the small issue

the recession started about a year ago. and it’s pretty much going out of fashion now. all the romanticism associated with recession is all dying a slow death. people are getting their jobs back, people are thinking of and buying homes, the market indices are crawling their way back on the y-axis. in short, life’s getting back to normal.

the politicians in India however, are however very late in responding to the recession with their current austerity drive. and their response to controlling spending our money is a bit late — whether it’s a response to recession or a long-due enlightenment within, to stop wasteful expenditure.

while the delay is understood — they all take about a year to respond to anything anyways — this small issue is alarming. it has all the characteristics of becoming a big issue; one that will hurt the common man in more ways than one.

if these austerity measures aren’t rolled back very soon — and we allow them politicians to travel by their personal jets and helicopters, the common man’s hard way of life will be severely affected.

politicians using our means of travel and living, means that now there will be a grid-lock in traffic, and increased security risk to you and me. with these folks travelling economy, regular commercial flights will be delayed for politicians never respect the schedule of a commercial flight. with these folks travelling in the same train as you and me the train will come under the scanner of every person who wants to attack the politician and will target the train rather than the politician. with these folks travelling by a vehicle on pre-congested traffic, you and I will be sitting in our cars longer than before.

today’s small issue. all those who are responding with an “about time” in their head, need to think twice. our hard way of life will be ours no more.

i read, with great amusement, in ht today (mumbai/metro edition, 30jul2009, p3, top-left, headline: travellers give a thumbs up to fleet taxis at airport, by soubhik mitra) about the scene that is a result of the b&y (black and yellow) taxis “agitating” against the presence of the fleet taxis. this is a good small issue.

in the article, a few passengers relate stories of how they took a walk to get to a fleet taxi. how they prefer the fleet taxi to the b&y or the cc (cool cab). while my name doesn’t figure in the article, it could have well been my testimonial. since the arrival of fleet taxis, three now, i have completely shunned the b&y taxis. i have never taken the cc – it has fraud written all over it – they spell it as – cool cab. there was a time when i travelled a lot by taxis and there were no options. i didn’t own a car then. i was mercy to their wish and whim.

the fleet taxi phenomenon is relatively new to mumbai. it was born out of, probably, the frustration that every person in mumbai faced whenever he or she was in need of transport. the constant refusals, the badly tuned meters, and the very uncouth drivers (most of them).

the b&y’s had enough time to realise that they would need to upgrade – they were the ones who were moving about the city, privy to the smallest change that this city was undergoing. the disposable income, the need for comfort, and the requirement of an honest fare. they were the first ones to pick up the foreigners in their cabs; they must have noticed their numbers swell. there is a limit to how much the government can keep falling at its knees at your every whim. when the consumer has a choice, all that the government can do comes to a nought.

the violent agitation they have caused amuses me because i see this as the tremble before a certain death. there is time before this death occurs, but the disease is so gangrenous, there isn’t a cure, unless they shed the decaying b&y body for a healthy corporate colour.

the days when they could hold a weary traveller hostage, are over.

why am i not surprised? yet another legal product faces discrimination.

“Critics fear next could be a ban on serving alcohol on international flights and turning pubs into salad bars, but Ramadoss is unfazed.”

(Via HT: Ramadoss’ next: No alcohol ads at airports- Hindustan Times.)

this is yet another classic distraction technique that the health minister has initiated. success is addictive; so after a while it quite doesn’t matter what the initiative is, if you know you are riding a wave, you will extract the maximum of it.

in the uk, you can already see the subtle imposition of government agenda through advertising. and the alcohol companies are following suit, there is an obvious alignment to government agenda. almost as if saying, “please don’t ban us, we will ask our customers to drink responsibly.”

the question, as most may misinterpret, isn’t about health issues. it is about creating classes and de-normalisation of certain behaviour. and it is happening slowly, one day to become a big issue.

relent at one place and they will take over the world.

a wonderful article to read. true, that the world is today a majority of compliant rebels and terrorised heroes.

An Open Letter to CEOs: Defend the Profit Motive–or Perish by Alex Epstein — Capitalism Magazine

“Mayor Ken Livingstone of London is urging his citizens to forego bottled water in light of the drag it puts on the environment. Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York has done the same. Others, meanwhile, have taken the further step of an outright ban on bottled water. Your thoughts? “: Bottled Water Is the Enemy – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog

(Via Freakonomics: Bottled Water Is the Enemy.)

yet another small issue. notwithstanding the arguments for global warming climate change, this is the small change i have been waiting for; dreading, but waiting for. it is inevitable.

it is, really, the case of being addicted to winning. what you win, is fairly immaterial, after a while. the purpose doesn’t exist – it is just the need to see where victory is possible. in banning the bottle, they are bottling all possible choice.

the basics are under attack now.

here is a snip from a comment posted on the article (link below)

I bought [my first Ferrari] because, with a growing trend towards the politics of envy being thinly veiled as saving the planet, I believe these nincompoops are sadly gaining ground and have a chance of winning. Therefore this may be the last chance to enjoy such engineering masterpieces.

Chief scientist in sports cars warning to women – Telegraph

in the article, Sir David King urges women to “stop admiring young men in Ferraris” – their contribution to helping control climate change.

next ban, ferraris and such. (you’d have to wonder if Toyota is funding this?)

the more i read statements from authoritative figures like these, the lesser i believe that the one world theory is just a conspiracy theory.

ps: see the freakonomics take on this issue

it was interesting that i picked up the independent yesterday. dominic lawson had an interesting comment about the ongoing obesity statistics, which, i feel, is just a race in one outdoing the other. so much, that some folks concerned with obesity are competing with climate change, as regards its impact. before i discuss dominic’s article, here is another report that featured in the independent the day before.

A startling new study by medical researchers in the United States has caused consternation among public health professionals by suggesting that, contrary to conventional wisdom, being overweight might actually be beneficial for health.

[...]

In fact, scanning the whole gamut of diseases that could curtail your life, being over weight is, on balance, a good thing. The bottom line, the scientists say, is that modestly overweight people demonstrate a lower death rate than their peers who are underweight, obese or – most surprisingly – normal weight.

The findings will be hard to dismiss. They are the result of analysis of decades of data by federal researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. This is not a study from a fringe group of scientists or sponsored by a fast-food chain.

Being overweight, the report asserts in its conclusions, “was associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall”. [ Via: The Independent: Now doctors say it's good to be fat]

note, that this report is published “in the respected journal of the american medical association” and like the report states, be hard to dismiss as it comes from cdc and doesn’t have a “sponsor”.

coming back to dominic’s article, very well written, and i appreciate it a lot because this is one small voice of sanity that cuts through the ruckus that publishers of decontextualised statistics (read: most newspapers) create. his article starts out, ironically with statistics:

My paternal grandmother lived into her tenth decade, subsisting almost entirely, or so it appeared, on cigarettes and whiskey. Her only form of exercise was shuffling decks of cards – she was to the end a lethally competitive bridge player. My sister, Thomasina, worked for the NHS in rural Wales and her great pleasure was to eat the vegetables she grew in her own garden. She died of cancer at the age of 32. [Via The Independent: Dominic Lawson: Eat, drink and be merry – you can ignore this unhealthy obsession with obesity]

when a single instance like this is cited, it is never take seriously because of the minimum number of data points that statistics, as a subject, needs, to arrive at a conclusion. yet, dominic gives a clue to what’s missing in all the alarming reports that we read as headlines that cover half the front page. the context of it. genetic constitution, culture, adaptation, climate, lifestyle, and many such factors that influence disease and death. this, i find relevant because many indian newspapers, including the hindustan times, which i had come to respect in recent times, publishes these reports without any context whatsoever. what a newspaper like ht fails to realise is that most studies use ‘local samples’. the ‘study’ doesn’t include factors that are relevant to the majority of the readers of the ht. it is almost as if the newspapers are starved for news and they need studies published across the world to fill in the papers.

then there is this play with numbers. this is something, I have suspected happens, for nearly every such statistic that is published.

It is especially significant that the report emanated from the CDC. In early 2004, the then director of the CDC published a report in the self-same Journal of the American Medical Association which claimed that obesity was responsible for 400,000 deaths per year in the US.

[...]

Diet Nation reveals how, following a series of furious letters from doctors questioning the report’s basic methodology, in April 2005 the CDC published a new analysis of the data. It said the net number of obesity-related deaths in the US annually was not “400,000″ but “25,814″. This correction was, of course, much less widely reported than the original dodgy dossier[...]

exaggerated fifteen times over. but we might miss the pertinent point here, if we, like them, crunch numbers. what is more important is, “This correction was, of course, much less widely reported than the original dodgy dossier“. and this is where our beliefs and fear take root. the number 400,000 is obviously a much better headline than 25,814. a newspaper would much rather look for a statistic that has a significantly higher number for the front page that helps sell. i find this funny, because i’d believe it is much more fun to write an interesting headline about the correction than hunt for bigger numbers that allow for sensationalism. perhaps i am mistaken, yet. perhaps there is something bigger at play here:

It is not just that Cabinet ministers have a vested interest in exaggerating the problems they face, thus making a greater claim both for departmental budgets and for their own political profile. In the field of healthcare, there is an almost sinister alliance between apparently disinterested campaigners in the public sector and the big pharmaceutical companies.

and yet, dominic does point to where it matters:

We journalists must take some of the blame for this – it is the uncritical reporting of scare stories as fact which does as much as anything to send healthy people to doctors demanding pills to make them lose weight and thus live longer. A recent search of British newspaper archives showed that some titles had a hundred times as many stories about “childhood obesity” in 2004 as they did 10 years earlier. Yet, over the same period, the average weight gain among British girls aged 15 was 0.4kg and among boys of the same age it was 1.9kg.

the conspiracy alliance may do what it may, the truth, however uninteresting needs to be revealed. because science will almost become a rhetorical tool rather than the study of natural philosophy, if it goes unchecked.

and while this isn’t related to obesity, according to michael siegel (hat tip: simon clark> why? because they can get away with it):

[...]while some misrepresentation of the science may have been occurring for some time, there has, without a doubt, been a dramatic increase in the amount of this misrepresentation.” [Michael Siegel: IN MY VIEW: Why Has The Tobacco Control Movement Lost Its Scientific Integrity?]

this is what will become of science and statistics if “they” have their way.

this is today’s small issue, tomorrow’s big issue.

part of it is interesting conspiracy theory, but the way it is constructed, you can’t but help believing, even if for a fraction of a second.

small issue today, all those that are described in the video. believe (or not) at your own peril! yet, i know people who won’t join facebook for security reasons. they might as well stop using credit cards and passports and mobile phones.

ah, well. sticks and stones.

this is what I’d call the height of taking it too far, beyond exaggerating the issue.

Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan was on Friday issued a legal notice by an NGO for smoking in public during the two recent events – the Twenty20 cricket match in Mumbai and Hindustan Times Summit in Delhi.

The NGO, National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE) issued legal notice to film actor Shahrukh Khan for smoking in public during the two recent events – the Twenty20 cricket match in Mumbai and Hindustan Times Summit in Delhi. [Via Hindustan Times: NGO issues legal notice to Shahrukh for smoking in public

smoking in an open space (at least till now) isn't illegal. well, they'd do it to if they could. now i could be smoking on the street if i want to, but no, shah rukh khan gets special treatment on account of him being a celebrity status. so did amitabh bachchan, if you read the article. i wonder if shah rukh khan's legal counsel will invoke a human rights clause in this case. this is racism. persecution based on a person's celebrity status. be scared to be a celebrity henceforth, for one incorrect twitch that offends these sensitive sensibilities could land you in jail – or at least a legal notice.

actually, i'd imagine, you can't technically summon srk. doordarshan and the photographers violated the law, no? and the publishers?

in older news, i tracked yet another act of one-upmanship by the government. Every country in the world seems to be in a race to do something better to make a smoker's life worse.

buying cigarettes may not be a pleasant experience from december 1 as grim pictures of cancerous tumours or an ailing infant will be printed on the packet of your favourite brand. [Via Hindustan Times: Scary pictures to help you quit smoking

seems cigarette cases will be back in fashion. niche, i.e. damn! i shouldn't have said that. those might get banned too, to ensure the popularity of the creative morbidity on the packs.

yet it seems, they haven't lost it all.

[...] set up to review the “merits and demerits” of pictorial warnings, the skull-and-crossbones sign was dropped as also was the idea to give a picture of a dead body.

these were found too offensive. a tobacco product will now carry the warning “tobacco kills” along with a picture that shows one of the following – smoking causes cancer, your smoking kills babies, tobacco causes painful death and tobacco causes mouth cancer.

fear, you see, is the new political science.