Wednesday, October 17, 2007
One more elderly person for Alex Tabarrok's grandma to think about
Apparently there lives in Coimbatore a certain Malayali gentleman who has a curious proposition to make. Said gentleman is single, has no ‘issue’, of reputedly very sound body, very very sound mind, and is 85 years old. But what makes his case interesting is the fact that he lives in a good part of town and owns what has been described by a reliable acquaintance as a rather neat, large flat.
This flat is said to be worth Rs. X Lakhs. Now, our nice man is ready to sell it for an incredible Rs. X-n Lakhs (n is also negotiable). Alas, to provide Navjot Singh Sidhu, who's conspicuously unemployed these days, some fodder, the octogenarian has an obligatory ‘but’.
"I shall generously chop off a few Lakhs from the contract and you pay me right away, but you can take possession of the house only when I have passed on.", says he.
This immediately struck me as an opening for a potentially absorbing tale. Sordid, maybe excruciatingly dense. Probably darkly comic, or thrilling even.
Briefly forgetting how he could draw up a legally valid contract for such an arrangement, think about this. Would you go in for this deal? If you do go for it, then what would be the terms of your contract? How would the two of you enforce it?
Also, help me here. I'm just incredibly curious as to what the hell a single old man wants to do with the Rs. X-n Lakhs he wants immediately.
Labels: Economics, Other, Storytelling
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The Spinning Girl
Pre-empting XKCD
Labels: Avocations, Humour
Thursday, October 04, 2007
I ravvu de Japaneesu!
Do not miss the commentators!
Labels: Links, Tech, Video, WOW
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
மக்கள் தீர்ப்பு
"At the fast venue, DMK and alliance leaders were critical of the Supreme Court observations with one of them observing the court had ‘crossed its jurisdiction’.
"Bandh was a democratic form of protest and there was no constitutional breakdown, CPI leader D Raja said, adding that the majority of the government can be only tested on the floor of the legislature.
"Senior DMK leader and Union Minister TR Baalu wondered whether the courts were giving the right decisions. “Why would there be appeals or higher benches if every judge was right?”
— A bunch of idiots
Whereas
"For centuries efforts had been directed towards limiting the powers of government; and the gradual development of constitutions served no other purpose than this. Suddenly it was believed that the control of government by elected representatives of the majority made any other checks on the powers of government unnecessary, so that all the various constitutional safeguards which had been developed in the course of time could be dispensed with.
"Thus arose unlimited democracy — and it is unlimited democracy, not just democracy, which is the problem of today.
…
"The greatest and most important limitation upon the powers of democracy, which was swept away by the rise of an omnipotent representative assembly, was the principle of the ‘separation of powers’.
— F. A. Hayek, Whither Democracy?, 1978, The University of Chicago Press.
Labels: Law, Libertarianism, Politics
Of dying Elephants with names beginning in A
Jumbo Arundhati to be put to sleep | Your Say
Aswattama, Arundhati... why is it always the elephants that have the misleading names. For a moment I was happy. Now I feel guilty for that!
Monday, October 01, 2007
Nothing new
But it hurts a little to be repeatedly reminded that I voted to power some utter idiots! T R Baaaa(aa)lu is my MP... woe!
