Post-Saturday Lunch Apoplectic Outrage

From LiveMint.com, courtesy the pen of Mayank Soofi, comes a recent article on the changing nature of St. Stephen's college. This is the place I went to get my undergrad - and I mean that phrase literally. There's lots of things people say about St. Stephen's - most of it coming from previous graduates - but what bugged me was the following:

"In no other DU college is the algebra of infinite merit as complex as it is in Stephen’s. You have to be top-notch academically, have blue-chip public school pedigree or have parents belonging to the old boy network, be part of a religious quota or other reserved categories such as sports and physically handicapped, to get into the college."


Let's start with the writing shall we? What on earth does the phrase "algebra of infinite merit as complex" mean? What happens if we replace that clumsy, meaningless line with "it's hard to get into St. Stephen's because you have to fulfill a variety of criteria." ? Nothing, and the meaning is clear.
Next, on to the reasons why it's hard to do so. "You have to be top-notch academically". This is the Indian version of academic success - getting top marks in a bunch of exams held at the end of high school. I am not the first person to state this is a very limited definition of academic quality. But that, well, nothing much we can do.

What is required, however, is a comparative examination of this criterion. Is this "top-notch"-ness any different from other leading colleges in Delhi University? (I stick to Delhi University to abstract away from state-wise variation in undergraduate education). No. Other colleges - Ramjas, SRCC - have similar, if not more demanding, notches.

You "have" to have "blue-chip public school pedigree". Indeed. By this, I suppose, is meant the finishing school for boys and girls - your Doon School, your Mayo College. Unless you want to factor in the Sardar Patel Vidyalayas, the Delhi Public Schools - presumably, you don't want to. Not only is this incorrect, I take great offense to it, for it implies quite seriously that admission depends on a factor that no right thinking person should account for. One of my classmates, who I admire greatly, expressly did not come from blue-chip pedigree. Many of those who were my classmates came from quite the usual set of schools.

We are also informed that if you don't have the above, then you must either play "sports" (which ones exactly?) or (the writer uses the word "and" but he means "or") be physically handicapped or come from a religious minority (i.e. Christian). Again, this fails the comparative test because such qualified admissions are made in other colleges as well. (I have a minor complaint against the "religious minority" leeway given but well).

Basically, there is nothing in any of the above that is true. What is different about the admission process in St Stephens is the interview - and as the writer points out, this biases faculty toward choosing English speaking students since the interview is conducted in English. Still, an interview does help you weed out what I would call, for want of any other word, the DelhiBoy. (For an example, look at the main actor in the movie Band Baaja Baaraat).

I'm no sentimentalist regarding St Stephens. I don't believe it is the bastion of civilization it keeps claiming for itself. I despise all the rubbish about calling the canteen a "cafe", calling the hostels "residence" and calling the alumni "old Stephanians". Fuck you, I'm still young, and don't brand me with a decision I made at the age of 17.

I do think it is a good college within India though, all things considered. It is not the best, no. (In fact, there is no "best" college, I'm sorry, but the quality of undergraduate education that at least I received was not all that great.) But it is up there. There is no denying that it has a definite character, a presence that I did not find in other colleges. But whether this is more the case in Stephens versus other colleges - and maybe it is all because of the relative absence of the DelhiBoy - I don't know.

Sometimes I wish it would acknowledge itself with a little more, how would you put it, latitude.

I just found it really egregious that such a statement could be printed, at all. It paints a completely inaccurate picture, that too of one of the things the college got right, or at least less wrong than others (the admission process, specifically the interview).

So, Delhi

I'm coming for a few, after 2 years away. I expect you will be very different, but please, please be gentle on this slowly aging boy.

I thought I'd have more to say, but there's work to be done and the above two sentences are as full a summary as any.

Dirty Rotten Cheap and Free

"Hey, do you think we could watch a movie sometime?"

"Sure, when?"

"Maybe Saturday?"

"Okay"

"How about my place?"

"Alright, should we do dinner?"

"Hmmm...lets just order pizza"

"Okay, see you then; but which movie"

"The Johnny Depp one"

"Done"

***

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

(effusive hug)

"I got some wine, thought why not"

"Okay..."

"I mean, we're ordering food so I thought I could make up with this"

***

*rustle*

"Your hand's on my thigh"

"I know...sorry..."

***

"Wine's over"

"Ya.."

"Whoa"

"What?"

"Lets not...I mean...what..."

"You think too much"

"No, look, I didn't mean..."

***

"What are we doing?"

"What do you think we are doing, Sherlock?"

"I should call my folks"

"What??"

"Tell them I'll be late"

"Where's the damn phone?"

....

(adapted from a conversation overheard on the J-4 from College Park to Bethesda, Maryland)

You may sit, Adam

Rare thing, insight. Rarer still, humour. A natural derivation from these two axioms: humour and insight in one must be rarest. Ronald Coase has it in spades. Spades.

Economic writing isn't usually fun to read. Most economists aren't really all that interesting. Connection? I think so. The best have this quality to their writing - it shimmers, it shines, it grows from the page, a living breathing entity. The writing has that most important element - zip.

So, for your pleasure and mine, here is a case study taken from the 1990 Nobel Symposium on Contract Economics. (By the by, do read. Such a collection of economists, all commenting on each others work. Coase (duh), Alchian, Demsetz, Stiglitz, Cheung, Williamson, Hart, Holmstrom, Rosen, gosh!). Ronald Coase was called to give closing remarks:

"When Professor Werin asked me if I could be a member of this panel, I agreed, but he didn't tell me what my duty would be...I was quite happy with the arrangement...it meant I couldn't be upbraided for not carrying out what I had agreed to do, since I hadn't agreed to do anything."
zing!

"When we move to the legal system...it is not easy at all to say what the legal system is actually doing...the only generalization one can make is that if a change is made it will increase the income of the lawyers..." zing!

"In the rest of economics the existence of markets and firms is assumed...what in effect we do is study the circulation of the blood without a body" zing!

"From my point of view the chapter I enjoyed most was that of Rosen and the reason was that it was a survey of empirical studies...I read it and was fascinated...when the studies agreed I was puzzled and when they disagreed I was puzzled. This is how we got hold of things." zing!

"Williamson...felt that...good work had been done and we need not be ashamed...Well, I agree...that old puzzle of how you describe things: is the glass one-tenths full or nine-tenths empty? I happen to think it is nine-tenths empty at the present. Oliver Williamson has reason to be pleased...since a large part of it is the water he put in..." zing!

In all of this, outside of the superficial though enjoyable comedy, there are lessons buried in the words. They are not there by accident: how do you specify a closing speech? (you can't, but yet you have to); what is the point of law anyway? (it is really not clear); how do we write models in economics? (false metaphors can kill the patient i.e. the economy); how do we know things? (by measuring them); has progress been made? (yes, but in one dimension). I know of few economists (Lucas' and Solow's Nobel Lectures come to mind; most stridently McCloskey of course makes her presence) who can write with such eloquence, such precision and humour. They are teachers, all.

So let it be written, so let it be done

One, three out of.

Over, out of the way, here's the (20th version of) the abstract:

Transaction cost economics helps explain the existence of economic institutions such as market structure or contract form by considering these to be intelligent governance mechanisms. The focus on governance ignores the institutional environment in which contracts are written. Using data on 20 years of coal procurement in the US, I show that changes in the institutional environment - in the form of the reorganization of the railroads, and the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990- enables a switch to fi xed price contracts, by changing the transaction
characteristics of relationship speci fic investments and frequent ex-post adaptation. This enables me to derive causal estimates of these transaction characteristics. I find that ignoring the role of the institutional environment can lead to biased estimates of the e ffect of relationship specifi c investments; and ex-post adaptation appears a more important determinant of contract choice than relationship specifi c investment.

I hope I haven't quite sunk that abstract in a morass of academic-speak. Although there ought to be at least a smidgeon of difficult language. Because otherwise, if I reduced everything into commonplace utterances people could understand, they might get the wrong idea. Some camouflage in dense verbiage and mathematical mysticism is actually useful because it makes the reader work a bit to understand what the hell the writer's going on about.

This is why I don't agree with the usual dictum of 'being easy to read'. Because - notice, readers, notice - being easy to read is very easy to confuse with being simplistic. The end result is a temptation to advertise falsely, although the falsity comes in because you're trying be an easy writer. Oy, we aren't writing bestsellers. If you wanted to do that, why do a PhD?

If you want to get me, you're going to have to work at it, at least a little bit. Free riding isn't useful here, babe.

"Now it seems everyone wants to discuss me,
But it must mean that I'm disgusting"

With a little help from my friends

A faint stirring of the pot: something here about the inalienability of rights, that google appears to want to alienate, perhaps this is frightening?

Number 2

I'd like a little rest, sometime, but I don't think it's coming anytime soon. Long hard look ahead, I am a rational forward looking "agent" after all, there is much work to be done, much much much. Three equals infinity, like what Jeff Ely said.

But, hang on, what is this "agent" anyway. Why does economics love to use such communist notions? Ronald Coase said we are all communists at heart, like everything Coase says, I cannot disagree. So, are we all economists? Probably. After all, all of us have at one time or another said "this is too expensive, outrageous times we live in, hai o rabba". But that we are all economists does not mean we are economists all. And this is a weakness of economics, not of us. I'm nobody's agent.

How am I to make sense of the future? By not making sense of it, maybe. Ouch, the burden of all this wisdom. Twinges muscles, racks limbs, races minds. I like the word "wisdom", it sounds so regal and empowering. "Clever" is sort of saying, okay yaar, I see what you did (you sonofabitch).

***

On phone with old friend, destined the two of us are to go down greying together, discussing the flirtations taking place in the esteemed hallways of MIT and Harvard:

me: man, the whole thing is weird, why would you want to hook up with her anyway

him: they produced papers, they produced a book....babies are next

me: what, do you think he said "I love how you say internal validity"

burst of guffawing laughter for 2 minutes, the sort of thing that reminds you of your humanity, we can still act like school kids. A lovely foolishness.

Blogging a bubble

this is #201: okay, admittedly half of my posts are lame excuses for pushing whatever nonsense music I happened to be enjoying, usually under the influence of beer or wine.

But, damn it man, if Sachin can have his idiotic landmark - or would it be more correct to say people are willing to give it? - then why can't I. Agree? Okay. So. Next.

I'm not sure too many people have noticed it, but 90% (accurate statistic, that) of all blogs I used to follow can now be officially declared dead. Yet I go on. What lesson, beta, do we learn from all of this tomfoolery?

Let it be known, kind and dear reader, that this author believes this tells us something about the nature and existence of bubbles.
To an economist about to be trained in the degree of a philosophical order, nothing, I mean nothing, annoys more than the casual throw of the term 'bubble'. "But, but", you say, "the economist claims the term". Rubbish. Economists should know better, they do know better.

So, bubbles are often used to describe pricing behavior that forms a bubble. If this idiotic sort of definition doesn't already inform you of the intellectually poor foundations beneath the concept, then the usual definition handed around like Gatorade after a football game should: "bubbles occur when the prices diverge from the fundamentals."

Eh, what. Excuse me, sir. Exactly what are these "fundamentals" oh lord of the universe? Time to use a non-price-quantity framework to describe what people call a bubble.

Many Indian people, of English medium training, around the holy year of 2005 or thereabouts, decided that it would be cool to tell their friends through a website how happy/sad/boring/exciting their lives are; some more talented ones used it as a mechanism to enhance their writing skill, a minor few actually had some ability with words and phrases. One spoke about blow jobs, and got book deals. But this is beside the point (is it?).

Around 2010, many of these blogs stopped dead. It is really quite something. Almost everybody I used to read stopped writing, simultaneously. I maybe will even generate a dataset. Many world famous blogs came to an end. I was sad to see a couple go, because they provided much entertainment during long Sunday evenings. (Sunday evenings are the worst, in case you didn't already know).

Now, if we look back at this, we say "Ah! A Blogging Bubble! Clearly the price of writing diverged from fundamentals. Now, the actors suddenly wake up and realize - hello! My writing is not as valuable anymore! - and- I have more important things to do! Look the index of fundamentals, will you. Oh well, enough of this online stuff."

Of course this is not what happened. So, you say, smarty pants, what happened?

I can't really say. But I know it has nothing to do with fundamentals, because the story of man's existence has been of evolution, growth, adaptation and change. Dynamic, to put it in mathematical terms. It might be a bit rich to compare mankind's evolution to blogging by a few of the Indian babalog, but I think the analogy is basically correct, although quite stretched. "Fundamentals" don't exist, except in some warped notion of a stationary world, where everything must be in line, like what ma'am said.

Obligatory obituary

It would be easy to attempt to contribute to the growing number of glowing good-byes.

Rahul Dravid, alone of all sportsmen/women I know, tells me I can play at the highest level if I work at it.

To this day, via the career of Dravid, I believe if I practiced my forward defensive and straight drive enough, I would play for India.
It is a most useful metaphor.

riding the tiger

12.30 am no sleep

got my first murakami today, no work day, well apart from some saaf-safai. cleaned out bathroom to a sparkle, kitchen to a shine, the bedroom to a gloss. (stop wincing, it was a clever idea). lady turns up tomorrow, fridge stocked with whole milk and butter, she can't live without these. the sri lanka australia match playing in the background, with ravi shastri saying to my utter shock that the batting team would like to keep their wickets and the bowling team would like to take them. I will die and that man will be saying this then as well. Well, that won't happen, because dear friends, hear me this, cricket is a dying game, the whole thing is ridiculous. but this is another idea. oh god now wasim says wickets are key...

somewhat of a celebration I suppose, advisor sahab says the paper is ready to be sent, I can send it to him for comments, but honest f*er he is, says he will take some time to reply. diagnosed with skin cancer, face all bandaged. i ask if a serial killer came over for breakfast. gives a loud laugh informs me of cancer, my face denotes shock. then the counter "99% recovery rate, and the 1% left usually survive second round of treatment". pale reminder of our mortal ways, the over 300 citation paper thins into vapor comparatively.

well, so it looks like this thing is taking off. who knows I may be published sometime. whatay turnaround from 10 years ago when I was struggling to be even a mediocre student in an uninspired undergrad degree. but there is a massive amount to be done. the coolest thing, the dissertation has formed itself into a nice tight little ball. everything connects in a intimate fashion, there is a beauty in it, the logical completeness of it. I can't put it in words, I can sketch the logic of it though.

the funny thing about doing work you believe in: how much less you believe in others.

thought for the day, as they say

you tell me what is certain, i'll tell you what is true

Things past?

I can remember even though I feel I want to forget. Such a haunting feeling, like the memory of you, occasionally kickstarted to life through the facebook picture and the birthday email. It is pointless to try to forget, sometimes I wonder why it all happened - the bus route, living on the other side of the river together, you coming home at odd hours, my mother remarking at your ease in coming into the house.

She thought there was 'something going on', perhaps there was for you, it was certainly for me. Matters were not helped when I started getting close, but you always stood a bit further away. And on that sorry birthday, made sweet by your letter and the appearance of the two quizzing fiends (hello!), the letter you wrote, I still have it, "I sometimes take you for granted." I told you no, but of course you knew I was lying.

The world and life swung by us, and swung us by, it started to drift, but this was only natural. It was a true friendship, honest and open, kind and gentle; the biggest compliment here is that such friendships are simply not being made anymore. (Notice the emphasis on the past.)
I tried keeping my end of the bargain with visits that never fully felt complete, to be fair, you tried too. When my lady and I got together to face life with each other, the email that came in, it was straight from that shared past.

It's been my birthday come and gone, 4 years ago you called me from across the world and we spoke for half an hour. You got married, it was quite the fairy tale come to life, I feel extraordinary happiness for you. Now, we are barely a few hours bus ride away and despite all the facebooking, emailing, free phone calling on weekend...

"I owe you a phone call", full stop.
****
Here's a thought to chew on: if something begins to fade between two people, since no one else is around to notice it, does it really fade?