Socialism and its perils

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class insisted that socialism [eschewed for long by India and made famous recently by Barack Obama] worked. It said that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the Socialist plan". All grades were to be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade. Ergo, no one would fail and no one would receive an A. At the end of the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone received a B. The students who had studied hard were upset. The students who had hardly studied were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who had studied little studied even lesser. The ones who had studied hard decided that they too wanted a free ride and ergo, they too studied little. The second test average was a D. No one was happy.
When the third test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one wanted to study for the benefit of others. To their great surprise, all of them failed.

The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great. However, when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

-via random email fwd

A nobel joke

WSJ Article
Time Article

Fritz Henderson a more deserving candidate? This very mockery probably hits the nail on the head in trying to explain how the politically savvy, marketing guru with good sense of the pulse of the people got it horribly wrong by accepting the Nobel peace prize award for 2009.

In office for a grand total of twelve days when nominated, eight months into the presidency today, he is still working on his promises and his vision for the US and the world at large. Kudos to him for a job well done thus far, for attempting to create a new world order and for taking the US away from the cowboy diplomacy that it had come to be identified with off late.

Nevertheless, a lot needs to be done before being declared Nobel enough, or maybe not. Well at least more that rhetoric and propaganda. It would have been astute and humble to not have accepted the award, saying in effect, I will be back in three years to accept this award. Only, it may not have been there because the people who are on the committee have proved that they too are human and could have taken his 'no' as a snub and a question of their judgment.

Obama, on his part, showed he is human. He agrees that he is humbled and undeserving, that he is human [read: greedy] enough and is fallible. As for the Nobel, it lost a bit of its charm today. Just like when Sadat, Begin, Kissinger got it. Just like when Mahatma Gandhi didn't. Great guy that Obama, will probably be deserving in 3 years. Flatpacked on twitter put it aptly when he said that it would appear there is a Nobel "looks like you might do something for peace in the rest of your term in office" peace prize.

What's in a name?

Bombay or Mumbai, the bard once said "what's in a name?". The 'cool peeps' will call it only Bombay and refuse to call it anything else. The 'nationalists' will call it only Mumbai and will break the heads of those who think otherwise. Grow up folks, call it what you want. It is officially Mumbai; if you don't like that, you should have stood in line and cast in your opinion in the ballot box.