Friday 29 October 2010

A Suttee to Swaraj

Read here the story of Annapurna Devi who battled against caste oppression, patriarchy and the horrible condition of Indian women- except that, as a Kamma, morevover a Brahmo, she faced no caste oppression, no patriarchal fetters and, having burned up her expensive sarees and turned down the chance to join her hubby in America, clothed herself in khaddi, fell ill, and though tortured by bed-sores refused to relinquish that Nessus robe of flame, being cremated in it much to the approbation of the Gandhian nut-jobs of the period.
The British must have been laughing themselves silly.
No wonder they continued to rule till, finally, the Americans pulled the plug.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

English is now a Godess- amongst 'Untouchables' in India.

Finally, Indglish is coming of age!
We have our own Goddess now- courtesy of some activist Dalits (who were formerly called 'untouchables' by heaped piles of feces having the deceptive form of human beings) who are building a temple of black granite for 'Goddess English' in Uttar Pradesh. 


It is noteworthy that Lord Macaulay- whom Ivy League Post Colonial Magi and Subaltern Studies Shamen have been denigrating all these long years- is the object of gratitude, not calumny, by those for whom the elite has claimed to speak, thus securing themselves a place at the top table.


The fact is that, over the last forty years, official Hindi and Urdu have become- with all due respect to none whomsoever, except maybe Lenin Prize Winner, Abdullah Hussein who switched from Urdu to English- great steaming piles of shite.
Let the so called 'Forward Castes' carry this load of night-soil on their heads for a change!

I'm not saying Hindi is not Soteriologically superior when it comes from the heart and deals with true experience. I am not saying Urdu is 'un-natural' or not equal, if not better, than Englsih as a window etymologically opening on ancient, Socially Liberative, Greek and Hebrew thought.

 What I am saying is these dialects of officilaese- or meretricious advertising for  a type of feudalistic consumerism-  have become tools of elite oppression and suppression.
Why?
Because of the Bureaucrato-Academic Censoring and foreclosure of their range of expression 

By God- or rather by this new Goddess!- I am now officially an anchorite of Ambedkar's Hindutva.

Sarasvati Devi- as our new Goddess English- be propitious to me.
No! Slay me, your unworthy votary!
But, let my country grow strong.


Tuesday 26 October 2010

The Trojan War as an allegory of mystic Love.

Conscripts to what her Creed demands, for War is a glorious game
Unflinching we, as Love commands, at our own hearts take aim
Which, beating but in Beauty's breast, our Achillean Arts defame
Till our pitiless necrophilias attest Penthesilea's nuptial claim

Monday 18 October 2010

Salman H. Bashier & Ibn Arabi

Dr. Bashier's highly readable and succinct book on Ibn Arabi is available here.
In some ways, by stressing the continuity, so to speak, between Philosophy and Ibn Arabi's thought-  it is an anti-dote to the heady wine of Corbin, Izutsu and Chittick.
Indian readers, especially those with an interest in Jainism, may well reflect on the evils proceeding from Islam's Aristotelian captivity such that, to this day, self-confessed incarnations of the Muhammadiya line might as easily proclaim the validity of all religions as prosecute a cowardly and capricious jihad against some ragged old neighbor not of, or not sufficiently of,  the sect.
What a net of perplexities was cast when Aristotle's organon illicitly fed upon itself!
The mirror, in Islam, Alexander's invention- showing that student of the Stagyrite the one horizon he couldn't conquer- becomes as unavailing as that Book of Sand which can never open on the same page twice.
How different from the nigrantha- grantha means both a knot and a book because leaves were knotted together- doctrine by which mirrors become frames of reference embedded in a field such that a metric, a stitching together, is established and no frame of reference is privileged over any other.

Sunday 17 October 2010

How green was my willy?- Shakespeare's sonnets & Post Colonial Queer Theory

'... the practice of packing the vagina with supposedly spermicidal rotting vegetation, giving rise to the Shakespearean lament 'how green was my willy', has been interpreted by Post Colonial Queer Theory as being yet another way in which we have been victimized coz nobody told us we'd have to read like Shakespeare and stuff just to get tenure.'
(Candi Pataweyo-Golem)

Friday 8 October 2010

Steve Landsburg getting it wrong about the BP oil spill

Steve Landsburg's Big Question blogspot can't get anything right when it comes to Economics. Why? The man has shit for brains.
This is him on the BP oil spill
When big companies (like, say, British Petroleum) wreak great havoc (like, say, by spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico), it can be good policy to make them compensate their victims (like, say, with a $20 billion claim fund). It can also be bad policy.

A.C. Pigou taught us that we get better outcomes when decisionmakers bear the costs of their actions. Ronald Coase taught us that Pigou’s lesson cuts two ways. The shrimp boats that are sitting idle today are sitting idle partly because BP decided to drill in the gulf, but also partly because the shrimpers chose to operate in the vicinity of an oil rig. In this case, making BP feel the costs of its own decisions entails insulating the shrimpers from the costs of theirs.
In this particular case, I’m inclined to believe that it’s a good thing for BP to pony up. But contrary to what I’ve been reading around the web, there’s absolutely nothing in economic theory to dictate that conclusion; instead the conclusion depends on the particulars of the case. Is it cheaper to deal with the problem of spills by encouraging oil companies to be more responsible, or by encouraging others to stay out of their way? That’s an empirical question. Theory can’t answer it.


Why is this silly? Both shrimp and oil are good things. We want more of both. What we don't want is petrol in the water where it does us no good and others a lot of harm. Making the polluter pay the full cost (i.e. all negative externality costs to all agents) gives him an incentive to be more careful. Permitting compensation to shrimpers reduces uncertainty for that industry and, ceteris paribus, yields us more shrimp- which is what we want.
If the oil industry has an adequate incentive to avoid oil spills- that is that much more oil that gets to market rather than ends up killing shrimp. Which is a good thing.
Furthermore, there is a dynamic aspect which the head-up-his-own-arse Larnsburg does not mention.
Oil is a technology driven business. By penalising pollution you get innovation such that, it may be, the industry itself will be on a better time-path than if the sanction were not applied.
Why is Landsburg writing this crap? Fuck is wrong with him?
The answer is that he is confusing 2 different things viz. goods in joint supply as opposed to catastrophic consequences.
Let's take an example.
I'm a blacksmith living alone in the middle of a great plain. You come and set up house next to me and then sue me for damages for the suffering caused to you by the excessive noise of my hammering. Now, in this case, the hammering is in joint supply with my work as a Smith. Welfare Econ can't say in advance whether your getting damages from me in this instance is a good or bad thing.
On the other hand suppose a fire breaks out in my smithy which burns your house down. That's a catastrophic consequence not something in Joint Supply. The burden should fall on me because only I can internalize this externality by taking into account the Expected full social cost of the catastrophic contingency thus purchasing the correct amount of cover, or investing the right amount in preventive measures. Notice, the shrimpers have no means of calculating the risk of catastrophic spillage- only BP does. In Econ the guy who has got the info. and can do something about it, is the guy who should pay. That's how you get rational decisions.
But all this is High School Economics- if not common sense. No need to mention Pigou or Coase.
Is Landsburg really as stupid as his disingenuous blog post would indicate? I guess his policy is 'never give a sucker an even break'. There are stupid people on the Net. Trawl for them by writing shite. What's the harm?

Steve Landsburg's specious argument against Equal Pay

The Big Question about Steve Landsburg blog- thebigqestion- is why he's pushing specious arguments which he must know are specious.
Here's his latest- To believe that the gender gap in wages is driven by employer discrimination, you don’t just have to believe that everyone’s ignoring a profit opportunity — you have to believe that everyone’s ignoring an opportunity to kick their profits up by thirty percent. That number is large enough to strike me as wildly implausible. Might employers ignore a profit opportunity? Sure. Might they ignore a chance to kick up their profits by thirty percent overnight? Seems bloody unlikely.

No, Prof Landsburg, you utter asshole, you don't have to believe anyone's ignoring a profit opportunity. All you need is Imperfect competition in the labour market- i.e. an upward sloping Supply curve of labour and hence a steeper Marginal Cost curve. (To raise the wage to attract a new worker you have to raise wages for all existing workers. Thus the marginal cost is more than the average cost i.e. the wage rate).
If Landsburg believes there is perfect competition in the labour market then could the cunt kindly explain how wage discrimination could arise in the first place?
Clearly, in his example, everyone would only hire women since they are paid less. But this would cause either
men to lower their rate to the same wages as the women so as to get a job
or
the wage rate for women to rise to that of the men.
or
something in between.

This is High School Economics. Why is Landsburg peddling this shite? How stupid are the people reading his crap?

Sunday 3 October 2010

The Revolution we need today..

Sometimes
When I feel the Revolution is just about to happen
I wanna stick my dick in its mouth so bad...
What? That's not sexist!
Coz the Revolution might be totally gay and up for it big time
Especially if I was quadraplegic & grossly obese
And had shaved my head and eye-brows and body hair
And wore a nappy and  glistened with baby oil and... no, I'd have to be White.

Fuck!
I need that Revolution real bad.
But big titted and not gay
Like back in the day.