Aphorism: Pigeons

We all are pigeons. This is a problem but it can be mitigated to some extent, if we recognize that we are pigeons and we choose our pigeonholes wisely.

Aphorism: Biology

Liberalism* has many problems, but its main problem, the one which ensures that Liberalism is doomed**, is its assumption that it is possible to completely override, or rather discard, the biology.

 

* When I say liberalism, I include both socialism and libertarianism.

 

** There are only two possibilities, either liberalism dies alone, or it dies with its host civilization.

Reading

From the archives of Jane Galt here is a post where Megan Mcardle takes certain critic of LOTR to task. The post is worth reading in its entirety, but the money quote is the concluding paragraph,

 

Little wonder that so few of them evinced any genuine love of books or words -- they were far too busy trying to figure out what books they should like, to ever discover which ones they did. Saying that you're not allowed to like Tolkien, or like Tolkien better than other authors, because he doesn't add up well on the hierarchy of literary traits that Soskis has assigned is no better than declaring that you like a writer merely because he does

 

 

Market For Melodrama ?

Some of you might have been familiar with the concept called market for lemons. In brief this phrase deals with the markets in cases of asymmetrical information.

Now I have never understood the concept per se* and this post is not about it. Rather it is about a different case. Now I am sure I am not the only one who believes that quality of serials was, in general, far better when we had only channel (i.e. Doordarshan) than present scenario, and this applies across all genres. Now I am not someone best described as a passive viewer, so I don’t mind ordinary junk, but for some reason almost all the serials have descended to the melodramatic depth that they deserve a special category for hazardous effect (unparalleled emotional atyaachaar, to borrow from Dev D ). Why this has happened is not at all clear to me (hence the question mark). In general competition is supposed to be good, yet what has happened is the opposite. I do understand that when competition is cutthroat, it is not possible for a generic channel to broadcast anything except what it thinks is the safest bet (in this case despairing melodrama). However this doesn’t explain absence of even a niche channel for such programming. Which is why it will be interesting to find out if this phenomenon can be explained if modeled in terms of economics.

 

* More accurate would be to say that I was not convinced by the example cited for this, viz that of second hand cars. The explanation went that since seller always had more information about the used car than the buyer the resulting asymmetry will prevent formation of a stable market. My problem is, the same applies to the case of first hand goods also (i.e. seller knowing more than the buyer), but that’s hardly a problem there.

Reference Point

Here is an admission. Frogji's comments on my earlier post have kind of perplexed me. He asked why language in bollywood cinema so infused with Urdu. This was news to me. Assuming he is talking about contemporary bollywood cinema, its language is that its audience is most comfortable with, i.e. Hindi/Hindustani. Urdu ceased to be a language of cinema long ago, and since use of Sanskritized Hindi was never widespread it is hardly an option.
Then it struck me that the reason why our observations are so divergent has to do with our experience. Frogji not hailing from Hindi heartland is obviously not familiar with Hindi the way it is spoken there. Therefore it makes sense to make explicit my reference point, which is the video embedded below. This is what I will consider Urdu infused language.

A note here, this too is relative. For my father's generation which actually could read and write Urdu this video won't be very difficult to understand.

Is Indian Blogosphere Dead ?

No flame wars, no heated argument spanning over multiple blogs, no mocking, damn, I really miss 2005 (that’s when I started reading blogs).

(I think) I just missed the era of Jivha (who I know, much like Carvakians, only via rebuttals of Ravikiran)

Anyway the first, and, although I have been fortunate enough to enjoy other flame wars (I have never been part of any AFAIK), most memorable, flame war I witnessed was between bleeding hearts (DCubed, his boy toy etc.) and cartel. That all is now water under bridge though, the present silence reminding one of graveyard.

Though I have to admit, I do find absence of a certain passive aggressive neo-con a relief.

Generic Blogging*

May be I am easily excitable but by the mace of mighty Mahabali this is made of pure awesome, in fact it is epic.

 

*Derived from generic programming.