A revisionist autobiography

02:24 pm - Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. – Frank Zappa

There is more awesomeness in my life right now than I have the time to describe.

Michelangelo is the least popular Ninja Turtle? I always thought it was Raphael that no one could cared for.
Poll #1186150 Pets
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

The pets I most enjoy interacting with are

Current Mood: excited

01:15 pm - A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. - Arthur Miller

Poll #1155106 TMNT
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

My favorite Ninja Turtle is/was:

Current Mood: complacent

01:26 am - Endless money forms the sinews of war. - Cicero

In musical terms, the 90s were my favorite decade. But they also produced this.

I saw two movies last week. I liked Atonement, but didn't think it outstanding. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the minimalistic approach to animation employed by Persepolis.

Abu Dhabi's government has been having a good time with the numbers game. It just sold license plate number 1 to an Emirati businessman for over $14 million, a world record. He broke the previous record, just under $7 million, which was held by his cousin. The world's seven most expensive plates have all been auctioned off in the UAE. The country requires numeric plates, effectively precluding the customized alphanumeric ones seen elsewhere, and plates with lower numbers confer prestige upon their owners.

Neighboring Dubai has been in the news for its plans to construct what it says will be the world's largest arch bridge. The main arch alone will be 205 meters high and 607 meters long. The entire project seems aimed mostly at creating an architectural monument, which is why we will be getting a 1.6-kilometer long crossing of a creek that is under 100 meters wide at its narrowest point.

Once again, however, Saudi Arabia has outdone the Emirates in terms of garnering headlines for the wrong reasons. This time, they've arrested 57 men "accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls," which is to say the country is unhappy with flirting.

Not to be outdone in the race to the bottom, an Israeli MP has blamed earthquakes on his country's tolerance of gays.

Marginal Revolution has a great post about an abandoned book depository for Detroit's public school system. More sad- but impressive- pictures can be found on flickr.

While the organizers of cricket's world cup claim it is the planet's third largest sporting event, after the football world cup and the Olympics, the game has a lot of catching up to do before it can compete with other major sports. Football (or soccer, as it is known in some of the less civilized parts of the world) has some structural advantages over cricket on account of being simple to understand as well as easy to adapt to small spaces and limited equipment. But other major factors have contributed towards its preeminence among sports. For one thing, it has a well-respected governing body that can credibly threaten countries where political interference is a problem and actually obtain results. Cricket cannot hope to do this just yet because India accounts for more than twice as much of the game's revenues as the rest of the world put together. The latter's cricket board, which has often been run by politicians, is happy to throw its weight around in order to get its way.

Still, the game is making strides in two other areas. First, India is setting up a prominent eight-team league. For the first time, there will be large-scale international participation in a domestic competition, allowing the world's best players to play together on a regular basis at a club level, much like in European football. Second, the participants will finally be making a significant cut of the money generated, with some players taking home seven-figure salaries. I'm rather hoping the rules on the composition of teams wither away and the league eventually get expanded to take in other South Asian cities like Colombo, Dhaka, Lahore, and Karachi, but this is a decent start. Many fans take international matches too seriously, and while similar problems have occurred at the club level in some parts of the world, new teams should be too young to command such intense loyalty. Besides, the game's administrators are unlikely to be significantly biased in one direction.

Two other things about the league's recent player auction interested me. First, Indian players commanded a huge premium, presumably on account of their ability to draw audiences in their own country. By pappubahry's rough calculations (which excluded 5 of India's biggest stars), this averaged about $265,000 per player, or half the average salary of the 78 cricketers whose services were up for grabs. Second, the highest valued non-Indian player was Andrew Symonds, an Australian player of aboriginal origin. On his last tour of India, crowds twice subjected him to racial taunts. They money bid on his abilities speaks volumes about how misplaced public prejudice is. And shows Indian club owners might just have learned from the mistakes of their counterparts in European football.


I'm almost done posting pictures of construction from Dubai.
( Almost every shot in this set was taken from behind tinted glass )

Current Mood: thoughtful

12:41 pm - A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it. - Oscar Levant

If I'm going to write a post that looks at politics, Marxist puppets are as good a starting point as any other.

How blue is DC? Nearly 20 times as many Democrats as Republicans voted in party primaries there. My favorite candidate not only won all eight wards, but received a majority of votes in all 142 precincts. But then you'd expect nothing less given how much he's done for all of us, and his endorsement by lolcats. Yes we can has! Fundrace, run by the Huffington Post, has set up a map that lets you to check where in the country donors are, and which party they've donated to. If you zoom out enough, you end up with a representation of where in this country you can find large numbers of relatively well-off people. Zoom in, and local contrasts turn up. The Democratic advantage in the District, for instance, is not limited to the number of voters. New York is slightly more mixed, but the more interesting thing there is to see how sharply donations drop off when you move north of Manhattan's Upper East Side and Upper West Side into Harlem, or anywhere east or south of Park Slope in Brooklyn.

If you're not enjoying a movie, you're likely to look at your watch a lot. I peeked at mine just once while at a screening of Charlie Wilson's War, and even then, only because the movie seemed to get to the point where it was winding down very soon after I stepped into the theater (which was admittedly, a couple of minutes after it had begun). At 97 minutes, it wasn't an especially short movie, but the outstanding dialogue made things go by very quickly. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the movie- a story about how one Congressman almost single-handedly expanded a $5 million covert program to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan into a $1 billion operation that secured their defeat and helped end the Cold War- was that it was based on true events.

Moving on to the world of international finance, if you've ever been curious about the economic relationship between the United States and China, particularly with regard to the consequences of a massive and sustained American trade deficit for the world economy, this is a good jargon-free explanation of everything you need to know.

Established in 1976, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority runs the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, with an estimated $500-875 billion dollars in assets, or something like $2-3 million for every citizen of the emirate. Scarily, when the Peterson Institute for International Economics scored 33 funds worldwide in four categories (structure, governance, transparency & accountability, and behavior), ADIA came at the bottom in every single one. Before you ask, this is not about size- Norway's Government Pension Fund, the world's second largest, is ranked second overall. It's not about location or laxer rules for old funds either. The Kuwait Investment Authority was set up way back in 1960 and places respectably in the middle of the table. Alas, Abu Dhabi's lack of transparency is bound to cause it problems in the future when Western publics panic about who is buying large stakes in some of their most valuable companies.

Lately, however, Abu Dhabi has been in the news for happier reasons. It has started to build Masdar, which it describes as the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste car-free city. This will not come cheap- the estimated price tag is $22 billion- but it will be interesting to see if it can succeed, and possibly even inspire other projects.

The UAE government gives money to Emirati couples wishing to get married in order to encourage local men to pick wives within the country. (For a number of reasons, Emirati women are unlikely to marry men from outside the Gulf. But Emirati men have a strong incentive to look abroad, as any good prospective bride within the country would expect a large dowry.) Gulf News has run a piece explaining how this isn't enough.

Some people may think it is insane that the UAE gives nationals [$20,000] to get married, but after they read how expensive it is to get married, they will change their mind.
...
Although many nationals are grateful that such a fund exists, after the increase in prices and living expenses in the UAE, some nationals agree that [$20,000] is not enough. To hire a famous singer of the likes of famous Saudi national Mohammad Abdo, costs [$200,000]. Recently the fund issued a decision stating that only nationals whose salaries are [$4,000] and below are to receive the grant. These nationals must not have any other source of income other than their salary and must not own any businesses. This decision created an uproar.

"After the 70 per cent salary increase for all federal government employees, many of us cannot apply for the grant."

Current Mood: peaceful

01:54 pm - The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl. - Dave Barry

Dubai's latest inspiration seems to be a James Bond villain. Having decided that The World is not enough, the city is building The Universe around it. This project, which will also consist of a series of manmade islands, should use up most of whatever little space is free off the city's coast. Given the failure of the The World, I'm rather surprised the same developer believes there is a market for this.

A reporter in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for blasphemy because he downloaded material a court deemed offensive to Islam. The Taliban is dead, long live the Taliban?

ETA: There Will Be Blood has some great cinematography, a good score, a number of powerful scenes and a superb performance from lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis. But I still think it was a lousy movie.


This post has pictures from three separate night trips I made to the area around the Dubai marina.
( Want to see? )

Current Mood: complacent

07:42 pm - Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. - John Lennon

I found this via Chris. There is some strong language, so be careful listening if you are at work. iamtravish pointed me in the direction of the equally uproarious Sad Kermit, who is even less appropriate in office environments.

When President Bush visited Dubai last week, a lot of people had trouble because the roads were all shut down. But I can't imagine too many people had it as bad as the gas station attendants who had to work for 24 straight hours because their replacements couldn't be bussed in. An earlier version of this article noted that the employees in question would receive no monetary compensation for this, but vaguely hoped that they would be rewarded for their services in the form of a day off later. The story also claims that the majority of Dubai's population is made up of manual laborers of some description, and that there is a car for every two people in Dubai. Analysis of just what this might say about (and mean for) the city is left as an exercise to the reader.

Being possessed of some free time lately, I've finally gotten around to reading books that piqued my curiosity several months ago. Jane Jacobs' The Economy of Cities was dry but made interesting arguments. I had much more fun reviewing Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.

I saw much of the Heartbreak Kid on my flight back into the States, and it turned out to be less terrible than the trailers suggested. Then again, anything else would have taken some doing. Mean Girls was alright given that I'm not fond of teen movies as a genre. But once again, I have completely failed to grasp why several people seem to speak of a film in such hallowed tones. I hope it's not because Lindsay Lohan is in it.

I've had far better luck in picking TV shows based on recommendations. I just finished watching the first season of The Wire. Judging by what I've seen, it's only a little short of Rome in terms of being the best show I've ever seen. The two have a good deal in common. Both have large and talented casts, along with perfectly chosen backdrops that transport you into the world the characters inhabit. But it is the writing that draws me to both shows. Each has elaborate plots and subplots that take an entire season to unfold, along with crackling dialog to keep things moving along in the interim. The downside to this is that you have to start watching from the beginning and pay close attention in order to appreciate what is happening. But the payoff for the patient viewer is substantial, not lease because you can inject a lot more meaning into a scene if you've been building up to it for several episodes. I must particularly commend the job the writers did in creating a gritty world where the good guys do not always triumph, and the police have to worry at least as much about their internal politics as about catching criminals because that's where their incentives lie. It's so refreshing to see a show get things right by breaking away from conventions.

Today's high temperature was -4°C, and that's not counting windchill. If I decide I'm not leaving my room until May, you're not going to need to ask why.


When you stand to the north of the Palm Jumeirah, you can see one of the two rows of apartment buildings along the trunk in which people already live.


Construction is still under way on the third row, as you can tell from this shot, which was taken from the south.


Here is a closer look, to give you some sense of the size of each building.
( Two more shots from the area )

Current Mood: sick

02:00 pm - Most buildings now are glorified wallpaper. - Alan Bird

The ten principles of economics.

Dubai's roads now have decent signage, but this does not fully make up for the counterintuitive design patterns employed, especially since these are exacerbated by the absence of a grid system. All too often, I will get confused about which exit I want, or drive along some newly rerouted circuitous road, of which there are no shortage, and find myself somewhere other than where I had planned to be. Upon realizing this, I quietly curse the lack of opportunities to change course over the next two kilometers. In short, my prior familiarity with this city counts for little; I needed to spend less than one year out of town to end up making the same complaints about the roads as visitors from other parts of the UAE, or indeed world.

A researcher I spoke to here told me that 70,000 new units of housing entered Dubai's real estate market in 2006. These were meant to satisfy demand from the 100,000 new residents the city expected, and thus stabilize prices. As it turned out, a staggering 300,000 people moved to the city that year- a full quarter of the existing population- driving demand and prices through the roof. Rent caps have helped hold down expenses for many existing Dubai residents, but for new tenants, it is a different story. A two-bedroom apartment in a nice building in Dubai's unfashionable Ghusais district can set you back as much as a comparably sized place in Manhattan's prestigious Upper East Side (ETA: only two-thirds as much), while a luxury apartment in the overcrowded Marina could be twice as expensive. How much further prices will rise is anyone's guess, but land valuations seem fairly ridiculous already.


Construction anyone?
( More under the cut )

Current Mood: chipper

03:31 pm - Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves. - Frank Lloyd Wright

After a fairly hectic ten days, I've really enjoyed the chance to sit back and relax. I can't even remember the last time I ate out so much I preferred home-cooked food. Yesterday, though, I drove to Abu Dhabi to meet up with friends there. Even as someone who tries to pay attention to new projects, I was stunned by the sight of things that had come up or were being built along the way, many of which I hadn't even heard about. I ended up taking so many pictures yesterday that I will need more than one post to house them all. And that's despite not being able to stop at a number of the most interesting places. I've come to the sad conclusion that I will not be able to photograph everything I'd like to by the time I leave because there is just too much out there.


A faux traditional coffeeshop at the Abu Dhabi Marina. The blue light belongs to a tower attached to the shopping mall behind.
( More from the capital )

Current Mood: blank

05:54 pm - China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand. - Mukesh Ambani

I'm back from my short trip to Mumbai. I left with the impression of that India is changing rapidly, but not fast enough for a lot of the people living there. Mumbai's airport serves as a good metaphor for the country. For one thing, it is now largely- but not entirely- owned by the private sector. It is also undergoing a large expansion in order to cope with the growing demand. And whereas it used to be overcrowded and poorly run, it is now a decent medium-sized airport to fly through. It's not especially luxurious or aesthetically pleasing, but it is functional, and no longer resembles a grimy industrial plant from the 1960s. But one can see differences in any number of places outside the airport. Construction is very visible, and I could see a number of tower cranes, unusual in a country where even tall buildings have traditionally been built using manual labor. A number of shopping malls have cropped up, although one still needs to through a metal detector to enter. The roads have also improved considerably over the past decade, although traffic remains terrible.


I can't possibly describe how driving over there works, so you have to see this for yourself.

I used the dirt cheap auto rickshaws a number of times, and was quietly petrified by the way the drivers got around, passing mere inches from remarkably nonchalant pedestrians, cars, and buses. I'm not sure that's something I'd ever want to get used to. In one case, we had a minor collision with a motorcyclist. While we were both stuck in traffic, he argued intermittently with our driver about whose fault the accident was. Neither got off their vehicle though, once the cars ahead of us started to move, we just drove on as though nothing had happened. All I'll say is that it's just as well auto rickshaws can't go very fast, especially given the lack of niceties like doors and seatbelts. Still, being right by the street in a city as lively in Mumbai is an experience. You can see pedestrians getting haircuts on the sidewalk, homeless people lighting bonfires by intersections, and beggars who can reach into your vehicle to ask for money, even as you go by fancy new hotels and large signboards advertising luxury goods or political campaigns.

An Indian automobile manufacturer will soon launch a $2500 car, bringing four-wheeled vehicles within the reach of a number of new buyers. No wonder the number of cars in the country is expected to rise 14 percent next year, as compared to 3 percent worldwide. Already, it is striking how few people still drive the handful of domestically built cars designed in the late 1960s and early 1980s, which used to account for practically all traffic. Luxury imports, which were once almost invisible, are now a fairly common sight in Mumbai thanks to burgeoning economic growth.


This is a video I took to show you what the view from a Mumbai local train is like. While I traveled at off-peak hours on a holiday, 9-compartment trains carry well in excess of 4,000 people at peak hours, resulting in a bone-crushing 14-16 people per square meter of floor space. Trains only stop for 20 seconds at each station, and so commuters jump onto trains well before they have come to a complete halt, or the passengers aboard them have alighted. Indeed, if you are inside get off one of these things, you need to stand up two stops before your station in order to push your way to one of the door-less exits. The combination of very low fares, bad traffic in the city, and Mumbai's unusually convenient geography means that over 80 percent of the city uses these trains to get around, and half the rest use buses, taxis, and auto rickshaws. Not even New York is quite as reliant on public transport. Mumbai is also considering the construction of a subway system. Other Indian cities have already gone ahead with this, with the Delhi Metro in particular being an enormous success.

While in India, I saw two-thirds of Taare Zameen Par before walking out, partly because it was too slow for my taste, but mainly because I was scared of missing a wedding reception. As it turned out, everyone I knew got there at least 2 hours late because hey, that's what people in India do. It turns out you now often pay more to watch a movie in Mumbai than in Dubai, even though I can remember a time when tickets cost only a fifth as much in the former. (Inflation means that Indian city dwellers now pay as much as their counterparts abroad for most things, with tipping at restaurants being one major exception. One cousin of mine remembered me as the guy who left an extravagant $1 tip when he last lunched with me at a pizza parlor four years ago.) But the most unusual thing about going to the movies in India is that they now make the entire audience stand up before the show for the national anthem. From what I understand, this has been one of the consequences of Indians getting a lot more patriotic over the past five years.

Finally, a number I can't seem to verify online. Tax collections rose a jaw-dropping 48 percent last year (ETA: A more reliable source says it was 24 percent). Rumors are circulating that the government will now be able to drop tax rates, triggering a further rise in revenues. The Laffer Curve may not be doing good things to the US fiscal deficit, but this whole business of abandoning 90% plus taxation rates in India has done wonders, as has the transition from indirect taxes (e.g. import duties) to direct ones (e.g. income tax).

( Pictures from Mumbai )

Current Mood: peaceful

04:00 pm - No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky. - Llewelyn Powys

I've made it to Dubai in one piece, having gotten over the surliest ever person to check me in for a flight, two delayed planes, and a piece of baggage that did not arrive with me. Washington Dulles is undergoing a major expansion. I can't figure out why they wanted to copy the single least popular part of Dubai airport- a deep and lengthy pedestrian tunnel between the terminal building and the midfield concourse. On the plus side, they are getting trains in the future, which should make it less terrible. Once I realized that Terminal 2 at CDG was all concrete and glass, I really wanted to like it. But it's an unwieldy behemoth. When you land, you can see plane after parked plane through the window while you're still hundreds of feet up in the air, approaching the runway. Even the name 'Terminal 2' masks 6 or 7 separate terminal buildings. And yet, there isn't enough space. The lounge in which I waited for my Boeing 777 had all of 16 seats. When I got to Dubai, I realized that it, too, was well over capacity, and every service was struggling to meet the demand. Yesterday, I found out that large expansions have already been ordered at terminal 3, the dedicated center for Emirates flights, and that hasn't even been opened yet. Once airports pass a certain critical size, they get very messy, and I suspect Dubai is about to hit critical mass. Still, my actual flight from Paris was very comfortable. Emirates' entertainment system is superior to anything I've seen in a house, leave alone an airplane. I used my time in the air to watch Ratatouille and the Simpsons episode from which mrputter derives his screen name, among other things.

I've really enjoyed myself since getting back to Dubai. I've started meeting up with friends (hi basaferetch!), eating foods I've really missed (idlis, dosas, falafels, hummus), and seeing what's new (umm, lots). Despite the insane traffic and the roads I don't recognize, even driving around is fun because I haven't been behind the wheel of an automobile for close to a year. I was jetlagged on the day I arrived, and since I was wide awake at 1 AM, I decided to go to the Deathspire to take pictures of what is now the tallest building in the world. I ran into unexpected difficulties- the empty patch of sand where I wanted to park is now itself a large construction site.


This is from the Burj Dubai site.

( Skyscraper porn )

Current Mood: tired

03:58 am - Myths which are believed in tend to become true. - George Orwell

Today, I was out of bed at an almost respectable hour. Soon thereafter, I realized that it was a full 13°C (55°F) and rising. I quickly gave up all pretense of working on my remaining paper, and pretended to be from out of town, correctly predicting that I would not have to wait in queues to see DC's popular tourist sites. ( Three X-ray machines and five metal detectors later, I had taken a lot of pictures. )

rfmcdpei has a post up about the number of Canadians on facebook. Syria appears to have banned the site altogether, claiming Israeli infiltration. How do I know facebook has become too important? I saw this in my university library.

A comment on woobeans' journal led me to this 20-minute video using public data to debunk myths about developing countries. The sidebar is right, the presenter does speak like a sportscaster.

The BBC recently commissioned a global survey on press freedom. When asked to rate their country on a scale of 1 to 5, more people in the UAE than in the United States rated their press as being free (4 or 5). This blows my mind. Indians were among the most likely to consider their press free, but were also among the most likely to say that social stability was more important than freedom of the press.

Staying in India, you know the quality of political discourse is slipping when the leader of the opposition describes the government as a "merchant of death" for failing to stop terrorism. People complain about the bitterness and partisanship here, but can you even imagine what would happen if Harry Reid used that term to describe President Bush on account of the latter's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks?

Next, an 'Only in India' incident. A businessman sets up a fake government office in order to fleece would-be workers, who pay him bribes in order to receive jobs there. Said businessman then gets sucked in and/or carried away, and instead of disappearing as planned, starts to collect taxes, provide services, and even issue birth and death certificates. Nobody notices until his employees complain about their salary problems to the actual government.

You know what else can be outsourced to India? Surrogate motherhood.

The UAE's explanation for revoking its ban on smoking in bars is a classic: "We have decided not to ban smoking in these places because we understand the people going to such places are mature enough to take care of their health." Just how they are supposed to take care of their health while surrounded by secondhand smoke is left as an exercise for the reader.

But if you think that is shameless, wait till you see the article about a plan to install public toilets. "The advertisement boards on the toilets will add colour and beauty to the city."

53% of Americans say they would not vote for an otherwise well-qualified atheist. It's official, I belong to the least popular minority in this country.

And finally one last picture, since I've got so many sitting patiently in queue, biding their time until they are asked to present themselves.


That's downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.

Current Mood: good

12:45 am - Music is a means of rapid transportation. - John Cage

As the last person in America without an iPod, I can't appreciate this quote. Or maybe I know its significance all too well. Anyway.

Last August, mrputter and I wanted to get an early morning bus from DC to New York, but found ourselves in a pickle upon realizing that the Metro didn't open until 7 AM on weekends. My nocturnal lifestyle has meant I've seldom had to worry about opening times again. Since then, however, I have had an incredible string of luck. Despite staying out late on a regular basis, I have never once been stranded anywhere on account of forgetting when the Metro closes. On more than one occasion, I've caught the last train without knowing when it would arrive, or whether I'd make it to a station in time to catch it- no small matter given how much I dislike using taxis. Thursday night witnessed the culmination of this good luck, when I boarded the final train on no fewer than three different lines in order to successfully arrive home from an excellent Thanksgiving with homais and his family. Such an event might not be quite as thrilling as winning the lottery, but is the type of good luck that can come in handy on a regular basis. I still wish I lived in a city where the public transport didn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight, but at least late connections seem to be coordinated decently well here. And for all my complaints about the way the Washington area's public transport operates, it is a fairly easy metropolis to live in without a car, for which I am thankful.

Poll #1094408 Public transport
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Where you live, the public transport optons available are:

How often do you use public transport?

Do you have regular access to a car?

Current Mood: cynical

02:51 am - You can lead a boy to college, but you can't make him think. - Elbert Hubbard

This week, I decided it would be interesting to watch The Kingdom, not because I expected it to be intellectually stimulating (it wasn't) or because I figured I'd learn useful things from the film (I didn't), but because I wanted to see how Hollywood portrayed Saudi Arabia. Save for the surfeit of British villains, Hollywood is a useful barometer of American perceptions of a particular part of the world. There is a reason so many bad guys were Russians during the Cold War, for instance. As it turned out, the film wasn't unjustly critical or apologetic. ( Here be spoilers. ) Unlike Syriana, which paid great attention to such details, the Saudis here all speak Arabic in Syrian accents. But then I suppose action movies aren't meant to be realistic anyway. Oh, I've also been watching a lot of episodes of a Canadian sitcom called Little Mosque on the Prairie, which follows the Muslim community in a fictional town in Saskatchewan. Unlike the movie, it's actually worth your time.

I've always rather enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere of this area. As it turns out, Arlington, where I live, is the smartest medium-sized city in America. Or the one where the largest proportion of people have gone to college, at any rate. Neighboring Washington, DC, where I used to live, leads the country's 53 large cities in terms of the number of people with graduate degrees.

In other local news, DC cabs are finally getting meters. I hate the present zone system. I knew there was a zone boundary half a block from my old house, and could theoretically have exploited this to get a good deal, and yet because of the complex rules, I always wondered whether I was the one getting ripped off. The actual impact of the rule change on my life is likely to be marginal though- I don't like to use taxis, and can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been in one in DC.

One of the ways in which I judge India's development is that country's tax base. Back in the days when they amended the constitution to put in the word 'socialist,' large companies would be asked to surrender almost all their profits, and the overwhelming majority of individuals paid nothing, largely because most people barely made enough money to scrape by. Individuals could be taxed over 100 percent of their annual income, and unsurprisingly, found ways to hide how much money they actually made. While India's farmers still pay no taxes and receive generous subsidies, economic liberalization has led to a situation where increasing numbers of people, especially in the booming major cities, earn more than a subsistence income. Successive governments have thus tried to find ways to decrease tax evasion so that spending is not financed entirely by debt. And it looks like their efforts are proving fruitful.

Connoisseurs of bad English and those of you who just want a different perspective on the news should check out Turkmenistan's official information portal, The Golden Age. It even covers sports ("Turkmenistan wins Cambodia in the 2010 World Cup qualification match") and human interest ("Festive parade of newly-constructed buildings") stories. (Credit to tomscud.)


DC's Theodore Roosevelt Island, on a summer day of the sort I miss.

04:26 am - Football is the opera of the people. - Stafford Heginbotham

I spent Saturday evening watching my first professional sports game in this country, and it was not a particularly American sport. RFK Stadium played host to a football (soccer, if you must) game between local team DC United and the Chicago Fire. I was pleasantly surprised to hear all the announcements in the stadium repeated in Spanish. Given the large number of immigrants in this area, there are surprisingly few other places in which in a language besides English is used publicly. I wonder if it even happens at hockey or baseball games.


While the home team's playing standards were not great, its hardcore fans were a fun bunch. On multiple occasions, they got the entire deck of seats on their side of the stadium to bounce. And since they never sat down, neither did anyone in the sections behind them, something which added to the general sense of excitement in the stadium.
Poll #1071008 Professional sports
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What sport should I watch next?

Current Mood: cold

04:09 pm - If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back? - Stephen Wright

I don't much feel like writing an entry, so here are more links and pictures:

atthesametime is running his monthly Secrets Monday post today. Stop by if you want to get stuff off your chest. Or you can just see what other people get up to but are too afraid to tell you!

birdfigment has used photography to describe the downside of living in a one-party state. (Okay, so DC isn't technically a state. Whatever.)

qatar posted about one of the lesser-known pitfalls to affect Gulf residents.

okanagansun pointed me towards some amusing animation.

The UAE has announced journalists will no longer be jailed for they write!

When you begin to switch to a free market system from a state-regulated economy, a lot of people can get hurt by the change. I feel bad for some of them. But it's hard to muster sympathy when tour operators protest because the tourists visiting their part of India aren't all rich.



( More from Boston )

Current Mood: indifferent

02:46 pm - If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. - T.S. Eliot

Dear New York,
I was but thirteen when I first laid eyes on you. We only had a few days together before I was forced to leave you, but I have cared deeply for you ever since. Sure I was out of touch on the other end of the world for a few years, but you knew deep down that I'd be back for you, and I was. I was young and foolish then, but as I've grown older, I've only come to appreciate more facets of your personality and character. Alas, our encounters must remain brief for now- I must remain with one for whom I have respect but not true love- and for this I apologize. Still, I want you to know that I cherish our every moment together, and do not have a single unhappy memory of you. I assure you that as soon as I have a chance, I will make you mine for good; I'd like nothing more than to be together with you for the rest of our lives.
Love,
dubaiwalla


Downtown Manhattan, including cranes for fugney.

( Things I enjoyed while in my favorite city. )

Poll #1061054 Obligatory poll
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

How awesome is New York?

Current Mood: content

11:05 pm - All would live long, but none would be old. - Benjamin Franklin

Poll #1056451 Future travels
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Of the places you have never visited, what three would you most like to see?

Current Mood: hungry

03:16 pm - A man's homeland is wherever he prospers. - Aristophanes

Poll #1049061 Hometowns
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What do you like best about the city or town you live in?

What did you like best about it when you first got there?

Current Mood: complacent

01:19 am - People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. - Kurt Vonnegut

Siskel and Ebert talk about overthrowing the government, why Protestants suck, etc. Probably NSFW. (Found via sabotabby.)

I've been using DC's buses a bit lately. There appears to be a substantial gulf between the users of the two major components of the public transport system. While suits are a common sight on the Metro, the buses seem to shunned by the District's elites. The latter are dominated by the working class, whose members are present on the Metro, but far less visible. A bus fare costs only a few cents less than a Metro ride over a short distance, and the operator is the same. I wonder how much of the difference has to do with the Metro design. To get executives out of their cars, the Metro was designed to appear upscale (carpeted trains, stations with high ceilings, air conditioning everywhere) and safe (straight corridors with minimal obstructions, surveillance cameras everywhere) in a way that city streets are not. Some of the difference might be accounted for by the fact that many of the wealthier executives live farther out of downtown, making buses impractical. But this doesn't explain the relative infrequency with which members of the city's working class use the Metro.

Via apropos: A lolcat not involving a cat.
Poll #1033612 Interwebs
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Do you have a favorite Internet fad/meme? If so, what is/was it?

Current Mood: sleepy

10:52 pm - I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. - Woody Allen

An old TV clip.

The Simpsons Movie is everything a Simpsons movie ought to be. Go watch it. I saw it with the most enthusiastic crowd I've ever been around in a cinema- the folks around me were not content to applaud the better jokes and give the movie an ovation at the end, but cheered for trailers, and even two of the commercials.

homais may be off in Yemen, but he was nice enough to leave behind his bookshelf, along with some recommendations. I just finished Against the Gods, a history of the human understanding of risk. I learned a bit, but actually found myself wishing it had more equations in it. Probability was the one field in math I actually enjoyed studying, and while the book might have been more accessible without numbers, even as a history book it lacked something for being brought down to the level of absolute laymen.

If I listen to multiple artistes perform a particular piece of music, the first version I hear almost always ends up being my favorite. I actually prefer the Michael Jackson version of Come Together to the Beatles one. Which is why I enjoyed hearing the National Symphony Orchestra play classics by Mussorgsky and Stravinsky, but felt the piece they performed best (in a concert where they also played music by such luminaries as Beethoven and Tchaikovsky) was the one they rendered most faithfully, relative to the version I have. And before you enquire which great monarch commissioned the Imperial March, I am referring to John Williams' composition from Star Wars.

It turns out that the perfect time for the fire alarm to go off in your office building is a little after 4 PM. By the time everyone has evacuated the building, most people find it is just a little too late for going back upstairs to seem worthwhile, and everyone who wants to can just go home instead.

The Chinese restaurant I was at today claimed to serve 'Buddhist with fried tofu' for just $8.95. I suppose it qualified for the 'vegetables' section of the menu because soylent is green.

Judging by the last poll, you aren't a particularly patriotic bunch. How do you feel about another set of beliefs?
Poll #1030662 Religion
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Do you consider yourself religious?

Current Mood: tired

10:06 pm - Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century. - Marshall McLuhan

After several weeks of running around ceaselesly, last weekend was a welcome break. I finished off my paper for summer school, caught up with the days of newspapers that had piled up at home, and finished watching Rome. I really appreciated the character development- almost everyone with a major part became increasingly more corrupt over time, and the show did not shy away from portraying good guys doing some very bad things. Still, it felt selectively judgmental. Good and bad characters both owned slaves, and the show only very occasionally