12 Apr
I’m writing this post in anger. In disgust. At the sheer lack of strategic vision shown by Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Daniel Vettori. What the hell was he thinking when he threw the ball to Virat Kohli for the 19th over, with 43 required off two overs? Yes, there had been a miscalculation earlier which [...]
Posted in arbit, cricket, economics, ipl, sport by: skimpy
5 Comments
24 Dec
After my drastic and dramatic weight loss in late 2009, my trouser size came down a notch, thus necessitating a massive shopping spree. The amount of shopping required then was marginally lowered because I’d retained some of my old pants, which were of the lower size. Now, the same question arose – whether I needed [...]
Posted in arbit, personal by: skimpy
2 Comments
16 Oct
In an article arguing why Kolkata is best placed to be India’s “best city” in another 20 years, Aakar Patel (I’ve started looking forward to his columns in Mint Lounge) mentions that there isn’t much corruption in the governments in Bengal (at both the center and city level). I don’t know the reasoning for this, [...]
Posted in arbit, economics, politics by: skimpy
1 Comment
24 Sep
I admit that of late one of the unifying themes of this blog has been “correlation”. So what does that have to do with quizzing? Thing is that while I absolutely enjoy qualitative logical reasoning (which is why I still quiz actively), there is very little in common in terms of areas of interest between [...]
Posted in personal, quizzing by: skimpy
1 Comment
07 Apr
Recently I read this joke, not sure where, which said that the American and Indian middle classes are feeling sad that they cannot take part in a revolution, unlike their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and other similar place. Instead, they can only vote There needs to be some sort of an antitrust law [...]
Posted in politics, randomness by: skimpy
4 Comments
09 Mar
(yet another post that is a few days late, but what the hell) In the recently delivered Karnataka State Budget, the government has budgeted funds for developing a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in Bangalore, in order to supplement the Metro and help ease the city’s traffic woes. The problem is that it’s a small [...]
Posted in bangalore, fundaes, infrastructure, politics by: skimpy
No Comments
23 Jan
The problem with a lot of touristy places is that there are no fixed prices. While this means that vendors can practice effective revenue management, it also means that it is easier for them to cartelize and take the tourists for a collective ride. I realized this during my recent trip to Sri Lanka where [...]
Posted in descriptive, economics, travel by: skimpy
No Comments
03 Oct
This is an idea that’s been in my head for a while. About whether it is possible to nudge people who normally travel in cars to use public transport by simply flooding the roads with buses. The motivation for this comes from the hassles associated with marking and enforcing bus lanes, a form of public [...]
Posted in bangalore, economics, fundaes, general, infrastructure by: skimpy
8 Comments
03 Jul
Often when we see players being sent off AND penalty kick being awarded in the event of an illegal stop of a goal-bound ball, Baada and I have thought that the punishment is too harsh. That for stopping one goal, the team effectively gives away the goal (conversion rate of penalties is high) and also [...]
Posted in economics, football, randomness, sport by: skimpy
4 Comments
08 Feb
So I was reading this article by Ajay Shah about administered pricing for petroleum. He does an excellent (though it gets a bit technical in terms of statistics) analysis about what could go wrong if the government were to free pricing of petroleum products. He mostly argues in favour of deregulation, and that is a [...]
Posted in business, economics, food, fundaes, politics, randomness, retail by: skimpy
4 Comments