Two stimulating observations/reads from economics…
The Economics of Revolution and the Columbian Civil War.
How do changes in prices in Columbia’s main exports, coffee and oil, affect conflict? Surprisingly, the researchers found increase in conflict when the price of capital-intense exports rose and less conflict when labor-intense exports rose. Their thinking is this: when coffee (labor-intense) rises, a large group of people, farmers generally, benefit and thus conflict shrinks (presumably conflict is related to standards of living). When capital-intense export prices rise, e.g. oil, the profits or benefit occurs to a small group, the businesspeople who own the enterprise, and thus conflict tends to increase in those periods (presumably the large group of laborers and others gets annoyed as others get more benefits while they continue to live in relative deprivation; also the conflict over who owns the oil and the land exacerbates as it’s proven that those resources are actually worth something).
This is the full 61 page paper (for economics departments, I would wager that one of the authors Oeindrila Dube is on the economist job market from the title of the file “Dube_Job_Market_Paper”).
Witch-Killing. Why? In a brief blog entry from FT, it points out that witch-killing is a widespread phenomenon across many countries, cultures and religions. One study has found witch-killing positively correlated with colder weather and thus crop production and food. So when there isn’t much food around, it’s time to do some witch-killing to get rid of a few mouths… For instance, it’s hypothesized that witch-killing in Tanzania is a system of ’social security’ but not as practiced in the U.S. In the practice of the West, grandmothers are not sent to the sweet hereafter, but rather grandmothers are sent to homes for the elderly. It’s unimaginable in much of India to think of sending your grandmother to be cared for by strangers not to even mention killing your grandmother…in Tanzania, though, most witch-killings are committed against older women by their own family members, the thought is that such killings may be a way to preserve resources for the young and still-working. While it may be hard to empathize with witch-killing, it’s also similarly hard to imagine what it’s like to starve to death and what happens in a famine–look at how often famines occurred in the 19th century for example and how often hundreds of thousands of people died (wikipedia list).
Here’s the entry on Witch Killings. (for further exploration, the link in the entry to Miguel’s paper on Tanzania link is broken, search for it on google and read google’s cached copy)
The Knight Foundation is distributing up to $5 million to individuals to develop web services to expand news and information delivery on the community, local, or regional level. The 2008 winners are a mixed bag…some with a bit more impressive and precise goals than others…so if you have an idea (whether for-profit or not-for-profit) for a community or news-related service with some local or regional aspect, we’d encourage you to apply!!!
…so reads a headline that you may already have read as it’s being picked up by many different papers…
India *sometimes* Really Really Rocks as Female Empowerment goes (as long as she doesn’t go to jail). A police official speaks of trying the woman for “culpable homicide” even though admitting she was defending herself. I suppose she was supposed to politely ask the man to please not rape her or recite some mantras on ahimsa…I’ll write in later posts on my encounters with Indian police and the source of skepticism…but for now we don’t know all the details of the story, if anyone in UP has a fuller update on what happened and the reaction there, let us know.
This story reminds me of an extraordinary story of a woman activist who turned bandit or dacoit and later become a member of Parliament: Phoolan Devi. If you want to learn about India in a bit of the nitty-gritty (child marriages, caste relationships, family politics, etc.), the entry on her at wikipedia is a quick but good and informative read. There was also a film made about her named ‘Bandit Queen’ which I haven’t seen and thus can’t comment on.
With a lot of talk these days of the demise of newspapers–it’s not just talk, newspaper subscriptions decline every year for most newspapers in the U.S. at least (in India, it’s probably a different story) and the evening paper did die out decades ago–it’s probably not a bad idea to look into where and how newspapers actually came into being and reflect on what really is or should be “the news.” It’s a particularly ripe time for reflection since the web is changing how we find “news”, who makes the “news”, and what we call “news” with new movements including citizen journalism, user-voted journalism, blogging or personal life reporting, social network friend news, lifestreaming, rss feeds and aggregators, and more interaction via commenting and discussion boards.
Here are three quick and hopefully stimulating reads:
A small bit of Thoreau, a famous 19th century American writer and accidental activist, who denigrates newspapers as a kind of mental pollution that move a person into an artificial “world” and away from the natural world: News is Gossip
Marc Andreeson wrote a summary of reading he did on the origins of newspapers: Birth of the Newspaper
A nice, short summary of the history of newspapers in Nevada including the days when being a journalist meant being ready to settle accusations of libel via duels with guns rather than lawyers: A Brief History of Journalism in Nevada
I thought I’d report for the benefit of the rest of the world some unique methods of wooing women from one Bharath Keshav, member of Hidden Reflex. He’s lost interest in Bangalore-born Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, but has found a new friend in the beautiful city of Mysore (former capital of Karnataka). To woo his princess of Mysore , he’s taken up two interesting tacks:
1. Reciting Poetry and Playing Romantic Songs on YouTube. In this case, he recites a poem he wrote himself and performs a song by the band Coldplay. Watch the video below. Be ready to weep.
To listen to more from Bharath, search youtube for the user “bharathkeshav”.
2. You no longer have to be born with it. Born with what, you ask? Sex Appeal! It comes in a bottle in India, and Bharath Keshav owns it. Actually, it was a gift from a few helpful friends…to bolster Bharath’s natural pheromones. (Also, with uzvy’s launch imminent, we don’t get to shower as often as we’d like…)
Girls, I’m pretty sure you’re all pretty impressed by our romantic Bharath Keshav who does reply to every e-mail. Men, if you do post romantic poetry recitations on youtube or buy a few gallons of Sex Appeal, please report your results in the comments. Happy wooing all!
One of the more irritating phenomena in Bangalore and I think much of India is that many Indians don’t obey lines or queues. You can be standing in front of a door of an ATM machine and someone will brazenly walk right in front of you as the previous person exits the vestibule. He or she will pretend not to see you…until you stop them!
While there are often misunderstandings, many many times there has often been no ambiguity when others have tried to come in front of me in a queue: I’ve generally not allowed anyone to get away with this, chastening them with “peechay hato” (and sometimes an explanation that I was waiting before them) which is a bit on the rude side. While I try to avoid divisive speech, I think that being direct to the point of a slight rudeness is best. When I’ve been more on the polite side I’ve heard responses like “no problem” which translates to ‘I tried to go in front of you but it didn’t work my bad luck’ OR in a tone of magnanimity or slight annoyance “please serve him first” which translates to ‘I am such a great person that I’ll let you go first despite the fact I’m such a superior person I should always be served first.’ Thus I prefer to be a little on the direct side…which I think has surprised many people who’ve probably been getting away with cutting in queues for a long time. I don’t think they’ll forget quickly and may actually behave differently next time–who knows.
It’s also the job of shopkeepers to manage their shop so that they handle customers in the order they arrive. One pharmacist, Mr. Murthy I believe, in BTM Layout managed this like an art. He could remember who arrived with a dozen or more customers waiting. I was a good customer of his but when I arrived he never served me before others who were waiting–he did, though, always start talking to me, particularly to assure me the order had arrived or not or to make a little small talk. I felt that was the right way to run a small store–to give attention in small ways to your best customers but to run the store in an organized, professional fashion. I appreciated it.
It’s in stark contrast to my treatment at MedPlus stores. Even though I was a pretty good customer (I think?!) of that store, I went there on a Friday and other customers were taken care of before me. I shouted a bit at the people there who didn’t apologize but lectured me on not having tension which well caused me to shout a bit more on those duffers. In this case and much of the time in stores, it’s not the other customers’ fault as they just come in and wait. It’s the shopkeeper who makes some sort of judgment as to what order to serve people. Amazinging, I went back to the shop on Sunday and the exact same clerk did the exact same thing–started serving other people before me. I shouted at this guy and a number of other people in the store nodded their head and said that I was correct. Again, no apology. I questioned the clerk as to what was wrong with me? Was it my caste, my complexion, my hindi (maybe it was that I didn’t speak kannada there or not much kannada at any length–but others speaking Hindi were served before me), my gothra, my face, my body, my clothes, that I”m manglik or not manglik, etc. The guy was silent though he smiled…and never gave me an answer. Once I started yelling at him, he got my order together pretty quickly. I don’t know if I’ll ever go into a MedPlus store again. Why go somewhere to be treated badly?
I hope that Indian stores and Indians stick to a queue system and respect other people. Who knows if it will happen in our lifetimes!?
