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?

If ever a transaction came with cost

(the DRS must be it)
"There must be some way out of this" says the joker, with the thief listening.

"It's too confusing, boss. The administration dithers, the scientists bring in more angles. Even Harsha Bhogle wants relief. And none of them understand what it's worth."

"You get excited too easily" says the thief. "You know we can use an auction to discover worth. You and I, come on, we've been through that."

(pauses, while Mark Nicholas airs his view on shrinking three dimensions down to two)

"Let's not pretend to perfection, the game's staring down the toilet bowl it will soon start to circle as it is..."

All along the TV towers, HawkEye keeps it view.

Unanticipated events and the DRS

when the Decision Review System (DRS) was brought in to cricket, it was meant to resolve the "howlers" that is decisions made by an umpire that was obviously wrong.

Instead it is used for marginal decisions. But that is not of concern here, the focus is on the unanticipated effect of using the DRS - it has changed, or will change surely, how the batsmen play their defensive shots.

Why should this be so? The DRS contains a highly controversial ball tracking technology that can "predict" where the ball would go. In times past, when the umpire on-field was the sole voice of authority, it was usually okay to tuck bat inside pad and take a big step down the wicket to smother the ball (the only caveat was if it was obvious that the batsman was not offering a shot, then a more relaxed, bowler friendly decision is possible). This would cause enough uncertainty as to where the ball would go, since it still had a way to go, and the benefit of the doubt went to the batsmen.

Now, with ball tracking, this uncertainty is removed. Obviously (in retrospect) now batsmen have to use their bats more to pat the ball down. For this alone, the DRS is a good thing, no more will England and South Africa get over their inadequacies against spin by hiding behind their legs. Perhaps a more equal game, and thus, a more interesting game awaits.

Shows how policy changes can have effects that were not anticipated, let alone expected.