living. There will be people who do other things - which, in turn can accelerate the rate of development. The first person to make a wheel was perhaps greeted with the same derision that the first sea-dweller who liked hanging out on beaches was subjected to. There might even be a critical mass, a tipping point for every economy and every ecology after which the rate of growth increases and increases.

And inevitably, in both systems, there will be predators. And there will be predators of predators, superspecialized creatures which usually represent the current peak of development in that system. But such apex predators can only survive when their footprint, their constituency, or simply put, their garden isn't wiped clean. If these predators kill everything that sustains them, then the whole system collapses. Probably examples are many current deserts. (side note- does the goat count as an apex predator, when protected by the benign hands of humans?)

I leave it to your active imagination to think of hedge fund managers as apex predators in today's economy and why their untrammeled greed can lead to the undoing of a functional economy which has taken a long time to build up.

But, before leaving, two links which are the reason I started thinking about such things: the first concerns the use of cellphones as a barter system in Africa - which is a new economic development - and should merit close study. The second is a podcast by Kaspersky's people on frauds in the cellphone economic system. The predators have arrived.

Guest post - on building a tech base

Guest post from the Statesman.
All content belongs to the Statesman, Kolkata - but this is worth reproducing here.

From body shop to hi tech

8 November 2011

The tendency of India’s government and its industrial sector to play safe when it comes to technological invention will prove disastrous in the long run if more emphasis is not put on research and development, writes arunabha bagchi

A new controversy regarding IIT graduates made headlines recently in India. It was sparked off by comments made by Mr Narayan Murthy at the IIT 2011 Global Conference in New York while ruing the poor quality of recent IITs graduates. His contention was that the quality of students gaining admission to the IITs had deteriorated over the years owing to overemphasis on coaching classes. Chetan Bhagat, a well-known writer and an IIT graduate, hit back, wondering how could someone, who ran a “body shop and calls it hi-tech”, make such sweeping comments.
While Bhagat’s observations about Infosys were just as candid as Mr Murthy’s take on the quality of recent IIT graduates, the point worth exploring is whether the perception that IT bellweathers such as Infosys are no more than mere body-shops and not really pioneering centres of technological excellence holds good or not. Newspaper articles and books churned out by American and Indian presses would give a layman the impression that Indians are giving a tough competition to Americans in the technology race with only the Chinese still in the reckoning. Japan and Europe already seem to have disappeared from the picture. A glance at an article titled Special Report: Technology in India and China that appeared in the 8 November, 2007 issue of The Economist, made it clear that outside of the pharmaceutical and software sectors, India finds hardly any mention. Our technology handicap in other sectors of the world economy cannot be more glaring. What is also surprising is that while the article lauded the remarkable success of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and had special words of praise for Biocon, to name a few, it pointed out: “Few Indian firms are creating drugs, rather than recreating them.” Furthermore, according to The Economist, exports of indigenous software comprised a tiny fraction of the Indian IT industry’s total service exports. Most telling was the comment of the then head of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), Mr Kiran Karnik: “…companies are either born as product companies or as service companies, not both. Scribes want to become better scribes. To be a poet, you probably need to be born as one”. This is likely what Bhagat had in mind when he had reacted to Mr Muthy’s comments. Why should we then bother about the deteriorating quality of IIT engineers? The truly bright among the IIT graduates should be busy inventing products for companies in the West. Perhaps the not-so-brilliant ones would serve India’s interests better!
How does one then reconcile this scenario with the barrage of good Press that the “India story” seems to be enjoying? Well, it would seem that this had been made possible by a twist in the tale provided by desi and phoren business gurus. They put the thrust on “innovation”, as opposed to “invention” to forecast India’s continuing high growth in the foreseeable future. Roughly speaking, innovation has three levels: “know how”, “know why” and “invention”. “Know how” means learning and tweaking the production process, better quality control, making slight adjustments to the technology already in use and adopting other minor measures to improve business performance. “Know why” involves delving into the technology in use and improving the design by trial and error. This is commonly known as “reverse engineering”. The third level, of course, is genuine technological invention. In fact, a subtitle in the 8 November, 2007 issue of The Economist suggests: “A new way of mixing existing technologies is also innovation.” The argument often advanced is that India has unlimited potential in this broad area of technological innovation.
In fact, the World Bank and other organisations advise India against making large investments in technological inventions. A report put out by one such organisation argues that traditional companies in India are so inefficient that just improving the functioning of a vast majority of them in order to bring them to the level of the few well-run ones would increase India’s production by five-fold. So, the World Bank and other moneybags of the world recommend that India remain in the “know how” stage and protect the impressive growth rate witnessed during the last decade without disturbing the status quo. But, given India’s lack of “inclusive innovation”, this growth model is bound to hit a wall in the medium term. International experts do not advise India to even dabble in the “know why” stage of innovation. The argument is that the “know why” stage does not give much of an immediate return though it is, of course, an essential step to reach the invention stage that guarantees an enormous return ~ something enjoyed by the developed economies. India is warned again and again that any policy favouring investment in invention would be very expensive, highly uncertain and unnecessarily stressful.
So, how does India fare by international standards in the matter of technological innovation? The World Competition Index: 2011-2012 prepared by the World Economic Forum puts India in the 38th place in the field of “Innovation” ~ way above Pakistan but nothing to write home about. A closer scrutiny makes it clear that India would have done far worse but for the economic meltdown of the former USSR and some Soviet bloc countries during the 1990s. But India is advised to remain optimistic. For any country, optimism of such a nature is derived from its level of “technological readiness” or, the current state of human resources in a country deemed necessary for successful absorption of new technologies. Another glance at the World Competition Index: 2011-2012 made it clear that India has very little to be optimistic about for the simple reason that it ranks 93rd under the head “Technological Readiness”. In fact, in terms of both innovation and technological readiness, India is doing no better than Indonesia ~ a country that is rarely mentioned by business gurus.
India’s poor performance in technological readiness is a very serious matter and needs a separate discussion. It will be appropriate at this stage to recount India’s efforts to develop innovative technology since Independence. Even before Independence, top Indian scientists had been making plans. The final strategy adopted was two-fold: to develop strategic technologies and to help foster indigenous technologies for both capital and consumer goods through import substitution. The first strategy led to the birth of Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Barc) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). The success of both Barc and Isro is now well known. The only pity is that the technology developed in these centres did not appear to have much of a spin-off effect on the industry as it happens in developed countries. To implement the second strategy, diverse government-run research centres were set-up under the aegis of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Research undertaken in these centres had only a marginal impact on the private sector. Big companies catering to sheltered markets were not particularly interested. And, import substitution efforts resulted in horrible inefficiency, obsolete technology, shoddy products and the license raj.
There was also a parallel effort by the government to create a technologically-trained workforce by setting up a number of IITs, complemented by National Institutes of Technology and other engineering colleges. India’s best and the brightest were attracted to IITs because of their world-class facilities. Some of the IIT graduates went on to become highly-successful engineers and scientists abroad, mostly in the USA. The opportunities for successful invention offered by the Indian industry were, however, limited. So, in effect, India eventually gave some very expensive gifts to the West. No wonder, IITs received universal acclaim and the attention of multinational corporations.
With economic liberalisation, efforts were undertaken by the government to provide fiscal incentives for research and development (R&D) in the private sector at the expense of R&D in government-run research institutions. As such, one would expect the private sector to invest more in R&D in the new economic climate. Expenditure on R&D as a share of the gross national product (GNP) is an important indicator of a country’s level of innovation. In the case of India, this share steadily increased from 0.17 per cent in 1958-59 to 0.98 per cent in 1987-88 and thereafter started declining before settling around 0.8 per cent. This confirms the general perception that India’s technology remains primarily in the “know how” stage, despite the fact that huge profits made after economic liberalisation by Indian companies have given them the wherewithal to move into the “know why” stage. We know that Japan, and later South Korea and Taiwan, deployed the “know why” strategy extremely successfully in the years following World War II. It would seem that the only exception to the rule has been delivered by India’s pharmaceutical industry that has clearly crossed over to the “know why” stage.
While writing this article, I tuned in to the BBC World Service just when the presenter was announcing that Europe’s first satellite-navigation (sat-nav) spacecraft, developed as part of its Galileo mission, had been launched into orbit. This sat-nav system is Europe’s answer to the GPS system ~ developed originally for defense, and now used widely for civilian purposes all over the world ~ put into orbit earlier by the USA. I recalled that at the planning stage of the Galileo mission, the USA had put every conceivable pressure directly and indirectly through Great Britain, to dissuade the European Union from going ahead with the mission. The argument advanced was that the GPS system was available to everyone for free and to try to develop an alternative system would be very expensive, highly uncertain and unnecessarily stressful. Sounds familiar? The stance of European Commission’s Vice-President Mr Antonio Tajani, as reported on the BBC website could not have been clearer. “Galileo is at the heart of our new industrial policy,” Mr Tajani said once the separation (of satellites from rockets) confirmation had come through. “We must commit very strongly to Galileo. We need this; this not entertainment. This is necessary for the competitiveness of European Union.”
When will policymakers and business leaders show the same determination in India? To not move our focus beyond the “know how” stage in order to play safe with economic growth will prove disastrous in the long run. Our nuclear and space research must find a resonance in the industrial sector. Even more important is to develop an indigenous defense industry with a strong research base. The civilian spin-off of defense technology would give a big boost to new inventions and the private sector can play a major part in this endeavour. Indian business houses must spend far more on R&D than they do at the moment. The ultimate key is in forming a research triangle involving universities, government-run research institutions and the private industry so that India’s “Innovation” ranking climbs steadily. Only then will India be able to shed its “body shop” sensibilities and put its economy on the “hi-tech” track.

The writer is ex-dean and professor of applied mathematics at University of Twente, The Netherlands

Ra-One

We Desis don't do subtlety. It does not come naturally to us. Melodrama has always been, and will continue to be a big seller when it comes to entertaining us. Hence 'jatra'. Hence, also our enormous love for bling, be it in our clothes or our houses. Hence, also the Punjabi word 'shosha' - the meaning of which I leave you to find. Not that I am against any of the above. Oh wait, I am. That is why I feel compelled to to take some time away from sleep to write this review of Ra-One straight after returning from the late night show.

The one sentence summary - this movie sucks giant, hairy balls. Avoid. At all costs.

However, since I have subjected myself to this ordeal, I will tell you about what you should miss. This movie is about a viddy game archvillain jumping the barrier from the digital world to the real one, and the superhero doing the same to save the day. The superhero is, of course woodenly acted out by our beloved Sharook Khan. SRK delivers his best post ki-ki-ki-ki-Kiran acting here - straight from the HART - by which I mean the viddy game's Hertz Analog something Transmitter. Yes, the movie is full of such technobabble. Of course the nice thing is that it references EVERYTHING. Yeah, really everything. If, for some reason you have been completely oblivious to the movie and pop culture milieu of the last twenty or so years, fear not. Messrs. SRK and company have taken it all, shoved it into a giant blender and served you a cocktail which has the same aftereffect as a New York mugging.

The whole thing about the HART being part of the villain (Ra-One) and the hero (G-One) and has to be integral to the bloke in orde for him to be vanquished smacks of different flavours of the "shaitan ki jaan us pinjre mein band tote mein hai". Apparently the budget was 150 crore Rs. That is what - 30 million $? A lot of money. And you can tell where it has gone. A liberal application of bullet-time Matrix style shows up. As do shades of Terminator, and of course Iron Man. But the actual philosophical underpinnings - well they might have well been derived from the David Cronenberg sleeper eXistenZ, and also from the rather awful Virtuosity - where a cyber villain Russel Crowe battles Denzel Mr. Eternally Righteous Washington. All of that has been updated here, and very slickly done, all the way down to a Tron style lightcycle.

The masses have not been forgotten. The great Rajni makes a surprise appearance, and what I really liked - Munnabhai comes in - but not to peddle 'Gandhigiri'. Kareena is her usual ravishing self - and there is a song and dance routine which is almost worth sitting through. Seriously, there are very few wimmen who can look like that one in a sari. My 'watch this!' scene was when Kareena was powersliding a bloody huge Volkswagen Panzer, um.. sorry, Touareg for what seemed like 6 or 7 turns. Speaking of which, this was the first movie in which I have seen a veedub Phaeton. Methinks that most underrated of overachieving German exec saloons will now be sold in the Des.

But then again - what is completely lacking in this movie is a marginally competent storyline and good dialogue. The emoshuns are ladelled on nice and thick. And the music changes gear like a suburban mom suddenly placed in a racecar. This is supposed to cue you into the current emoshun. Bang, bang, dishum, dishum! And then, suddenly a wailing mandolin informs you that it might be time to turn on the the tears. The screen-changes and lines have all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Typical Bollywood blockbuster.

Bottom line, avoid this. Bollywood has a long way to go and shelling out money for tripe like this will only encourage them to produce more movies where everyone gets a paycheque except for the scriptwriter.

PS - the best acting, by far in this movie, and I mean by miles is by the obviously gay transit security bloke at Heathrow who almost wants to see all of Sharook's piercings. Bemused? Don't be - I am sure someone has put this scene on the web. Me-also-thinks that this is a not-so tongue in cheek reference to when the SRK was strip searched at Newark Liberty Airport. Go Jersey!

PPS - ladies, Arjum Rampal takes his shirt off. You might like that.

Battleship New Jersey

This day is propitious. Or it was, almost six hundred years ago, for the British. For on the 25th of October, 1415, in a recently ploughed, rain muddied field in an entirely undistinguished place in France called Agincourt, the English won a battle. The English monarch, Henry V's inspired leadership and exhortations aside, this battle was won by the English commoner, in the form of the most effective European artillery of the time - the longbowman. And in turn, this battle was lost by the nobility of France, their knights in armour - the very flower of French society and the natural leaders of their state. The event lives in memory through the words of the bard himself. This is where the 'Band of Brothers' speech on St. Crispin's Day comes from. But that is not why we are here. The reason for this extremely complicated start to this discussion is because this battle heralded the end of the age of chivalry and the beginning of a process which I can only describe as the democratization of war itself. Armor would not show itself to be superior on almost any European battleground for more than 500 years, when these two former enemies would join hands at a place called the Somme. But for the moment, Agincourt had shown that heavily armoured knights were easy targets against the massed firepower of poorly paid common archers.

The naval parallel is almost too easy to make. Battleships are as the armoured nobility of the high seas. When these capital ships engage, the engage as did the knights of yore. They move in close and slug it out like heavyweight boxers magnified a billionfold and encased in unbelievably thick armour. Smaller ships, like minnows, get out of the way of these orcas. The art and science of battleship warfare came to its stunning climax off the coast of Jutland in midsummer 1916 where the two greatest fleets in modern history, the British Grand Fleet and the Imperial German High Seas Fleet met, and sought to annihilate each other.

With this engagement, the day of the battleship was over. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned this to many of the naval strategists of the world powers. What few doubts remained about the obsolescence of battleships were put to rest on a Sunday in December 1941 by the Japanese. The future belonged to carriers and now, as we know it to submarines. But battleships continued to be built, if only for the remaining years of WWII. And they continued to be marginally useful as giant gun platforms, but as smaller vessels increased their firepower, even this role was usurped from them. Still, the very word "battleship" evokes a very special feeling - that of awe. With that immense scale, that terrifying firepower, battleships were the last titans of the ocean - when they fought, the heavens stood still and watched.

In the days following the debacle at Pearl, the US Navy scrambled to replace the losses it had suffered. The Iowa class of capital ships formed part of that plan. The USS New Jersey was commissioned in 1943 and saw service throughout WWII in the Pacific. Later it was decommissioned, then recommissioned in time for Vietnam, the mothballed again, then brought back - well you get the picture. Suffce to say that this was one of the longest serving battleships ever and was probably the last such vessel to sail the seas. Today it lies moored quietly off a pier on the Camden waterfront, just across the river from Philly. This was where I spent my Sunday midday with my friend Rudra - and I have a few pictures to show for it. Here goes.

Images, images

The beginning of every interesting piece of art is a canvas. This is especially true in the world of storyboarded cityscapes rendered in hypercontrast as Robert Rodriguez does. There are other ways of going about creating art and putting it down on film though.

Some auteurs have managed to think of every frame as a canvas in itself - and have spent loving hours (sometimes years) in turning such frames into masterworks. Examples? Certainly. Ray's Pather Panchali, Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in the west - remember Harmonica's thousand year old face, enduring and indestructible like the mountains which framed him? And yes, remember also how a camelback rider suddenly appears in the view on the far left of a huge, huge, vista - they called that 'the anvil of the sun', in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

The very best of these works have told beautiful stories, and have used fantastic imagery to imprint those stories into our consciousness. But sometimes, the story takes second place to the canvas. A fabulous example of this is Refn's Valhalla Rising. This is a ponderous work, which creaks under its own burden of self importance.

Every frame is created with the utmost care. Vivid nightmares of colour appear, to be washed away by the everpresent mist. There is a long and arduous Rime of the Ancient Mariner chapter, save that there is no albatross, and no redemption. The violence is sporadic, but always threats to break loose. And the soundtrack. Dear Gawd, the soundtrack. The use of harsh guitar tones from an obsessive compulsive strummer you cannot see - mixed in with the sound of a heart beating. This, frankly is baiting. Very skilfully done, effective, even - but not subtle.

There might be a story here. Who knows? Depends on how psychotropic your last indulgence has been. But this will leave you shaken.

A bunch of crazy sites

About tipping http://15percent.tumblr.com/

ABout the best dads in cinema http://www.brobible.com/bronews/advice-cinemas-greatest-bro-dads-supercut

Guest article: Ghosts of Bretton Woods

From today's Statesman, Calcutta edition - no copyright violation intended, its just that you guys do not maintain archives - and this article deserves to be read and re-read.

Ghosts of Bretton Woods
In A Global Collective Action Trap
andrew sheng
LAST week I attended the second annual meeting of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in Washington Hotel, nestled in a beautiful snow-capped valley, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. In 1944, the historic meeting on the international monetary system was held there. The British delegation was led by Lord Keynes, the foremost economic thinker of his day. The US delegation was effectively led by US Treasury adviser, Harry Dexter White. Even though all the Allies attended the meeting, including China and India, it was essentially a debate between the declining superpower, Britain, and the rising superpower, the United States.
Keynes understood full well the problem that Britain faced as the issuer of sterling. Since Britain was running large current account deficits because of the two world wars, she was having a tough time maintaining sterling as the main reserve currency. By the end of the Second World War, the US emerged as the dominant global power, since she ran large current account surpluses by supplying food and raw materials to Europe in exchange for gold. To avoid the Triffin dilemma, Keynes argued for the creation of a new international currency, called Bancor that would not be related to the issue of a national reserve currency.
The Triffin dilemma is the problem that the issuer of the global reserve country had to continually run large current account deficits to meet the liquidity needs of the world. In the short-run, the reserve currency role benefits from an “exorbitant privilege”, since the issuer country could pay for its imports by printing more currency, whereas non-reserve currency countries could only import by paying in foreign currency.
However, Harry Dexter White rejected the idea of the Bancor because he did not like the idea of the issuance of global currency by a global central bank. Instead, the idea of the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) was adopted, where the SDR was a reserve unit of account, which could only be created through the exchange of national currencies with the issuer, the International Monetary Fund. As the dominant IMF shareholder, the US could reject the issuance of SDRs, thus ensuring the US dollar remains the dominant reserve currency.
There is common confusion that the SDR can eventually become a reserve currency to replace the US dollar. It is a unit of account between the IMF and the member-countries, but it cannot be used for international payments. Currently, it is issued to member-countries to increase their foreign exchange reserves. However, when the member-country needs foreign exchange, it must exchange its holdings of SDR with the IMF in four component reserve currencies, namely, the US dollar, the euro, sterling and yen.
Thus, the components of the SDR can change, but the reserve currency role remains national, not global.
Keynes was right. Sixty-seven years later, the US had become the leading global borrower, whereas the net lenders are Japan, China, Germany and the oil producers, creating what is now called the Global Imbalance.
Last year, the Italian central banker, Tomaso Padio-Schioppa gave a speech about the international monetary system, called the ‘The Ghost of Bancor’, because the idea of Bancor was killed in Bretton Woods 67 years ago. Mr Padio-Schioppa, who had a major role in the creation of the euro and became a member of the Board of the European Central Bank, unfortunately died early this year. Interestingly, he equated Bancor with Banquo, the Scottish king who was murdered by Macbeth, in the famous Shakespeare play Macbeth. As is well known, Macbeth met three witches in the forest. They predicted that he would murder his king, Banquo, and become king, but he would be succeeded by Banquo’s successors.
Keynes conceived the idea of Bancor as the steward of the king (gold). But the replacement SDR has yet to emerge as an effective replacement for neither gold nor the US dollar. At the heart of any global currency (issued by one country, a number of countries or the IMF) remains the Triffin dilemma: what is the hard budget constraint to prevent the global currency issuers from printing too much money and, therefore, creating global inflation?
The ghost of Bancor basically says that no national central bank or a global central bank, can resist the temptation of printing too much money.
Currently, the deficit countries blame the surplus countries for saving too much and the surplus countries blame the deficit countries for printing too much money. The reality is that it is the current international monetary system that is flawed. We cannot return to the gold standard, but a fully flexible system of fiat money is also not desirable.
We are in a global collective action trap, where everyone must share a burden of being part of the global game. The difficulty lies in how to allocate that burden in a fair manner.
My humble opinion is that the crisis of fiat money is due to excess consumption financed by excess leverage. That excess consumption is also the fundamental cause of global warming, as natural resources are depleted, while fiat money keeps on increasing. No one likes to use gold because there would be price deflation which would automatically cut down excess consumption. That is too painful, so everyone still keeps on printing money by passing the pain to savers and future generations.
If there is more and more quantitative easing (money printing) and less and less natural resources in a shrinking world, should we be surprised that gold and oil prices keep going up?
Who speaks the truth, the ghost of Bancor or his successors, the current reserve currency issuers? Perhaps it is the witches in the misty forest, the shadow banking system. That story will be revealed in the next article.

Perl grep = fat?

I present for your perusal this webpage which sez summat about ze Perl grep function. Also, it comes with an advert for reducing ze tummy. Why? Implicit assumption that anyone interested in perl will be pasty faced, eating Doritos and fat?

So, about Last.fm and other online players

My laptop has gone kablooey. After 5 years of more or less loyal service (yes, Deep Thought, we shall not speak of that one time. Or that other time. Or the third time, when I had to enlist the assistance of our Godlike SysAd at Ann Arbor). [They hire good people at the U of M. And I have always held that while 'one should never meddle in the affairs of sysads, for they are subtle and quick to anger' - the man we went to was like the White Wizard reborn].

Anyhoo, the dear old Macbook having gone the Vashangshi jeernani way, I have decided to invest in a desktop. Prolly (and yes, do gasp) from Walmart. Apparently they sell nice computer deals - Athlon X2. 5 Gigs DD3. ATI Radeon and also 1TB. Sounds good, no?

But my music collection, as eclectic and awesome as it was has also gone to the great beyond of randomized ones and zeros. Hence, last.fm also this cool project called Bollywood Production (go ahead, Google it.You know you want to). But as clever as Last's algos are - in that it can send from one member of the 27 club to another in 3 steps or less - it more or less screws up with Desi music. Why else would Kishore Kumar radio start playing Bhangra. Yech!

The Cosworth

So, here I was about to start muh car and pull of the lot when I espied a Merc opposite me. It was an old, low slung, rather nondescript looking car, with those straight lines and right angles that so fascinated the misguided designers of the seventies and mid eighties (and I am not just talking about the people who, say designed the Eldorado - this was an affliction that crossed continents as a whole generation of designers forgot how to draw curves. Apparently, Volvo was the last to recover.) Anyway, something, a sixth sense perhaps, told me to take a closer look. I legged it over and spotted a muscular spoiler, almost Evo-esque in its aggressiveness. And then I saw the legend.

190E 2.5-16

And my mouth went slightly dry.

Which was about when this bloke strolled up with a questioning slant to his eyebrow. I asked him if it was his ride. He responded in the affirmative. I then asked, somewhat hesitantly, if it was the Cosworth. His jaw hit the blacktop with a dull thunk.

Now you, worthy reader are prolly familiar with the TopGear episode when the Hamster talks about future classics and rambles on about the Cosworth. No? Ok, here, take a look.

Back to the story. So this bloke is rather tickled that I recognize his Merc for the beaut that it was. He was kind enough to give me a dekko under the bonnet. Aah, the loveliness of it. Just a 2.5 litre straight-4, but what an engine! Remember this was made by Cosworth which made a name for itself making those awesome Formula 1 engines which dominated the entire field. The reason why Merc wanted this car was because they wanted to ace the World Rally Championship. But then, around that time, another game changer came out. This happened to be the Audi Quattro. In its turbocharged shadow, the E190 had to be relegated to track and touring racing, where, of course it took the DTM. This was also the car that brought AMG into the Mercedes fold.

So, long story short, bonded with said bloke over his 190E. And then he tells me that his other car is a Delorean. A bloody Delorean!! I wanted to know if he had ever pushed it to 88 mph. He hasn't. Yet. Well, time to go build him a flux capacitor.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

I have long salivated over stuff that moves fast, turns corners violently and generally looks badarse. For the longest time, this led to a deep fascination with things that fly. Thus, the Supermarine Spitfire. The plane that is frequently, and erroneously, referred to as the plane that won the Battle of Britain. It was not. The plane that did win it, was the much underrated, Hawker Hurricane, and the equally (then) underrated (and in hindsight, unmatched) brilliance of Air Chief Marshal Dowding. But, here, for what it is worth, is the Spitfire. Is it a coincidence that the most beautiful things that fly, created either by the hands of Gawd, or men, are also the most deadly?