It has been very depressing. It feels slightly tacky to blog about my everyday petty concerns. It feels even more useless and redundant to talk about the devastation knowing how very little we can do other than giving some money to the charities supporting the victims. The sheer helplessness in the face of such disasters is scary, humbling, depressing - it brings home like nothing else the complete uncertainty of our existence.
It is hard to make new year wishes - when you know even the most basic wishes of over 100,000 people did not find a place in our world.
I wish you peace of mind and hope that you make those around you happy. At the end of the day, that is pretty much the only thing we have.
I am thankful to my readers who have been coming to this weblog regularly. Sometime in the last few weeks, this weblog reached its three year anniversary. I dont know if any of you have been reading 'Random Notes' for three years. But if you have been, thank you.
South East Asia Earthquake and Psunami weblog is regularly updating its list of volunteer organizations and charities supporting Tsunami victims and seems to have the most complete list. It is also a clearinghouse for information on resources, aids, donations and helplines for Tsunami victims
New York Times has a comprehensive list of agencies in USA that are providing assistance to the Tsunami victims and are accepting contribution. Washington Post has a slightly different list of agencies to which one can donate money or supplies. The Post said that most groups are recommending donation of money (wherever possible).
There really isnt much to say.
I have listed below some of the aid agencies that are rushing men, material and resources to South and East Asia in support of the quake relief efforts.
Please Do consider giving.
Doctors Without Border
Medecins Sans Frontieres will be sending a charter to Indonasia within 24 hours. They are also sending an assessment team to Indian, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Burma. I think very highly of MSF.
you can donate to MSF through this page.
Prime Minister's relief fund in India
Dr Manmohan Singh asked for donations to his National Relief Fund to help support the flood-effected people. Obviously, they havent made this easy. This page gives you the account number for sending checks to the relief fund. Mark it to the local Indian Embassy/consulate. If you want to pay through credit card, use this form.
Oxfam
Oxfam is taking donations for its relief efforts in areas affected by Tsunami in South and East Asia. They are active in some of the quake effected areas - specially in Sri Lanka.
You can donate to Oxfam through this page.
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
I am not huge on Red Cross. But let us face it - they have the best ground operation in South Asia. They already have an extensive operation - helping to evacuate victims. Their site allows you to define where your donation dollars go.
You can send money through this page. For those in India, it is probably easier to send a check to Indian Red Cross.
World Vision
This BBC story said that one third of the dead in the coastal regions are children. World Vision is trying to help. You can donate to them through this page.
CRY is the most well known NGO in India among those that work with children. Their online donation page is here. Although, I havent seen anything yet about what they can do in supporting the relief efforts.
Update: There is a more India specific list of agencies here)
How big an advance can an unknown novelist expect on her Debut book?
Justin Larbalestier asked a lot of novelists. Overwhelmingly, the answer seems to be - not much. You most certainly can't quit your day job banking on that advance.
John Scalzi initiated a good thread in Metafilter on the subject. In his weblog, he had earlier suggested that expecting to make a living writing -specially if you are a genre fiction writer- is unrealistic. He also has good pointers for those writers who aren't scared off by such assertions!
I can't conclude this post without referring to this awesome interview on Slashdot, in which Neil Stephenson claimed (in answering the second question) that unlike 'literary fiction' writers, sci-fi writers actually make a living writing. He was probably talking only about well-established writers.
I think this comment on Crooked Timber about endings just about sums up all Neil Stephenson books:
While I won't go so far as to say it is one of the best novels out there, it is certainly a jolly good read! Entertaining, stimulating and yes - interspersed with Stephenson's mini-lectures on whatever catches his fancy. He is a bit of an acquired taste - like Jazz or good red wine. Try it - if you haven't already read it.
this page maintained by John Musser looks like a very good project management resource.
Talking of tutorials and lecture notes, I always thought that MIT's Open Courseware is an incredible resource. There was some hoopla when MIT first promoted it. Over time, they have added a lot more content and commitment into this venture.
Last month Tyler Cohen threw down a challenge to those painting a gloom and doom scenario for the US economy:
While not exactly that, Jeremy Grantham has gone on record on a forum this month as having 10% of his portfolio in S&P shorts.
The complete transcript is here. (It is accessible only to subscribers right now.But it should become available to all by the next fortnight. It is certainly worth reading in its entirety)
In the same panell Milunovich also noted that he is 70% cash and commodities (someone should have asked him - cash in what currencies) But then Milunovich doesnt have the sort of brand equity that Grantham has ....
They managed to scare the hell out of me!
NYT has a good story on Europe's angst about 'multiculturalism'. Generally speaking, I think this 'multiculturalism' business is really code for European unease with Islamic fundamentalism. It has lately come to the fore thanks both to the French spectacle over headscarves (Via Amardeep) and the killing of Theo van Gogh.
A quarter century ago, Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. They found that the artifacts of Kabul museum - 5000 years of Afghan history - had vanished.
For a very long time, people expected the objects to show up on the global black market of art objects. But nothing ever come up. Eventually, the Russians left. The Taliban came to power. They too destroyed or looted what they could lay their hands on. But whatever left the vaults of Kabul museum in the year of 1979 could not be found.
And now the artifacts have been coming back.
About 8 government museum employees made a pact in '79. They stored these objects in small boxes and hid them away in various locations. They promised each others not to open the boxes until and unless all of them were present. The pact held through 25 years of bloody history of Afghanistan. And now the artifacts are coming back - boxes of 2000 year old Bactrian gold jewelry and ornaments, boxes of coins depicting Afghan royalty dating back to 500 BC, ivory plaques from 2000 year old Kushan culture .....
The archaeologist Fredrik T. Hiebert has been taking inventory for the Afghan government. All told, there are 20,400 objects. Less than 100 are still missing. Guy Gugliotta filed the story for Washington Post last month.
If you like cheer up stories, here is another one of how Iraqi engineers revived the marshes that Saddam had drained off to kill the way of life for Marsh Arabs.
It seems that in middle age Europe, burning women as witches gained currency largely because it was extremely cold. Record cold destroyed crops. People looked for someone to blame. Witches came in handy.
Emily Oster, a doctoral student of economics in Harvard, crunched weather data of years 1520 to 1770 and showed that there is a correlation between sharp drops in temperature and burning witches. Her study was published in the Winter issue of 'The Journal of Economic Perspectives' and is available through her website.
This story in NYT magazine might be easier going.
On the convergence of fear, hypocrisy and fanaticism
a) Last Thursday?s (12/9/2004, A15) Wall Street Journal had a story by John Carreyrou and Ian Johnson on French Muslims:
Although the government denies it, the new measures amount to a sharp break with France?s deeply ingrained tradition of secularism that forbids involvement by the state in religion ?France has long wrestled with how to integrate its growing Muslim population, estimated at 5 million to 7 million people among a population of 60 million. This fall it enacted a law that prohibits wearing religious symbols in public schools- a measure promoted as a broad ban, but that was conceived to keep Muslim girls from wearing headscarves. The state justified the ban by invoking the same secular tradition that it is now subverting, some French Muslim leaders argue.
Further muddling the government?s justification is the fact that France?s church-state separation is hardly absolute: The government and municipalities own-and are responsible for maintaining-Catholic churched built before a 1905 statute erected a wall between the religious and secular sphere.
The new measures are the latest expression of a government campaign to promote a ?French Islam? that is in harmony with France?s republican ideals and devoid of foreign theological influences. France is increasingly worried that poorly trained, mostly foreign imams who preach in mosques and prayer room across the country are spreading a radical brand of Island that can lead to terrorism and alienation from the French society. This year, it deported eight imams on the ground that they were fomenting anti-Western sentiment and violence with their sermons
..In Germany, senior politicians have called for imams to preach only in German, a demand that was amplified after a television crew filmed a Turkish-speaking imam at a Berlin mosque declaring Germans to be malodorous and unkempt infidels destined to burn in hell. The German state has set up a university-level program in Islamic theology meant to train imams?
b) Also last week, David Brooks educated the long suffering readers of New York Times Times about ?Natalism?. In that article, he introduced us to one Steve Sailer:
Garance Franke-Ruta deconstructed the Steve Sailer reference in this post. In a follow up post, he gave a a closer look to the data presented by Brooks. (If you are a David Brooks watcher, here is a Mathew Yglesias post on another Brooks column)
c) Via Amardeep, I found this article in Times .It explains a New Line?s decision to remove references to church in an upcoming screen adaptation of Philip Pullman?s ?His Dark Materials?.
'His Dark Materials' is (apparently) a trilogy about two kids fighting the church.
Amardeep notes:
d) In Locana, Anand remembered a day in India in Dec, 1992:
I find it interesting that this time the White House could not find anyone of stature on wall street willing to sell his dignity to add his name to the footnotes of history.
I added a few weblogs to my blogroll a few days back:
Economy
Brad Setser: If you are as obsessed as I am - about the macroeconomic issues revolving around the US twin deficits, the resultant instability in the currency market and the role that the Asian Central banks are playing, Setser's weblog should be a daily read.
Some people feel that it is Apocalypse Now for the current financial order. Bushies think they are orchestrating a soft landing for the dollar. Setser introduces a strong sense of proportion into the debate.
India
Jabberwock: Via Kitabkhana, I recently discovered Jai Arjun's weblog. Check it out ...
Photography
Durgi's's photoblog: As I keep telling Durgesh, if only he were not spending most of his waking hours in the services of the Evil Empire, he would probably have a couple of exhibitions under his belt by now ...
Conscientious: Jim Colberg runs the kind of weblog about photography that I would have liked to run if I were as knowledgeable and as focused. (although I do not share his enthusiasm for Chomsky)
Tyler Cowen lists reasons for longer lines in some stores. I think there is another reason too:
8a) Some stores do a better job of dicing and slicing customer behavior data that lets them develop more sophisticated plans for the number of registers that need to remain open in a given store/location/ season/time/day. One company headquartered in Bentonville has a bit of a reputation about that! Not everyone is equally good. (In one famous example i read recently, Bank Of America researchers found that if they provide cable Television on top of their teller counters, the perceived wait time would go down by as much as 30% (I think). The cost of HDTVs per counter in that geography was much less that the cost of implementing an EAI project that would have reduced the actual wait time. Increase in revenue per branch because of the TVs were projected to to be higher than the cost for the TV purchases. The TVs were in. The EAI project was thrown out)
b) The point about impulse purchases is related to this. The success of 'impule buy' merchandising is not only a function of the instinct of the merchandisers / store buyers, but also (I would say more so) of the sophistication of the business analytics applications used by the retailer.
c) Some stores have buggy software or messed up user interface. We go to 'Stop and Shop' and 'Shoprite' for our groceries. Shoprite's software has trouble reading discounts correctly and often brings lines to halt. But Shoprite managment deduced (correctly) that its price sensitive target audience in unlikely to walk away. Stop and Shop is at a slightly higer price point and (probably) made the necessary investment in more state of the art POS software
I think retail is one of the last frontiers. Regular Margin erosions and huge cost of implementations have made the majority of retailers risk averse.
At 65%, India has a worse literacy rates than Zambia, Tanzania or Combodia. Because the NUMBER of people in the educated middle classes is so high (as opposed to the percentage of people), our perception of the scope of this problem is skewed.
Kaushik Basu claims that we can't get kids to go to school until we start getting their teachers to take classes regularly. This statement threw me because I had been very fortunate in my teachers in the primary schools (and before you start getting snarky on me let me point out that I went to a government school). Basu says that a recent World Bank - Harvard study concluded that teacher absenteesm in India is 25%. Only Uganda seems to have a worse record (Papua New Guinea does better)
He suggests an interesting approach for resolving this problem in his BBC column.
(Via Suhit Anantula)
But the debt isn't because of excessive spending in the past. India's government expenditures amount to about 15% of GDP, compared to an average of around 40% of GDP in the OECD. Rather, India's financial difficulties stem from a badly designed and administered tax system. Rates and rules for personal and corporate income taxes appear reasonable by international standards. Nonetheless, India's government collects income taxes amounting to only about 3.7% of GDP, about half that in South Korea and the other Asian tigers.
Agriculture in India accounts for about a quarter of GDP, but even wealthy farmers don't pay taxes. Export-oriented companies in the software and other industries enjoy tax holidays on their profits, although their employees do pay taxes on their personal incomes. Despite reasonable rates, tax evasion is widespread. "
From Amar Bhide's article on tax system in India
I have been completely sucked into the Sarbanes-Oxley nightmare. Argggggh! It is the most useless piece of regulatory nonsense ever enacted in the history of mankind. I have no time for anything else this week ....
On the way to a client office in New York this morning, the taxi got stuck in a huge throng of people very near Times Square. The cops had stopped everything on the road. There were all sorts of people - cops TV cameramen, onlookers wielding cameras, girls waving banners .... It was some sort of a NASCAR car rally about to begin. A number of interesting looking sports cars that you get to see only in TV eventually drove by on our next lane. The cab driver was hopping up and down with excitement. He seemed to know the name of every race driver on the rally. Most of them looked rather young.
I felt quite ignorant. I also had a sneaking suspicion that it was not by accident that we had managed to land right in the middle of a rally.