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Lost in the Crowd

Here's David Brooks on Malcolm Galdwell's new book "Outliers"
"Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses."

Economist Video

Here's a very nice video from The Economist on money markets.

There are several other good videos on a variety of other topics

Responsibility as the best response?

Here's an article by Ramesh Ramanathan that appeared on Livemint
"We ask for a tough state, when we ourselves are a soft people. I mean it in the harshest sense: Most of us are selfish, inward-looking cowards who quaver at the slightest hint of risk to ourselves or our family."

Valid but uncomfortable questions...

Here's an editorial in the New York times.
"How can their government have ignored the warning signs? A 2007 report to Parliament warned that the country’s shores were poorly protected — and some or all of the attackers arrived by boat. Why weren’t the police and the army better prepared to respond? Sharpshooters outside the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel did not have telescopic sights, so they could not get off a shot for fear of killing hostages rather than the terrorists."

Here's an article that appeared in the WSJ on this topic
"The country's antiterrorism effort is reactive and episodic rather than proactive and sustained. Its public discourse on Islam oscillates between crude, anti-Muslim bigotry and mindless sympathy for largely unjustified Muslim grievance-mongering. Its failure to either charm or cow its Islamist-friendly neighbors -- Pakistan and Bangladesh -- reveals a limited grasp of statecraft.

Nonetheless, the reflexive Indian response to most every act of terrorism is to apportion blame rather than to seek a solution that will prevent, or at least minimize, its recurrence."

Here's an interesting article on LeT by Steve Coll of the New Yorker
"I was at a conference this morning where another panelist well-versed in these issues said he would not be surprised if it turned out that Lashkar conceived the Mumbai attacks as a way to pull Pakistani Army units and attention away from the Afghan border and into defense positions in the east, to protect the country from the possibility of military retaliation by India. In any event, if the evidence does show that uncontrolled Lashkar elements carried out the attacks, it would force India’s government to judge how to calibrate policy toward a civilian-led Pakistan government and Army command that may have little control over the very same Islamist groups that it purposefully built up and supported just a few years ago."

Perhaps, it is time to look inwards, acknowledge flaws and start developing capabilities that enhance our national security instead blaming a bad neighborhood, which grapples with its own incompetence!

Anatomy of the Meltdown

Here's an very nice New Yorker article that talks about Ben Bernanke and the financial meltdown.

And here and here are some excellent articles that gives an overview of the financial crisis. I found the links to these ariticles in Greg Mankiw's blog

Spiderman and a Chopper

Here's a way to fight the liquidity crisis!

And here's a way to kill time!

Articles on Monetary Policy

Here's an article that appeared on Livemint that provides a very nice overview of Monetary policy - from an Indian perspective

And here's an article from The Economist on the same topic.

My battles with cell phones

Cellphones are wonderful gadgets, but I perpetually seem to have problems with the instruments. Here’s an account of my close encounters with the darn machines.

The first cellphone I owned was a brick. It was a hardened rock in every sense – it could withstand damage even if you dropped if from two floors above and, at the same time, not pick a iota of signal at any point. But it was one of those handy devices with which one felt truly safe. I knew I could cause some serious damage to someone, if needed, even if I couldn’t call the emergency lines. I proudly carried around my weapon of choice.

Then I started to get seduced into the world sleek machines. I got my first flip-phone. It’s wasn’t the most extravagant looking flip, but it certainly a step above the brick in the evolutionary ladder. I flipped hard, flipped often and flipped like a trigger-happy cowboy. And then it flipped. I was left with two pieces – the base on one hand and the display on the other. I reverted back to the days of the yore as I used the base to dial and used my hands-free talk. Unfortunately this wonderful tag-team couldn’t handle the missed call culture. Out of sheer pity for the flip, and possibly practicality, I decided to rest the headless communicator.

Then came along the razor. It was cool, trendy and was the then latest and greatest communicating device in history. But razors do become quiet blunt if you bury them under the sand – and it doesn’t matter if you didn’t do it on purpose. It was a two faced machine - a sleek machine outside but a dusty bowl inside. However, it continued to work like a charm until it finally bamboozled me by spinning off my pocket and taking a journey on its own in a city cab.

Thus I woefully entered the world of borrowed communicators. There was the flip that had to be perpetually on life support – remove it from the outlet and the energy drained the next instant. It was a land-line masquerading like a cell-phone. Then there were the brick and the slider that were promptly recalled by their rightful owners. Finally, came along another razor that had numbers hidden in secret places and a voicemail that talked to me! Works well if you get used to it!

Distressed by these maniacal machines, and with the strong intent of staying away from the egoistical machine that proclaims itself as “I” the phone, I signed up with a sleek slider. It was quite reliable until I got ambitious and abruptly moved to the wondrous world of blackberries. But then I quickly learnt a hard lesson. Blackberries don’t go well with milk and cereals. As healthy as it may sound, strawberries are always a better option. This dark colored berry merely hissed in disapproval and has been resting peacefully since. The scorned slider, at that point, conveniently discovered a manufacturing defect and went on an indefinite strike. That's a slider scorned for you!

And that leaves me searching for a reliable machine to voice out my profound messages to the world. I truly yearn for the days of post-cards, smoke signals, and messenger pegions. Kabootar (a)jaa (a)jaa, indeed!

Indecision 2008

The US Presidential elections are in two days. It has been a very interesting campaign for the last several months. I have been following it a little too keenly and people who know me also know that I am a strong supporter of Barack Obama - not that it matters for I don't have right to vote.

However, even as I support him, I do acknowledge, there are inherent risks in voting for Obama. It is not as much as he is an unknown entity as it is about the highly probable gulf that exists between what he believes and what he can actually do. We have seen him give thoughtful answers to complex problems but will the lack of his executive experience affect his ability to execute them? He has shown the ability to attract some exceptionally talented people around him, but will their opinion matter in a possible liberal era of a democrat congress and democrat senate? These are legitimate concerns, but no one, including Obama, can really answer these questions convincingly.

While the way he carried himself through a grueling twenty month campaign under intense scrutiny does assuage some concerns, I do believe that the possible Obama administration is likely to have surprises that not all people will like!

And here's a very nice editorial from The Economist on this topic.

Decision Making

Here's a good article on Decision Making by David Brooks
"....our tendency to see data that confirm our prejudices more vividly than data that contradict them; our tendency to overvalue recent events when anticipating future possibilities; our tendency to spin concurring facts into a single causal narrative; our tendency to applaud our own supposed skill in circumstances when we’ve actually benefited from dumb luck."

Great Articles

Here's an article about Obama by a noted conservative commentator, David Brooks.
"There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine"

And here's an article by Suresh Menon on Tendulkar after his test record.
"As remarkable as his record is his self-possession. His head hasn't changed size, his boots haven't grown smaller. He alone knows what it means to be Tendulkar, with its frustrations, its sacrifices, and the need to be Tendulkar at all times. He is a one-man university that teaches sportsmen how to handle money, fame and pressure."

The Real Great Depression

Here's an excellent article that talks about the real great depression that has strong [and scary] parallels to the current economic crisis.

Elections lections!

I really like elections. They offer the best reality TV. It is mega-serial running at pace of Usan Bolt!
Politicians vehemently state that they absolutely love motherhood and apple pie. Political analysts then split hair into million pieces and conclude that nothing can be concluded. Spin artists bamboozle everyone including themselves. Talk show hosts yap their way to glory. You get hear of weird things like psephologist's prediction, pigs with lipsticks, bridges to nowhere! Newspapers put everything in red and blue. Small talk industry booms. Cocktail party topics go beyond the weather, the game and the traffic. And finally each of us go to bed with a feeling of comprehensive competence and accomplishment!

Unfortunately it seems all ends in November and there is nothing else to forward to! However, there is always good news around the corner. After Hollywood it's Bollywood's time . I only hope we will be entertained by our own version of Palin-Drones

Oh btw, I am Deepak Srikumar and I approve this message, in case you are left wondering!

Olympics - Do we really need to care?

This is a leap year, which means it is the year of the Olympic Games. This means we as a nation will have a shoddy medals tally. That means we as a nation will whine, cringe and express our utmost dismay to our performance in the games. It also means that we will dwell in realms of hyperbole and high emotion as we celebrate the odd winners.

I think it’s time we made a simple decision – do we or do we not truly care about the Olympics? Once, we as individuals make this decision, we just need to stick by it and act according to it. Here are a few things we may want to consider -

If we decide that we care about the Olympics, what are we as individuals going to do about building the sporting culture that our country sorely lacks? Are we willing to treat sports as a discipline on par with science and math? Are we willing to talk to our school to include sports education as an integral part of our school curriculum? Are we willing to encourage our children to pursue sports seriously? Are we willing to contribute to setting sensible benchmarks of success at the school and community levels? Are we willing to invest and maintain a well-functioning gymnasium in our housing colonies? Finally, are we willing to embrace and enforce a culture of fitness on ourselves and our families? There is a lot of non-glamorous work that needs to be done but we as individuals have a very important and tangible role to establish this culture if we do decide that sports matter.

On the flip side, it is equally fair to say that the most of the work that needs to be done is highly distracting from the real problems that we as individuals, families and communities face. We can, therefore, choose to not dedicate our personal resources in establishing a sporting culture at this point and hence don’t necessarily care about how we perform in the Olympics. After all, we cannot compete on everything, with everyone at all instances! To take this decision, and to actually to mean it and be comfortable with it, requires courage and a strong sense of self-awareness.

Either way, there’s a decision that needs to be made.
Until then we should not lose a sense of reality as we bask in Abhinav’s glory, we should not shed crocodile tears at our medals tally and we should not indulge in false introspection; for each one of those are simply foolish!

Emperor Barack - I

Barack Obama has a chance to do what no one has ever done before - Become the world's first democratically elected Emperor!

Think about it. He got rousing welcome every single place he visited over the last couple weeks. Over 200,000 Germans turned up for his speech there is a dessert in Palestine called the "Obama cake", the King of Jordan chauffeured him and unofficial polls in New Zealand show that he is more popular than the candidates running in that election. With his Kenyan ancestry, he has parts of Africa covered as well and penguins in Antarctica wouldn't give too much of a damn either way! There is a real chance for Obamasphere around the world!

But to be a little more serious, in this age of widespread information, will denizens of any nation or region temporarily lease out leadership/executive positions to a more competent individual even if that person is not a native of the land?

Can we avoid aging?

That's what Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey seems to think. Here's the link to a very interesting and provocative speech given by him at TED

But to be fair to the speech, it is not as much as about avoiding aging but more so about extending lifespan. It is a truly a very interesting question.

Most of medical research is about extending lifespan by preventing or curing diseases. But if the onset of diseases can be delayed, especially those considered to be inevitable due to hereditary or life-style reasons, would that extend life? I'm not talking about exercise etc but real medication that healthy people take to delay a disease that they are most likely to be afflicted with in the future! The results may not overtly radical, but something to think about. Enjoy the speech for now.

btw, with his long beard, Aubery de Grey looks like wizard out of LOTR. Wonder when he'll become Aubery de White?

The Moral Instinct

Bertrand Russell wrote, “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell.”

This is an excellent essay by Steven Pinker on the Moral Instinct.