Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is Dead.... Long live Michael Jackson.....

Idiots guide to printing money

"what is inflation" and "why cant the government just print money and distribute and make every one rich" have always challeged my understanding .....not that I never tried to google for answers .... actually I did read scores of articles, but the cause and effect kind of practical example that I was looking for never hit me ..... UNTIL ... zimbabwe happened .....

To start with, let me present the background ...

Zimbabwe's govt has been printing Zim dollars indistriminately .... highest denomination note now in circulation is for 10 billion Zim Dollars .. so on the face of it ..zimbabweans seem to have a lot of money .... however .... only 6% of the population is employed ... and most of the others are starving .... or surviving on foreign aid or wild plants (yes wild plants).... the country is in dire state ....

To understand the connundrum .."that more money does not mean more money always"....Zimbabwe fits the bill .. and this is what I understand happened to Zimbabwe...

A farmer owns land. Farmer spends 0n seeds, irrigation, fertilizers and off course human effort to generate a crop. Then the farmer spends on transporting the crop yield to the market. The farmer would add all this up and would put a value to his produce. The country were this farmer lives, imports seeds and fertilizers.

Suddenly, the country does something that pisses the international community (Expels all white farmers who own 70% of land that can be farmed upon)... every one stops trade (Export or Import) with zimbabwe.... As there are no imports availability of Seeds and fertilizers goes down .... there is demand but no supply .. so prices go up... farmers spend more on producing and thus crop prices go up... crop prices go up .. thus inflation goes up....

As there is no end to countries isolation and the isolation is at multiple levels... each and every commodity faces the same fate as the crop.... and pushes inflation up further ...

No exports means ... no forex... more demand less supply means ... someone who has forex available at hand will let it off with more and more of local currency.. thus the exchange rate of the currency topples... to counter this effect... govt decides to print more money in order to control the imbalance... which however is not in control at all and local curreny keeps on falling.... more moeny thus does not translate as more money actually..as every one has it .. so it has no value..

now, i would keep refining stuff above.. as sometimes even i am not convince with the amount of details in it....

and request to the knowledgable souls...please do comment .... and help improving story above....

Dhol beats

kind of passion and adrenalin rush that dhol beats generate, can sometimes not be equalled. Even the most passive and reluctant of people are seen to move a feet of too under the influence of dhol beats. I recently discovered there is something called "The Dhol foundation". I saw some of there performances on youtube. A group of 8-10 dhol players covering the whole stage, beat it and create an electrifying environment. I liked it so much that they have entered my favourites now, and i blog about it to make readers of my blog (not many now a day :( ) to take notice of it and have some fun watching it.

And by the way, federer finally beat Nadal....hfffffff......

move the container

3rd post of the day.... but its o.k. ... considering there were non last month and i am a bit over over due.
so here it goes, I have a animation movie idea hovering around in my mind and i would like some one from Pixar or Disney to have a serious look into it....;)
Short summary - there are lot of containers .... and there are lot of harbours all around the world .... they are living their life happily .... there is one giant program that controls the movement of containers all around the world .... until .... a bad container bugs that program and all the container movement goes for a toss.... and then a mass effort is made by good containers to fix the bad container and the movement program....
Won't it look awesome and Wow to watch a movie with containers interacting .... i think it would look so.... ;)

The thing is .... lately most of the animations seem to lack the x factor... non of the latest animation had the Wow factor.... as in .... the first time I saw Monstors Incorporated.... i just couldnt stop appreciating the idea ..... lately that hasnt been the case ..... be it "Monsters vs. aliens" or "Wall-e" or "kung Fu Panda"....

so... i have taken to the task of coming up with one of my own ... and in that endeavour .... Please accept the first recipe as above ..

Conflicts

Lots is happening in Srilanka. I am neutral. Only side I take is that of suffering people, who have got caught between the LTTE and the army. It would indeed be tough to get uprooted time and again, for a cause, how so ever legitimate or otherwise. The thing about ethnic conflicts around the world (Middle East, Iraq, Sri lanka) is that the only people who seems to be gaining out of these conflicts eventually and in the long run are the arms manufacturer.

Legitimate concerns sometimes do give rise to conflicts, but seem to be eventually taken over board by vested interest. Catching them young and not letting conflicts take huge proportions should be the aim. Not that there is no available data to understand the benefit of doing this, just that the right people should act.

Is is funny, most of the countries in Indian Subcontinent(Nepal, Srilanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afganistan, Myanmmar) seem to beat war within.

Poor Joker

The joker was not given the same techological edge that the batman had in the dark knight. where as the Batman used technology to read the figureprints from a exhumed bullet's, poor Joker wasn't provided with the basic facial recognition software. The joker fought and killed and plotted, trying to make the batman take of his mask and know who the batman really was, something that the most basic facial recognition softwares could easily acheive. I am on the jokers side for this. Make the Joker technologically powered so that he can achieve his objectives with less voilent means.

Welcome Mr. Musharraf

As the saying goes.... It happens only in India. Only we can call a person who waged a war against our nation, give him status of a statesman and then listen to all the bull***t that guy has in his mind.

Pervez Musharraf was the architect to Kargil war. India lost 600 + of its brave soldiers in this senseless act of intrusion. Pervez mussaraf was recently invited at a conclave to present his views. Apparently that conclave was meant for intelligencia to present their views on the world order (read dis-order) and ways to better / fix it. If I was one who would have lost a dear one in the kargil conflict I would feel deeply hurt. Not to mean that I dont feel hurt now.

Musharraf claimed that he was brave enough to come to the conclave, having being warned by his family, daughter and dear ones that he will be rebuked and abused. I hope his family is aware that this guy, took away 600 innocent lives and is no saint.

Only one brave guy, Maulana Madani had the guts to hit deep inside Musharraf. I could see the anguish on Musharrafs face while Maulana Madani spoke some facts. I wish someone had stood up and asked Musharraf about the kargil conflict and why he did what he did and what was he thinking when he started on it. Musharraf claimed that he was a brave chap. We could have asked this Mr. Brave chap to bravely give us some truth. This does not amount to digging the grave as Musharraf never come clean on Kargil (Even though everyone knows that he started it)

I hope we start putting things in perspective and keep reminding ourselves of the past while we venture into the future.

Random Thoughts Episode 1

Its easier to be stupid, then to act as one .... you see ..when you act stupid .. you are doing 2 things... you are being stupid .... and you are acting .... now the question is --> why i wrote what i wrote... answer is simple .... Its a Random though buddy... ;)

Suggested improvement/Add on i would like to see on blogspot --->
1. It would be fun to have emot - icons as a part of blogspot edit tool..... sometimes that emot - icons can put across thoughts that are hard to put forward in words ....
2. It would also be good to have a flag on each posting which can mark the posting a private ...
and my private i mean ... visible only to the author ... why .. i would want to use the blogspot as an online diary .... so need would arise where i would want to keep some of the events just to myself and thus need private flag facility.... anone listening ....

with this comes to an end.... Random thought Episode 1

Genocide (Geno --> Race) (Cide --> Killing)

I am not a foriegn policy expert ...... but their lies the point .... you dont need to be one to see if things are going terribly wrong in a certain region in the world .... I was watching Christian amanpours "Genocide program" in which today topic was Serbia's genocide .... apart from many other things ... one that the stuck me the most was the following argument :



--> Serbs were killing Muslims in numbers and the whole of European Union was aware of it .. Richard Hoolbrooke .... US's ambassador to Germany at that time was urging Bill clinton to attack ...Bill clinton got the following feedback from the European Union about a possible strike

--> "Our Peace keepers are there in the country .... if US attacks and tries to saves Muslims from Serbia genocide ... the peace keepers you be put to harm"



Now, excuse me ... Please let me understand this .... am i missing the whole point .... what was the EU peace keeping force doing in serbia .... as apparently there was no peace there .... looks like they were there to enjoy their time and were making some extra bucks.... because it would be shame if this was happening with their connivence ...



If I was EU.. i would have taken stock of the situation and immediately pulled out of the region to facilitate an attack that would have saved millions of Muslims from getting killed for no reason ....



Sensitivity and action without prejudice is the hardest this to do .... but then people in position and power .... are their as hard things are expected from them .... and they cannot afford to make mistakes .... Point driven i guess

Facbook, CNN, Obama and hinduism

Never I had so much respect for a politician.... may be i am able to appreciate what Obama is doing .... may be I am much more exposed to what is happening in US and thus can see what a phenomenon Obama is growing into.... I was watching his address the other day .... and some how had this feeling that in a way Obama was speaking for me .... even though Obama may ban outsourcing to India for certain cases.... I still feel he is doing the right this ..

Instead of running away from the eminent problems .. unlike his predecessors.... Obama is hitting then bang on ... be it Energy crisis or be it the global economy .... Obama makes just the right sounds ....

Obviously it will take more than ssaying the right stuff to get things fixed.... but alteast this time the saying part is correct .....

Other things ... the other day Tarun adarsh... any indian speaker mentioned that the world needs the Hindu way to sustain .... I agree and disagree ....
I agree due to the following points :
1. From the sustainability perspective their is nothing beating the Hindu way .... I mean imagine India (80 % hindu) guzzles 25 times less energy "per capita" than US....
2. From Social harmmony perspective again their is nothing beating the hindu way ..... Imagine never has India waged a war against anyone ..... the one that was waged was Non voilent (M.K.Gandhi)

I disagree due to the following points :
1. Sustainability as the primary motive to live ... may induce a lack of imagination and enterprise ..... not to say that we are not enterprising .. we are .... but i think we are still of the hook a bit when it comes going beyond ....

I think if +ves and -ves could be mixed to strike a balance .... Hindu would be the way to lead ....
and i can see that happening in the next 2 decades ...

ISB presented me with feed back for not selecting me .... I take it positively and work to amend the shortcomings has began .... ISB... here I come again .... This time wont give you a reason .... unless you are hell bent on finding one ....


Also, there is one thing I have come to appreciate a lot ... (Facebook and CNN).. 2 totally different platforms are helping each other out like anything .... facebook has huge user base ... CNN uses it as a medium for taking people opinions thru polls .... and it gets huge numbers thus acurate analysis on broad ranging issues ... CNN saves money on doing paper polls .... and facebook gets reference in CNN in every other news item ....

Reddy - if you read this ... you need to do something similar ... try to catch hold of that lady who works for UTV news (associate producer in a career program) (One that we meet at the italian restaurant at my and your friends birthday on 24th june 2008).. and have her ask the host to throwing the name verkko .....obviously you need to have them see the benefit (quote face book and cnn example) between a career program and a social site for top MBA grads....

"time to steal a line"
till next time .... I hope what ever you do is profitalble (Richard quest)
Singing off for now .... talk to you soon ...