Perfectly competitive markets

I'm taking a basic Economics course as part of Humanities credits this semester. We were discussing monopoly and perfectly competitive markets. The prof was writing down the conditions when we classify a market as perfectly competitive, when it struck me that prostitution is a nearly perfect example of a perfectly competitive market. I told this to Spanky too, who was sitting beside me. There is free entry for everyone to enter the market, there are infinite buyers and sellers, each seller might have a unique selling point, and one buyer or seller cannot influence the price.

CAT vs JEE

It's ridiculous how people even compare CAT to JEE.
JEE's infinitely tougher. You can get up one fine day, brush your teeth, crap and go write CAT and still make it to the IIMs. JEE? Nice try.

Prison break

Rocks!

Woi

We are taught many times over that productivity plays an important part in development. Well, we acknowledged that when we learnt it, but if you really want to appreciate it or understand why what when how etc, a good opportunity for you is to conduct a case study on the comments section in many news items in leading television channels. On going through, one really gets an answer to the mysterious question: How jobless can one get? If you think sitting on Mount road eating paan all day is the answer, you're way off.

For instance, take a typical random sample for the experiment, a news item in a leading television channel's website; an interview with Robin Uthappa on the upcoming world cup. First up, you have one chap who says that being in the Indian team is an unfair deal for Laxman, and that Kaif should not be dropped because he is the second wall of India. Another guy chooses a cryptic way of replying, saying 'I don't think not taking Sehwag is not wrong'. Should tell him, I don't think not using too many negatives does not make a sentence not easily understandable. Next, another guy says 'I'll promise India will be in Semi finals, and 95 percent chance that they're in finals'. I don't get it at all: Why does he want to promise? As if this isn't enough, he goes on 'If India is in the finals, I promise you India is going to win'. I promise you, I had a tough time controlling myself when I read this. Another guy makes a pertinent observation 'Robin Uthappa is inexperienced. So what he says in the interview doesn't matter'. Well, your comment also doesn't matter boss, does it? One more guy asks us to 'mark his words that India will win the cup'. Yes sir, marked them. Finally, a comment reads 'Robin and Ganguly make a wonderful pair. May god bless this couple'. Indeed, we hope. He adds 'May all gods get together and bless all the players with their hands on players. May gods bless Sehwag too'.

You get the picture.

Rotfl

Wimpy's new post which made me Rotfl!

Forecast

My forecast for the week, rightly taken from The Week reads:

Look out for favours from the government. This might boost your income. You will have a pleasant journey and a happy married life. Your public relations skills will stand you in good stead. Your social and financial graph will soar. A good relationship with officers will lead to a mutually beneficial enterprise. You will gain respect from your subordinates. Invest wisely.

What the fuck.

I should've written a forecast to the guy who wrote this:

Look out for insults and life threats from the general public and bloggers. This might boost your morale, although it will strongly decrease your life expectancy. You will have a pleasant death, and a happy dead life. Your public relations skills will bring you back alive as you will negotiate successfully with Yama. Your oxygen supply vs time graph will soar. A healthy relationship with the opposite sex will lead to a healthy baby. Invest in sanitary ware.

Simplicity

I tend to wonder what the purpose of complicating an issue is, when a simple solution exists.
For example, take the Butterfly effect (movie). They've tried so sincerely to explain the concept and its significance only to confuse people. Now take a typical Tamil movie (Aayitha Ezhuthu for instance) when a mini riot starts off in a scene. You have n distinct people in a room (A1,A2...An say, and by distinct, we mean they do not have anything in common, like they're not part of a group or something). A certain guy (A1 say) while talking to another guy (A2 say) hits him. This results in a random person Ai performing a scan around him to find the nearest guy (Aj say) and Ai and Aj start to fight (Note, Ai and Aj are distinct elements who do not know each other before). A definite set of solutions of ordered pairs (i,j) exists that constitutes the entire set of n people (n should be preferably even). However, please note that there need not be ordered pairs only, for if Aj is the closest to Ai, it does not imply that Ai is the closest to Aj. There might be an Ak who is closest to Aj, hence all the three Ai,Aj and Ak will fight. Thus, there can be triplets (i,j,k) , quadruplets(i,j,k,l), or in the limiting case, the whole set of n people (This might happen when all the n are in a line and the successive distances are like in an AP or something). So, what's happening is nothing but the Butterfly effect. In fact, it's so simple: Get all the people of the world together and make one guy hit someone. The whole world is in a world war. And as I type this, I realize that this scene could also be used to explain convection (bulk behavior), but ah, I'm lazy to draw the exact analogy.
Be simple.