Wokay!

Archive for March 2010

Regional Variations in Rent Seeking

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 25, 2010

In my post about lollipops and backup dancers, I made an offhand comment about the MNS trying to ensure that the Marathi manoos wasn’t done out of a fuckall low-paying job. But then I remembered Ravikiran’s point about the opportunities for graft in otherwise fuckall jobs; and how these are actually awesome gifts to give [...]

The NED Open 2010

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 25, 2010

An important announcement: The NED Open Quiz will be held this Sunday (that is, March 28) in three different cities. Questions have been prepared by me, Kodhi, and Wimpy with inputs from Baada, Aisha, and Gaurav. We’ve prepared this with loads of louw, and it will show in the quality of questions. So please do [...]

Saxon Engineering

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 22, 2010

I had mentioned in the post about my February reading that Tom Holland’s Millennium addressed the issue of how Christianity and monarchy spread throughout Europe after 800 AD. While it addresses the issue of how Scandinavia and the Vikings became Christian, Germania was converted before 800 AD, so the book doesn’t deal with that. I [...]

Candy Shop Jokes Will Not Be Tolerated

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 21, 2010

In its latest attempt to ensure that the Marathi Manoos is provided a fuckall low-skill low-wage job, the MNS is now demanding that Bollywood producers stop using foreigners as backup dancers (or, you know, just sitting around in a nightclub) in song shoots and instead only employ local junior artists. If the producers cave, we [...]

February Reading

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 2, 2010

I am following in Aishwarya’s footsteps and keeping a month-by-month record of everything I’ve read. Unlike her, I’m including only stuff I’ve read for the first time. The February list is quite limited. This is because February was tiny, and also filled with lots of work and travel; and I couldn’t read a whole lot. [...]

Selfish Genes and Shafting Shareholders

Posted by: Aadisht on: March 2, 2010

Has anybody made the connection between genes and the principal-agent problem? Richard Dawkins wrote a whole book about how we are but machines to reproduce genes, and in Genome, Matt Ridley quotes Bill Hamilton saying that the genome is like “a company boardroom”. But I haven’t ever seen the analogy being made explicit, so I’ll [...]