Freakonomics - The role of email chain letters in making our world a better place

New York: Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt, the duo behind the best-seller Freakonomics, the book that set to explore the hidden side of everything, in their latest blogpost have claimed they have discovered the solution to all the problems of the world. The rogue economist, who along with his journalist collaborator burst into international spotlight following the runaway success of his book which has till date sold nearly 3 million copies worldwide, has set the tongues wagging by making an astounding claim - that the key to making the world a better, happier and a prosperous place is the humble and ubiquitous email chain letter.

"For last few months we have been investigating the curious phenomena of the inexplicable popularity of chain mails and discovered that they are more popular in fast-developing, high-growth economies like India where almost everyone with an email id receives and forwards more than a 10-20 chain mails in a year. That set us thinking - Is it just a coincidence that Indians owning personal computers and having an email id also happen to be India's most prosperous and high-income earning group. We began to wonder if there was more to this phenomenon than anyone could have imagined." wrote Levitt.

"What could explain millions of highly educated, rational group of Indians, forwarding mails and power-point presentations that made wild claims of instant luck, immediate prosperity and qualitative life improvement all in matter of a week? Could it be that people who were forwarding such mails were actually enjoying increased luck and instant life improvement, which encouraged them to keep following the instructions on these chain letters obediently? We conducted a quick survey which confirmed our suspicions - that people with email ids who forwarded chain mails promising instant luck and prosperity mostly belonged to high-income groups and were indeed more prosperous than those without computers and email ids."

According to Levitt, "It became increasingly self-evident that the main reason for the dichotomy visible in Indian society - an ever-increasing group of highly educated an prosperous middle-class enjoying the benefits of a flourishing economy growing at the rate of 8-9% annually in sharp contrast with vast majority of poor people living in dire poverty - was that the former group had access to personal computers allowing them to actively participate in the business of chain mail forwarding."

The duo called upon governments of developing countries worldwide to invest heavily in computer literacy and in subsidizing personal computers to people in their countries living in poverty. "The chain email letter is a wonderful invention that has bestowed instant luck and prosperity to millions of people and has the potential of eradicating impoverishment, misfortune and ill-luck for ever from the face of the earth. Once the initial investment has been made in ensuing 100% computer literacy and accessibility of computers to everyone, luck-granting chain mails can be received and forwarded at zero cost, allowing all the inhabitant of our planet to enjoy luck, wealth and happiness."

"We have also found that the content of the chain letter makes no difference to the success of the letter in delivering luck and life-improvement to the forwarder of such emails. Any image of any god or goddess, inspirational message or good luck charm can be used to create a chain letter. The success of the letter depends on how enticing the promised rewards are."

In an effort to contribute towards making our world a better place, the maverick economist and the NYT journalist duo have designed their very own chain mail letter and have instructed all the readers of his book to forward it to everyone on their contact list.
 
     

Pritam: I'm a music importer & distributer, not a copycat

With around 15 films in his hand, Pritam Chakraborty is perhaps the busiest and amongst the most successful music director in industry right now. Not to forget one of the most controversial ones in the business too. Ever since itwofs.com, a website devoted to plagiarism in hindi film music, has exposed Pritam's blatant plagiarism, the composer has been recipient of virulent criticism from fans who have been disappointed to find out that virtually every hit song composed by him has been inspired from some Indonesian or Turkish number

In an exclusive conversation, the untalented music director bravely tries to stave off charges of plagiarism and insists that he fully deserves all the success he has enjoyed in his brief stint at music composing.

Almost every song that you have composed has been proved to have been a blatant copy of Turkish, Indonesian or Middle-Eastern tracks. One very popular website tracking plagiarism in bollywood has listed nearly 50 tracks that you have shamelessly copied from various bands worldwide. You have now replaced Anu Malik as Bollywood's # 1 copy-cat.

I've never denied that I lift foreign tunes for my movies. Yes, I've used Turkish and Indonesian tunes and will continue to use them in future too.

You don't sound very apologetic..

Why should I? Please don't use words like 'shamelessly' for the hard work I do to entertain the masses. I don't...

Hard work?

I don't consider using foreign tunes for my movies as copying. I'm actually doing a great service to the nation by exposing millions of Indians to world music, a kind of music they would have been never exposed to in the normal course of their lives. But due to the hard work I do spending countless hours listening to bands around the world, weeding out the average, poor, bad and terrible songs and selecting the best ones, music lovers in India get to enjoy some of the best music being composed all over the world.

                  

Isn't composing original tunes harder than merely copying them?

Not really. Composing original music requires natural genius, not much of hard work. Some of the best tunes ever have been composed in less than five minutes. But copying music entails hours and hours of listening to boring and tedious music in the hope of discovering a single gem. And when you hit upon a great track, it takes some amount of musical talent to realize immediately that you are listening to a winner track, which is really very difficult when you are listening to tracks in languages that you don't understand.

What about things like copyright? Don't the original composers deserve royalty from all the money you and your producers make?

Do you purchase every song of mine that you enjoy? Crores of people enjoy my music, but only a few thousand of them buy cassettes and CD's of my albums, while the rest download them illegally or listen for free on tv or radio.

Is it fair that original composers like Ismail Darbaar or Adesh Srivastava who refuse to plagiarise, should be out of work while a copycat like you should be raking in the moolah?

Who said life is fair? If you observe how real life works, you will notice that people who are original, people who invent new stuff and people who make new discoveries never make as much money as those who distribute their original inventions. Most of the inventors of the gadgets we use are anonymous, often poorly-paid scientists working quietly in their labs, while the big multinational corporations who manufacture, market and distribute their inventions are the ones making billions off their inventions

I'm rich and successful because I provide value-addition to my film producers and record companies by guarantying them superhit music. I import good-quality, high-standard music from Turkey, Indonesia and many other counties, process it in my studios, remake and distribute it to a large, music-hungry market like India.

Importing, distributing..you sound so business-like. Isn't it more like bootlegging? Aren't you afraid that the law will one day catch up with you? Doesn't the prospect of being sued by the original composers of your songs worry you?

You don't quite understand how it works. I only copy music whose copyright is held not by the artists, but by their music companies. My producers ensure that they sign up the same record company which holds the copyright for the music I copy. A record company like Sony when it signs up a Turkish or an Indonesian band would usually be able to sell their albums only in their home countries. But using my services, they are able to expand the market of such bands to a huge market like India and also an equally big NRI market.

Aah..So you work undercover for Sony Records too?

Yes, Sonny

PETA protests against PETA

Mumbai - Activists of animal rights and welfare organization, People for ethical treatment to animals (PETA), today staged a dharna outside the offices of  Poultry & Egg Traders Association (PETA) protesting against the cruel treatment meted out to chickens by the chicken-meat and egg industry.

 PETA India Chief, Anuradha Sawhney, issued a strong statement decrying the way chickens are kept and transported in small, cramped and unhygienic cages, in conditions that are inhuman and almost unchicken.

     
  An egg farm in Kalyan, Thane (left) where 7-8 chicken are crammed in tiny cages the size of a paper sheet. Do chickens face a future as horrific as that of Mumbai commuters (right)  who are crammed  in worse conditions, often forced to hang outside the compartments, many a times on top of the compartments due to lack of space inside.
 
"At present the poultry industry follows no standards and poor chicken are kept and transported in conditions that are almost as bad as that of commuters traveling by Mumbai locals. Like humans jam-packed in Mumbai's local trains, chicken are squeezed into tiny compartments with little breathing space. In egg farms six to seven chickens are crammed together inside cages the size of a sheet of paper, almost akin to the way Mumbai train commuters are stuffed inside the train compartments.

"Chickens who are raised for their flesh spend their entire lives in massive sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, similar to the way Mumbai rail commuters spend a major part of their entire lives in trains with tens of thousands of other commuters."

    
     Chickens crammed in sheds with tens of thousands of other chicken in conditions resembling human commuters from Mumbai in train compartments and railway stations.

"During transportation, they are locked in cages that are very poorly ventilated. A chicken needs at least one-fourth of its surrounding space to be ventilated, but most cages that are used to transport them don't meet these standards, causing cages to be heated up, resulting in acute discomfort to chicken." said Ms Sahney. "This nightmarish situation is not very different from the condition of Mumbai locals where ventilation is minimum resulting in rail compartments getting extremely hot causing sweating and intense discomfort to the rail commuters."

  
Chicken packed in poorly ventilated cages (left). Will the authorities wake-up to their plight only when their conditions become as bad as that of Mumbai rail commuters (right)?

"Unless, the government sets up a regulatory mechanism to prevent chicken-abuse due to these cramped conditions, it wouldn't be too long before the condition of chicken would worsen as much as that of Mumbai rail commuters." stated Anuradha Sawhney

Life: Vijay Golpade - A Life More Ordinary

In these Life columns, we feature ordinary people living extremely boring and ordinary lives with good cheer, a tinge of regret, an undercurrent of despair, but nevertheless with hope for something better however bleak their situations might be, however improbable the possibility of their hopes turning to reality.

This weeks antihero, our featured average joe, is Vijay Golpade, an amiable young guy who lives his life without a purpose plodding through life wherever it leads him. On a routine day, Vijay goes to work, chats with his workmates, comes back to his tiny shack, smokes a few ciggies, bumps into his neighbors, screams at his wife of nine years, scolds his kids, throws a few pebbles at barking dogs, hums a tune or two, drifts off to sleep. On a non-routine day, he goes to work, gets scolded by his supervisor, gets ragged mercilessly by his workmates, comes back to his tiny shack, smokes a few extra ciggies, bumps into his landlord, gets a dressing down from his wife of nine years, gets taunted by his kids, throws a few pebbles at dogs barking at him, gets irritated at everyone humming tunes, drifts off to sleep. On a special day, which mostly comes once a fortnight, sometimes just once a month, his wife agrees to fuck him.

In his 37 years of existence, Golpade has trudged his way through school, failed attempts to graduate from college, mountain of debt accrued from marrying off his sister after the untimely death of his father without leaving him a penny, string of poorly-paid jobs, a somewhat successful marriage and an occasional trip to Shirdi or a vacation at Lonawala.

"I like singing and I think with some training I might become a middling to good singer. Though my voice tends to crack while singing high notes, with little bit of training I might learn to sing at few octaves lower. Sometimes I wish I should audition for at least the 'Bathroom Singer' show, but my wife starts laughing hysterically every time I talk about it and pleads me to spare her the embarrassment" said Golpade to our reporter.

His wife, Premlata, denied that she laughs hysterically whenever he talks about auditioning for TV shows. "Yes, I do laugh off his ideas of becoming a television star and sometimes its difficult to control my laughter at his daydreams, but I would never intentionally hurt him by laughing hysterically at his face" she said with a smile, offering a plate of cookies. "I too do wish that he should do something with his life, set goals for himself, take charge of his life and try to make things happen. But when I talk about goals, I mean realistic, achievable goals that would better his life and help create a good future for our kids, not silly day-dreams of becoming a talent-show participant."

"I'm quite content with my life" countered Vijay, "Things could have been better, but my life isn't too bad. I got a job, a roof to live under, a good wife who serves me food twice a day, two great kids, friendly co-workers, tolerable boss, nice neighbors, my ciggies and my music"

Not true actually. A lousy job, just a roof and four walls, a nagging wife who denies him frequent fucks till he gets going in his life, two kids whose future looks as bleak as his own, nasty co-workers, brute of a boss, tolerable neighbors, ciggies which will eventually kill his lungs and delusions of musical talent.

But like every ordinary person living with hope and good cheer, Vijay Golpade likes to look at the glass of his life as half full, even as he finishes off another boring day failing to set any goal or achieve anything substantial.

Business: Times of India Group Unveils "Wealthex"

Mumbai - The Times of India Group Publications today announced the introduction of a special index which would record the rising and declining fortunes of India's topmost billionaires. This new group of indices which would be referred as 'Wealthex' would be subdivided into four sub-indices - Fabfive, TopTen, FantasticFifty & HotHundred and monitor the wealth generated and lost by India's top five, ten, fifty and hundred wealthiest people.

                     

Announcing the establishment of wealth based indices, Mr. Vivek Jain, Managing Editor of Times of India, said that wealth index would enable millions of star-stuck followers of India's business tycoons to keep abreast of the quantum of wealth generated or lost by them on a minute-to-minute basis. Explaining the equations of these indices, Mr Jain said that one index point would be equal to Rs.100 crores. This extremely simple model of index calculations would enable people to easily convert movement in indices to the equivalent value in crores of rupee and also allow easily determination of rankings of individual billionaires on the wealth charts.

When Mr. Jain was asked by a reporter why people would want to know the exact quantum of wealth owned by India's richest on a minute-to-minute basis, he answered, "The inspiration to develop a wealth index arose from our observation of traffic details of articles on our website featuring the statistics of wealth lost by India's richest during stock market crashes. We were surprised to see that such articles registered abnormally higher number of hits in comparison to our regular articles and news stories, indicating that our readers were tremendously interested in knowing how much of wealth erosion is suffered by India's wealthiest during stock market downturns."

"Intrigued by this observation, we launched deeper investigations through which we learned that our readers derived pleasure from learning about the extent of losses suffered by members of the billionaires club, especially at the time of sudden market crashes. One of our readers we surveyed for our investigations revealed - 'Knowing that market crashes do not spare even the richest of the rich, helps soften the blow of such crashes to a very large extent. When stock markets crash by 10-15%, my portfolio gets eroded by only a few lacs but such a crash wipes out thousands of crores from assets of Mukesh Ambani. Knowing that India's wealthiest suffer thousands of times more losses than me makes it considerably easier for me to digest the pain of loss of few lacs' - Our readers are a very queer lot unable to grasp that with assets running into tens of thousands of crores, the wealthiest people of the country don't actually suffer or even register any feelings of loss when faced with erosion of few thousand crores of their assets" Mr. Jain said with a sound that almost sounded like a snigger.

"With the introduction of Wealthex, we are hoping to fill the void generated when the action in the stock markets becomes too hot to handle and results in indifference towards sensex movements." added Mr Jain.

Mr. Jain admitted that focusing so much of attention on following the wealth of a few elites in a country where more than half the population survives on less than a dollar a day is highly unwarranted. "We had initially thought of developing an index that would monitor India's development, growth, per capita income levels and rise/decline in poverty levels. But we soon realized that indices focusing on macro-economic statistics are extremely slow-moving and highly predictable.Unlike stock market created booms and busts, which create & destroy thousands of crores of wealth in matter of days and weeks, development-based indices remain more or less static, moving by minute percentage points over longish periods of time."

"In these times of fast-paced life, people desire fast-moving action & ceaseless excitement, even if the action comes from other people who are moving fast in life and not them, even when all the excitement is happening in the lives of someone else. With this wealth index, we will provide people with fast-moving action & ceaseless excitement happening in the lives of the rich and the famous which we hope will fill the void generated from lack of action and excitement in their own lives." concluded Mr. Jain

M.F.Hussain to Paint Currency Notes featuring Amrita Rao

LONDON: Burdened by increasing needs and obligations, tempted by endless wants and desires, do you sometimes wish you had your own money-printing press minting as much money for you as you need? While printing India's legal tender illegally can put you behind bars for decades, there are a few privileged people who are adept at the art of printing...err painting money and minting crores without the fear of law catching up with them.

Legendary painter MF Hussain is one of those privileged few who can get away painting their own money legitimately and lawfully. In last few decades of his painting career, Hussain has painted money on canvas worth several crores of rupees. Announcing his latest money-painting venture from his residence in London, the exiled painter MF Hussain (exiled from India for reasons that have nothing to do with the currency painting racket he runs) today disclosed that he will be painting a new series of currency notes varying from denomination of Rs.75 lacs to Rs.1.50 crore. Each note will at the center of its canvas carry a very rough sketch of Bollywood actress Amrita Rao, his latest inspiration and muse.

Almost a decade back, Hussain had painted currency notes worth several crores featuring bollywood queen Madhuri Dixit. Although most of her fans were not able to recognize the rough sketches painted on the notes as that of Ms Dixit, Hussain's word carried enough weight to put all doubts to rest and everyone accepted without much objection, that the abstract outline of a female sketched on Hussain's currency notes was none other than the reigning diva of Bollywood. 
          
                                    
                                              
One peculiar feature about the Madhuri currency notes was that in almost all the sketches the actresses face (see below) was completely blank without facial organs like eyes, nose, nostrils, mouth, cheeks - organs that are regularly and without any exception found on faces of all humans. But even more peculiarly, this amazing absence of facial features, including eyebrows raised no eyebrows considering that only a few centuries back, Leonardo Da Vinci had painted a female face that was lacking only eyebrows, yet it raised a million eyebrows and to date continues to raise millions of eyebrows.

                         
          Series of currency notes painted by MF Hussain featuring outlines of a female specified as Madhuri Dixit

While people, even after all these centuries, are still wondering why Mona Lisa, the lady without eyebrows and eyelashes, had no eyebrow and eyelashes on her face, it is a surprise why art affectionados are not missing Maduri Dixit's eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, nose or mouth despite their very visible absence. It is not known why Hussain chooses to not paint facial parts and very surprisingly there have been no attempts to discover the reason for his disinclination to paint  them, though there are rumors and speculations galore.

According to one such rumor, MF Hussain never managed to learn painting the complexities of human facial features and his art teachers at JJ School of Art, Mumbai lost patience with him and threw him out of the institution after just one year of the course. (How Hussain from being almost a dyslexic painter went on to become India's foremost artist is another story that would need another article) Another rumor says that Hussain being a big fan of the maestro, the legendary renaissance genius, Learnado Da Vinci and his famous eyebrow-less Mona Lisa painting, reasoned that if painting a face without eyebrows can result in the painting reaching dizzying heights of fame and occupying the most unique position in art history, than painting faces without any facial features should similarly raise his stature and the stature of his paintings to such dizzying heights.

Whatever might be the truth of these rumors, the fact is that today, MF Hussain occupies a unique position in art & currency market, where the merits or demerits  of his art do not matter much. All Hussain has to do is to draw a few lines on his canvas, announce to the world what those lines represent and immediately his canvas gets converted into currency notes worth crores of rupees.

It is rumored that the sketches of Amrita Rao on his latest currency notes too would be devoid of facial features. Art lovers all over the world are expected to accept that the abstract outline of the female that will be sketched on the notes will be that of Amrita Rao. The actress is not expected to raise any objection at her facial disfigurement, nor is the lack of facial features expected to reduce the value of his notes from their quoted value.

Being God means never having to say - Sorry, I screwed up"

Ahoy Devotees, today I'm gonna have a honest talk with you, not as god to worshipers, more like buddy-to-buddy.

I love being your god. Its the most amazing feeling you can ever experience, a feeling of specialness that can come only from being a god. I love being omniscient, I love being so majestic, so damn superior to all of you. I love towering above the rest of you from my safe confines where you cannot touch me or harm me. I love being divine, infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful entity.

Am I really all that infinite, majestic, all-knowing, all-powerful divine entity? Not really! But since you guys can never know any better, I can pretend to be all of the above and get away with it (Laughter).

I'll be honest with you. I might be your creator, but I too can make mistakes. I too can can screw up things.

But the best part of being a god is never having to say "Sorry, I screwed up". Being God allows me to get away with anything and everything. I can mess up a trillion lives across innumerable sections of the universe and no one would be any wiser that it was I who made all the mess.

The privileges that I revel in are enormous. I can bask in the glory of being a god without being answerable for any of my actions. I hear zillions and zillions of cries all the time from the vast corners of my universe - Oh God, Why Me? Being God means being able to ignore their miserable whines to the point where they give up and conclude that I don't exist. Ho Ho Ho. Being God means freedom to spread confusion all around. I can erect towers of babels all over and transmit different messages to different groups of devotees and have them kill each other disputing which of the message comes from the true god.

Being God means never having to come up with honest answers for difficult questions. Why Thee, You ask? Pick from any of the below:
a) Coz you have been bad in past lives and your karma is catching up with you. Be good and you might enjoy a better life in your next birth.
b) Cheer up, dude! You will go to heaven when you die while the others (those who are having a blast) will go to hell
c) You are born on this planet to worship me. So stop your cribbing and worship me.
d) Life on earth is like attending a school. Stop watching the damned idiot box that is making you jealous of those having a time of their lives and concentrate on your lessons.
e) Be grateful for all the goodies I've provided you with. Be grateful for the tasty chicken curry you had last night. The chickens have had it worse
f) The reason for your suffering is hidden and mysterious. Only I'm supposed to know it. Your job is to get on with your life and worship me whenever you get free time. Do it with good cheer and you might one day know the reason for your suffering. Bad attitude will get you nowhere, Sonny.

Of course, there will always be some who will refuse to buy my answers. There will be always pests who will ask troublesome questions like if there is god and if god is good why there is so much evil? Why do tiny babies have to suffer? Why earthquakes? Why floods and tornadoes? But these buggers will never guess the real answer to these hard questions. They will keep asking these questions to all the wrong people who don't know any better and not getting satisfactory replies from them will conclude that I'm fiction, that I don't exist. Hah! Suits me well.

My friends, now you know the answer to these troublesome questions that have been plaguing mankind, monkeykind, reptilekind, angelkind, demonkind and all the rest of kinds since ages. The answer is that I screwed up! I screwed up badly! I screwed up massively! I made many miscalculations. Many fatal errors crept in my algorithms undetected by me till it was too late to rectify them.

But the good thing for me is that I don't have to repent when I've the power to make you repent. So keep on repenting for eternity or till I get bored of my universe, squash it with my big fist and end your collective misery, dear people.

Pssst. You don't have to believe a word of what I just channeled to you, my friends. My great foe, the Devil could have channeled all of the above to spread disinformation about me, to show me in poor light, to present me as less magnificent creature than I really am.

Being God means never having to be accountable for my own words.

Love & Peace
God (or Satan or any Schmuck you choose to believe in)
~~As channeled by neonsense