should you do a phd?

both of you have mentioned that you may want to consider doing a PhD. it is a good thing to do, kids, but you should be sure of why you want to do it. I came across this article which gives a very good response to if you should do a phd. I have done phd's for professional reasons as well as personal reasons. All my PhD's had something to do with my job but I didn't get my job because of my phd…it was because of the skills I had. For example, i got a job in a s/w firm because i was able to code, do complex mathematical and statistical calculations and knew financial markets but then anybody with a MSc could get it as well.

so something to think about :)

and now i have to go to the library to work on my PhD..I have to go check out some ledgers dating back the 1700's :)

love

Baba



======


"I don't know if we'll have time to meet again before I go back but I just wanted to wrap up and give you some more thoughts on doing a PhD, if you are considering it

1. It's good to have an idea why you are doing it, for example to get a certain kind of job in industry, or to get an academic job, or just to expand your knowledge. I think all of these reasons are fine. Remember that professorships are very few and today, most PhDs can not continue to become full professors. In many fields, postdocs are in a way "cheap labour" relative to their skill level. I don't recommend doing a PhD just because you have nothing better to do ;-)
Over the years since the 70's or so, the number of PhD students has increased dramatically, as has the number of postdocs, but the number of associate/assistant or tenured professors has not really changed. It has become much, much harder to climb that academic pyramid that you may be dreaming of...

2. As I said it's important to have an advisor you like and respect... some advisors really like the scientific field and some are more political/administrators. Both kinds may work for you depending on your personal style, and both kinds may cause problems for you. It may be very hard to switch advisor once you start, depending on the country you do it in, and this person's name will be with you forever. It seems to me that in practice, almost everybody has a mixed experience with their supervisors, so there will be good and bad things, just like in any relationship. In many ways I was lucky with my supervisor, because he secured funding and allowed me a lot of research freedom, but he was a little bit too political for me to really respect him as a mentor (keep this comment to yourself please).

3. Whatever you do, almost nobody will earn more money at the end of their career because they had a PhD. On the other hand, you may get to do more interesting jobs, and some jobs indeed require a PhD. As an experienced software engineer, fortunately you will always be employable anyway (in today's market conditions) so you don't need to worry too much about your worst case situation. You will not be unemployed and forced to live with your parents. PhDs in history or philosophy are not that lucky in 2015...

4. (Advice for actually doing a PhD.) PhD students spend many years focusing on a very small part of their field, so it seems common to lose your sense of proportion during or after you've done it. I still think of a lot of things in terms of programming languages...
So if you ever do it, you should try to keep an outside life as much as possible (non-academic friends, physical exercise etc) to make sure your life doesn't become totally unbalanced.
Also, I would at that point recommend not taking your own publications and publication record too seriously, even though it may be a condition for graduating.. ("at least three high level publications" or something similar might be an expectation). Your supervisor will always push you to publish, since he/she gets credit for it, for free. I worried way too much about this, which actually hurt my results and caused a lot of pain. Just like in love, the only way to win that game is not to be too desperate ;-)"

Which is the strongest religion?

So to determine which religion is the strongest, subject the adherents to bench press experiments. I was laughing helplessly when i read this research paper. Only in India.

For the purpose of the study Two hundred ten (210) men from Buddhist monastery, Vaisanab and Tantrik(seventy from each group), age ranged from 30 to 35 years were selected randomly as the subject for the study from Uttar Pradesh, India. All the subjects belong to three different religion of India. The subjects were categorized into three groups, namely group (A) Himalayan Buddhist (B) Vaisanabs and (C) Tantriks. All the subjects chosen for the study had completed at least five years in their respective religious field. To measure Upper Body Muscular Strength YMCA Bench Press Test was used. To compare the significance difference in mean One-Way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with LSD Post Hoc test was employed at 0.05 level of significance and it was found significant for all the three groups. In Post Hoc compassion of bench press test Buddhist and Tantric, Buddhist and Vaisanab and also Tantric and Vaisanab have significance differs among each other’s.

National Adjunct Walkout Day: Should We Feel Sorry for Adjuncts?

Having had taught in several universities in several countries, son, this is indeed an issue. Most professors don't like to teach. They prefer to research. The boring job of teaching is frequently pushed on to adjunct professors or doctoral or postdoctoral students. You yourself have been undergoing this phenomena.

Personally speaking I think academic staff need to do all three activities ideally, research teaching and administration. But what happens if that as usual specialisation happens. Some people do more in one area. And as economics will predict, their earnings will differ.

And yes people pile into doing a PhD without thinking through the implications. If you do a PhD from a good school and in a good area then you're good. But think about it. I'm embarking on a history PhD. If I'm lucky I'll get a job as a school teacher. Forget teaching in a university. Even on an adjunct basis. How many students want to study history eh? So sadly, this area is suffering. Finance. Mathematics. Economics computer science all top of the heap.

Anyway. We are but the choices we make son.

Love

Baba

National Adjunct Walkout Day: Should We Feel Sorry for Adjuncts?
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/02/national-adjunct-walkout-day-should-we-feel-sorry-for-adjuncts/
(via Instapaper)

---

Thesis: Adjuncts are victims of their own bad choices.

Caveat: Universities are run badly. Brown was run like the Russian government, and Georgetown is run like the Catholic Church. Universities suffer from a wide range of public choice-type problems. I mean it. I’ve even given public lectures (e.g., at a SUNY school last month) elaborating on the what and why of their persistent wrongdoing and mismanagement. Everything below is written with that in mind.

Can Google Data Help Predict French Youth Unemployment?

Its an indication of how technology is changing our lives when Google data can help give some fascinating insights into unemployment. Here’s the paper.

According to the rising “Google econometrics” literature, Google queries may help predict economic activity. The aim of our paper is to test if these data can enhance predictions
for youth unemployment in France. As we have on the one hand weekly series on web search
queries and on the other hand monthly series on unemployment for the 15 to 24-year-olds, we use the unobserved components approach in order to exploit all  available information. Our model is estimated with a  modified version of the Kalman filter taking into account the twofold issues of non-stationarity and multiple frequencies in our data. We find that including Google data improves unemployment predictions relatively to a competing model without search data queries

Don't want to go too deep into the paper, you wouldn't be interested in my views of Kalman filtering, but the idea of “nowcasting” and “Google econometrics” is very interesting and new, no?

I tried Google econometrics out with a bank name. Here’s what the results show

Fascinating eh? Google searches rose steadily, peaked when the crisis was really hitting its peak and then slowly came down and has plateaued.

where are the searches coming from?

how curious. UK I can understand but from Mexico, India, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia?

It also allows you to view by city

here’s the listing by city in another graph

Poplar?? lol

some very interesting trends :)

Why women leave science?

One explanation: ;

And another

Some reflections on the financial crisis

I was thrown into the wolves yesterday. In an academic conference full of economics, finance, politics, philosophy and journalist professors from across the world, this uglyass suited fat old git of a banker shambled in and decided to bollox up their lives. Apparently, for the past three years, they were debating how to fix the finance sector and then decided to invite me in to discuss the financial crisis, (i) what has gone wrong, (ii) what needs fixing, and (iii) how to put things right. Here are some thoughts.

• Andrew Lo compared the search for reasons and fixes to the Financial Crisis to Rashomon, I would much rather talk about the Blind Men of Hindoostan. We are observing this from London, so the reasons are bit broader than what has been summarised nicely by Andrew Lo and others.
• What's the problem and what's a symptom? Low interest rates? loose fiscal and monetary policy? housing bubble? subprime mortgage issues? liquidity and solvency issues? originate to distribute? fraud? reward and compensation policies in investment banking? repeal of Glass Stegal? Hubris? Too big to fail? regulatory failure? corporate governance? capital structure discussions - preference setting off debt against tax versus equity, regulatory capture and political contributions, inequalities? global capital imbalance and the dollar as reserve currency? govt push for housing - Freddie and Fannie mae, BSDs and Masters of Universe, risk transfer and risk management policies?
• What needs fixing? All of the above
• How to put things right? capital adequacy - Basel III, recapitalisation of banking system, the breakup of investment and retail banks - reintroduction of glass steagal, improved regulatory oversight, changes in comp policy, CoCo bonds, living wills, shrinking banks, etc. etc.

The above were my notes. So after the initial discussions, then questions came fast and furious. Im afraid I was very disruptive. Somebody asked me if the additional regulations were appropriate. I said, yes, the answer is yes. Is it going to avoid another crisis? No, its like saying passing laws against murder and theft will stop murder and theft. Plus all those regulations are actually increasing the possibility that there will be less money to go around.

A professor asked me, what should we teach our students? I said, I don't know about students as I am not a full fledged academic, but I look at my son and tell you the four things I taught him

1. How to survive on his own, cooking, killing, hunting, growing vegetables, DIY, etc.
2. Personal financial management, how to manage his own finances and how to be self sufficient, prudent with money, etc.
3. I have taught him that he needs to have a technical skill, something that he can rely on somebody paying for that all through his life. That can be coding, that can be accounting, that can be engineering, that can be copywriting, something that somebody can and will pay for what you do. If nothing else, learn to dig ditches.
4. Finally, learn how to sell. Everybody sells. Everybody. Some sell services, some sell ideas, some sell products, some sell themselves. Everybody needs to learn how to sell.

The last thing pisses me off, why don't business schools teach selling? eh? eh? There are about 150 business schools here in the UK. Do you know how many business schools teach sales? THREE. Warwick, Cranfield and Portsmouth. WTF? What do you think business is if its not revenue generating and selling? MORONS! I met with some people in Cranfield and I was pleasantly surprised to note their lovely sales programme. I am going to do something with them..

But the bottom line I told the conference. Remember that banking is an intermediary. And stop ascribing morality to economics. It takes money from people who have excess and gives it to who need it. If you want to reform it, then remove the need for banking.

When people were fulminating about derivatives, I asked a question, how many people here have insurance? Why are you taking insurance? Go home and stop taking insurance. If you cant, then dont fulminate against other people who are looking to protect their assets. But but, you cant slice and dice and and and. I said, you guys are confusing the underlying desire to protect with an instrument. Its like saying you need to ban ferraris because they drive too fast. That’s not going to change the underlying need to protect. People will find some other way to protect themselves.

Then I scared the crap out of them and said, you guys are all having academic pensions and think you are safe from the markets, eh? Let me wake you up, each and every one of you is going to have a poor retirement because there is no money in the pot. The deficits will be made up by the governments squishing your returns and asking you to pay more and work longer. That scared the crap out of them. heh.

My final point was, let the market be (I said I was a libertarian and that prompted some air whistling through the teeth and when I said that that was based on my religious principles – my Indian heritage tells me that I am responsible for my salvation through my deeds – that confused the heck out of these chaps, lol, they cant really complain about my religious beliefs while being against the tea party like / ayn ryandian individual rights business..hehehehehe). You complained about structured products, well, the crash made sure that pretty much a majority of people making and selling structured products have lost their jobs and the products arent there.

But bottom line is, we cannot live like this, spending too much, consuming too much. I said that we are heading for another crash as every sector of the economy, individual, household, corporate and government is trying to deleverage, so there is no demand. Don't assume that the business cycle is banished. So demand zero. ANy external shock like war or natural catastrophe is going to screw up our lives. Which I will welcome, I am hoping for a crash. Pretty much, I am happy to plonk down some money that in the next 5-7 years, we will have another crash/recession. And then hopefully people will wake up and reduce spending, reduce demands, reduce consumption, reduce materialism.

Here’s a great cartoon.

Academic Publications

My journey begins

I’m getting tired now, more accurately bored. Plus the lack of access to a good library is doing my head in, lol. So I'm thinking about going back to research. Here is a letter which i wrote to few professors to see if there is any interest. As it so happens, I am getting about 50% interest, lol. So over the next few weeks and months, I will be meeting some professors to see if this works out. I am restricted to London universities unfortunately, there are some good schools outside London like in Cambridge, Oxford and further afield. (heh, Kannu got a shock of his life when I told him that there is a possibility that we both might be studying in the same university, he didn't like the joke, lol, if I'm not wrong, there was a movie with this theme as well).

 

Dear Professor X,

My apologies for contacting you out of the blue. I got your reference from the university website. This relates to my desire to explore the opportunities to read for an MPhil (part time) in History. As I noticed from the website, you have an interest in this area of Colonial Indian / British history, hence the request for a meeting.

To introduce my interest briefly: my interest is in the area of company and economic legal history. From the little that I have read about this topic, I think that when the British arrived in India and started to take / were lumbered with the judicial responsibility of adjudicating commercial disputes in places like Bengal, Madras and Bombay, they faced an unpalatable situation of trying to reconcile an inappropriate British legal tradition from the local counties; a mix between Hindu laws and various Sharia laws. Combined with the inconsistency arising between the British tradition of case law versus the common law perspectives of say Sharia, it was quite an extraordinary legal landscape that corporates faced. Starting very slowly from around 1726 but gaining much steam and traction from 1857 onwards, the legal framework in India changed significantly as the British Raj replaced the Mughal Empire's and Hindu legal systems. This seems to have been fairly well researched and well known till independence in 1947 or a even later till the  right to appeal to the UK Privy Council as the court of final appeal was repealed in 1950.

The other angle to this is the British East India Company, which was the reason for and the cause of many a development in the global company law framework. For example, the concept of Royal Charters for British firms helped the British East India Company, but the examples of the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip Mania made sure that royal charters were a very inefficient way of organising firms. On the other hand, the Sharia based partnership / profit sharing structures in Mughal India or sole proprietorships in Hindu commercial frameworks had an entirely different intellectual, social, political and historical backgrounds. When these three totally different corporate law systems collided, much legal heat and some much needed light was generated. Interestingly enough, the Economist in December 2006 identified the rise of joint stock companies in the west as one of the major reasons why western economies and societies moved ahead of the Middle Eastern economies, which were still guided by the Sharia based corporate structures.

In my early readings, I seem to have found that how this process of Indian law transformation influenced British corporate legal history and vice versa has not been researched as yet. This transformation also had an impact on the corporate legal history of all the other countries which were colonised by the United Kingdom, ranging from the West Indies to Australia.
So my preliminary research questions would be as follows:

• What were the major areas where there were significant intellectual, legal, religious and historical differences between the imported British Legal system and the domestic Mughal Sharia legal systems in India between 1726 and 1950 relating to commercial cases?
• How did the legal system handle three competing legal frameworks (British, Mughal Sharia with its multiple schools of Islamic jurisprudence and a very amorphous Hindu legal system) for commercial cases?
• Due to the changes implemented in India, did any changes in British legal history happen to ensure consistency and legal equality between India and UK?
• How did British - Indian trade get impacted with consequent angles on investor protection, consumer protection, etc.
• What did these mean for the development of company law and
  corporate governance in the 19th and 20th century? Can we say that the corporate law developments in British India had a strong impact in British Corporate law developments?

Data is available in Indian archives (in New Delhi, Calcutta, Bhopal, Mumbai, etc.), British archives (India Office, Kew Garden, etc.). I am proficient in English, Hindi, Bengali, Sanskrit and I would also like to resume my studies in Farsi if this research goes ahead, which should allow me to research Mughal court documents in Indian archives if required.

Why the History Department and not other schools such as the Law or Business School? Unfortunately, the Law department requires prior experience / qualification in law which I do not possess. The Business Schools are not that interested in the arcane aspects of corporate law history combined with colonial history and religious law making. Religious or Islamic schools are too limiting and do not have the breadth. The History department allows one to explore all these elements with multiple dimensions.

Why me and why a part time MPhil? I am a banker with an interest in history. I am working in a bank, which has an amazing archive going back several hundred years. Just to keep my mind in gear and for it not to fall in disuse, I would like to spend some of the evenings and weekends studying this fascinating area. I have prior qualifications in mathematics (bachelor degree), financial economics &  computer science (graduate degree), but my academic exposure to history is relatively low. I would convert this missive into a formal research proposal, but thought it might be beneficial to have a preliminary chat first. I will also fund my studies personally.

If you think I have addressed this wrongly or some other professor would be more appropriate, I would appreciate it if you could let me know appropriately.  If I can provide any further information, please let me know and looking forward to hearing from you.

So I had my first meeting with a good professor at LSE. Fascinating stuff, but he has given me work to do, I need to create a proposal and that will mean hitting the BL, India Office and Kew Archives. Fun times, poking around in mouldy buildings and dusty archives. So from next weekend onwards, its fun times at the library

The Public Philosopher - Should a banker be paid more than a nurse?

I was invited to this lecture by Professor Michael Sandel who is a professor of political philosophy at Harvard. Unfortunately I cannot make this lecture as I have to go to a charity fund raising dinner where we are trying to raise some dosh for one of my charities. So I figured, why dont I pen down my thoughts here specially I belong to one side of the argument. Bit disjointed but here we go.

• I look forward to the next lecture where we will be debating “Should a nurse be paid more than a street cleaner”. A street cleaner seems to earn £6-8/hour which roughly equates to £14,000 per year on the higher rate of £8/hour. A nurse on an average band 5 makes about £24,000 per year. So this argument should be interesting indeed.
• Now for some theory. We are all basically adding value of some kind or other. Whether I am a prostitute, an engineer, a pilot, farmer, parent, a hair dresser, politician, banker, or what have you, we are all adding some value of some kind.
• We take something, plonk in something additional, create a slightly different thing, and then pass it on. In return, we get some dosh. This argument holds true for all human economic activity.
• So then the question comes, what is this value? So what are the numbers we are talking about? The UK’s official graduate careers website says that a typical salary after 10-15 years for a banker is about £50000-100,000. Assuming the top number, a banker gets about 4 times a nurse’s salary. So does a banker add four times the value of a nurse?
• To answer that question, we need to know how do we ascribe a value to this value addition. Again, very simplistically, we first find out what is the value of the inputs. Then we try to find how many and what kind of “stuff” you will require to add value for a range of outputs with different values. Take a simple example. I have some sand and some more chemical stuff. These are my inputs to make glass. Its cheap as sand, yes? Then we have to figure out what outputs we need? Glass can be used to make different bits and stuff. For example, this LEICA APO TELYT-R 1:5.6/1600mm lens is worth about 2.02 million dollars. Its glass. A glass tumbler of this kind will cost you £7. Now both of these were made by glass makers. But as you can appreciate, the outputs can vary tremendously. So lets ask a blunt question. Will you pay the same amount for the LEICA technician as for the tumbler glassmaker ? If you do, I have a great bridge for sale for you.
• Now the above glass example was very simplistic, but there was a reason for this. I showed that despite the inputs and outputs being comprised of the same, the value added by the intervening labourer (LEICA technician versus tumbler glassmaker) is seriously different. Also you need to figure out how many LEICA technicians are available versus glass makers. How long it takes to train them, etc. etc. as the laws of demand and supply comes into the picture as well to do the valuation.
• And before you think this is a new debate as this blog post seems to think, the question of a just price has a very old pedigree including people like Thomas Aquinas who talked about usury. Fascinating, how these new arguments just are rehashing of old ones. Btw, I dont think these new chaps would appreciate that they are simply following some very dodgy religious teachings which you can see in Islam and Christianity and Judaism and and and.
• So lets get a bit more complicated. How do we compare the salaries of a banker with a nurse? Based upon how we are calculating it, we should compare the inputs, the outputs and the intervening value added, eh?
• So who wants to take a shot at trying to figure out how to compare the inputs to the banking industry versus the inputs into the healthcare industry? Does the phrase “comparing apples and oranges” come to mind? In this particular case, we seem to be comparing apples (nurses) with a black scholes equation (bankers).
• You can quibble about the differences in value of the outputs (a banking system versus a nursing system, a loan versus a healthy patient) or what have you, but then that argument very soon descends reductio ad absurdum to whether we need to have a capitalist system which measures value by money. Wake me up when you have decided to measure value with cowrie shells.
• In my view, therefore, I have better things to do than to sit there listening to silly arguments. If I had time to do that, i will sit and listen to my daughter tell me how I should cook brownies every day.

I will leave you with this great little clip about glass.

Academic Translation Guide

lol

Professors with Tattoos have higher approval rates

The abstract:

128 undergraduates' perceptions of tattoos on a model described as a college instructor were assessed. They viewed one of four photographs of a tattooed or nontattooed female model. Students rated her on nine teaching-related characteristics. Analyses indicated that the presence of tattoos was associated with some positive changes in ratings: students' motivation, being imaginative about assignments, and how likely students were to recommend her as an instructor.

Source: "Perceptions of a tattooed college instructor." from Psychol Rep. 2010 Jun;106(3):845-50.

Hmm, i find this interesting, is this because the professor ties in with the student’s own rebellious phase? plus imagination? plus the sexy factor? Interesting, but I don't think there will be a rash of professors making a beeline for the tattoo parlour, do you?

Indians are incapable of History

While reading this research paper, I was constantly struck by the impact that colonialism has had on the historical development in the world. Whether we are talking about European Colonialism or Islamic Colonialism or American Colonialism or what have you, how you view history is dependent upon what colonisation you were faced with.

Some nations take up the colonisers ideology whole heartedly (look at the countries who have become Christian or Muslim due to the spread of that religion, or the Norman colonisation of UK, or the European colonisation of USA and and and) while some fight back.

Some sentences in the research paper made me think. I quote:

Ever since G.W.F. Hegel, Orientalist scholars had considered Indians to be incapable of history. India’s lack of historical consciousness,they reasoned, was a direct consequence of spiritual excesses. Indeed, the absence of historical consciousness could be directly attributed to the priestly caste’s need to control and to impose their religion on their naïve followers. As Theodore Goldstücker wrote in 1864, “When, by priestcraft and ignorance, a nation has lost itself so far as to look upon writings like these as divinely inspired, there is but one conclusion to be drawn: it has arrived at the turning-point of its destinies. Hinduism stands at this point…” (73). But all was not lost. “The causes of the gradual degeneracy of Hinduism,” Goldstücker reasoned, were no “different from those to which other religions are subject, when allowed to grow in the dark” (74). “In Europe, religious depravity received its check when the art of printing allowed the light of publicity to enter into the book whence her nations derive their faith” (74). So, too, “no other means” was capable of imposing a “check” on it “in India than the admission of the masses to that original book which is always on their lips, but which now is the monopoly of the infinitesimal fraction of the Brahminical caste able to understand its sense” (74).

As I said, perhaps its this excess of spirituality made India resist the colonisation of external parties, whether the religious kinds (Islam, Christianity) or the temporal kinds (British, French, Turkic)?

Besides this, the links between the silly Aryan Invasion theory and National Socialism hasn't really been explored in the public arena for the common man (Is this the reason behind the fascination Indians have for Mein Kampf?). There are some fascinating links between what Subash Chandra Bose did with the Nazi’s (he was a bit of a fascist himself), the linguistic arguments (Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit etc. are considered to be part of the Indo European Linguistic family)

Other than that, the article was discussing the German Indological academic framework and history. Might be a bit esoteric for most, but then academic debates are like that. I end with a quote:

“ACADEMIC politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” This observation is routinely attributed to former Harvard professor Henry Kissinger. Well before Kissinger got credit for that thought in the mid-1970s, however, Harvard political scientist Richard Neustadt told a reporter, “Academic politics is much more vicious than real politics. We think it’s because the stakes are so small.” Others believe this quip originated with political scientist Wallace Sayre, Neustadt’s onetime colleague at Columbia University. A 1973 book gave as “Sayre’s Law,” “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue—that is why academic politics are so bitter.” Sayre’s colleague and coauthor Herbert Kaufman said his usual wording was “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.” In his 1979 book Peter’s People, Laurence Peter wrote, “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.” He called this “Peter’s Theory of Entrepreneurial Aggressiveness in Higher Education.” Variations on that thought have also been attributed to scientist-author C. P. Snow, professor-politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and politician Jesse Unruh (among others). According to the onetime editor of Woodrow Wilson’s papers, however, long before any of them strode the academic-political scene, Wilson observed often that the intensity of academic squabbles he witnessed while president of Princeton University was a function of the “triviality” of the issues being considered.

Men and Women earning PhD’s

Curious, eh? In India, when I was doing my first in economics, there were hardly any women candidates. In the comp science/mathematics/finance world in Manchester, very few. In political and war studies at Kings College London, there were some but not that many either. Why is that that these “hard” subjects dont appeal to women? Or for that matter, why is that men arent interested in Psychology, English Literature etc.?

Can perfectionism kill you?

The major hypothesis of the study was that perfectionism as a personality trait, along with the five-factor personality traits and dispositional optimism, is strongly associated with mortality in late life. After baseline assessment of health and personality traits as predictors of mortality, 450 participants were followed over a period of 6.5 years. Consistent with our hypotheses, findings demonstrated that risk of death was significantly greater for high scorers in perfectionism and neuroticism, compared to low scorers at the time of base line. Conversely, risk of death was significantly lower for high scorers in conscientiousness, extraversion and optimism. Implications for health and longevity are discussed.

Source: "Perfectionism and the Five-factor Personality Traits as Predictors of Mortality in Older Adults" from Journal of Health Psychology

from here.

hehehehehehehe. dont worry, be happy

Redistribute GPA scores

Heh, very snarky indeed. For those who like redistributive taxation and think its fair, this was their reaction when asked about redistributing their GPA scores for students who are not able to study or whatever ending with low GPA scores. Watch the reaction. Its very interesting.

Support for Suicide Terrorism

So what is the relationship between the support for terrorism in public opinion and the relationship with terrorist attacks? Guess what these researchers found?

We find that justification in public opinion for suicide terrorism increases terror attacks on people in countries that are unfavorably regarded. There is a robust positive relationship between the share of the population in a country that at the same time justifies suicide bombings and has an unfavorable opinion of another country, and terrorism originating from the former country.

In other words, there is statistically significant evidence that public opinion does encourage terrorism. In a way, this is a d’oh statement. Terrorism thrives on the oxygen of publicity and then there are various assorted morons and idiots who will support terror as a way to punish other countries. What they do not understand (well, not surprising because its usually religious nutters and other ideologically screwed up people who do this) is that terrorism usually devours them.

So what do people from s Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, Mali, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Palestine and Nigeria respond to the PEW survey question?

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets
are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter
what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind
of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never
justified?

On average 23% justified suicide terrorism, with a minimum of 8% support and an astonishingly high 70% maximum support. Highest was in Palestine, Nigeria and Mali, Lowest up was in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. Surprising eh? Palestine I can understand, but Nigeria, Mali, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia? The last 3 countries are like factories for terrorists. Some other facets, Nigerian Women were showing more support for suicide bombing compared to men. Here’s the graph

There was another question which was asked, about which countries are most unfavourable to the respondents. Some of the results for the most unfavourable and least unfavourable are amazing and bewildering.

So Bangladesh actually has the lowest unfavourable opinion towards India! and highest towards USA. And what on earth is happening in Ethiopia with least Japan and high Iran? USA seems to be the most hated country across these muslim nations. Extraordinary but what is worrying is the extraordinarily high level of support for suicide bombing and terrorism in all these countries. The next time somebody says that terrorist support in Muslim countries relate only to a very small minority, do ask about the definition of a very small minority because a minority which ranges from 8-70% with an average of 23% aint such a small minority by any stretch of imagination.

People who buy Porsches want a quick roll

in the hay…Well, d;’oh. See here.

Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are following a lower investment (vs. higher investment) mating strategy and is triggered specifically by short-term (vs. long-term) mating motives. A fourth experiment showed that observers interpret such signals accurately, with women perceiving men who conspicuously consume as being interested in short-term mating. Furthermore, conspicuous purchasing enhanced men's desirability as a short-term (but not as a long-term) mate. Overall, these findings suggest that flaunting status-linked goods to potential mates is not simply about displaying economic resources. Instead, conspicuous consumption appears to be part of a more precise signaling system focused on short-term mating. These findings contribute to an emerging literature on human life-history strategies.

On the other hand, the black culture of wearing car sized jewellery or bling seems to be aiming back to the days of tribal behaviour in Africa. I quote:

As MC Schooly D put it, wearing gold “goes back to Africa.” Historians would agree, there is a connection, albeit underlying, between how African-Americans dress and the habits and customs of African ancestry.

“The sharper the dress,  the flashier the gold the more you are taking care of yourself and putting yourself ideally in proximity to important people and even to the divine,” said Robert Ferris Thompson, a renowned professor of African and African American Art who has dedicated his professional life to exploring the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world. “When the Portuguese first landed in Ghana the local chiefs with their gold and early versions of kente outdressed the greys.  Score:  Ghana 7, visitors 2.”

So that’s what I was missing, and here I am banging on about being sapiosexual…All I need is to get some bling around my neck and a flash car. Hmmm, ah! sod it.

Men and Women differ on household work

lol. This was amusing. D’oh research. I quote:

Research highlights

The division of household work is consistent with the equity theory.

  The females’ fair household work share is about 62%.

The males’ fair household work share ranges from 10% to 38%.

Husbands and wives do not concur with regard to the fair shares of household work.

The second fair household work shares are about 72% for females and 28% for males.

Specially the second last point, of course they wont concur. Here’s an interesting debate over housework and its value. And did you know, housework is worth £700 billion to the UK economy? at least in 2002. I quote:

The average hourly rate was £4.72, which varied between £2.59 for providing meals and £11.19 for providing housing. Selma James of the Wages For Housework Campaign told BBC News 24 her group thought women should be paid £500-£600 per week. She said women have worked for and are entitled to the wage.

"We also want the acknowledgement from society that the work we are doing is fundamental and important," she said. Housework counted for "basic work in society" she added. Within married or cohabiting couples with children where both partners work full-time, the woman spends nearly four hours a day on household work, and the man two hours and 20 minutes. In 2000, women spent 27% of their time on household production and 7% in paid work, compared to men's 20% on housework and 12% in paid work.

Erm, who will pay for this?

Doing Business in India

I seem to have forgotten about this till I was reminded during a discussion on books and book writing and stuff. Here’s the book that I contributed couple of chapters to this book edited by one of my friends, Pawan Budhwar.

The blurb says:

In response to the increasing interest in the growth and developments in the Indian economy, and the dynamic nature of the rapidly changing Indian business environment, this textbook is designed to provide a comprehensive guide to doing business in the Indian context.

Written by academic experts in their respective fields, this book is divided into three parts: the Indian business context, conducting business in India, and India and the world. Key information is presented on a wide range of topics, including:

• Both the shortcomings and opportunities associated with the Indian business environment
• The economic development model in India
• Critical skills for negotiation and incentives for foreign investors, including case studies of Italian companies that have entered the Indian market in different ways
• Business culture in India, including particular customs and etiquette

In addition to the pedagogical features, each chapter contains a set of key issues, and there is also a list of useful websites covering a wide range of business needs. This book introduces students to business in India, and will be also be of use to investors, organisations and managers who are already doing business, or intend to start one, in India.

I write about “living in India” and “Indian Multinational Abroad, tracking global footprints”. It is aimed at management students, can be used as a textbook and can be a primer for people who are, well, interested in doing business in India : )

New War Studies course which is totally free

Here’s a great little course, university level course on the lovely topic of war. Yes, it is a topic to be studied well, we humans end up doing quite a lot on and with it, no? We study old one, prepare for new ones, fight new ones, dropping people, money, ideology and stuff into this exercise. My professor said this:

 

"War makes headlines and history books. It has shaped the international system, prompted social change and inspired literature, art, and music. It engenders some of the most intense as well as the most brutal human experiences and it raises the fundamental questions of human ethics."
- Sir Lawrence Freedman

As the course blurb says:

Its purpose is to provide an introduction, or primer, to the study of war.

War Studies Primer is presented as a lecture curriculum at the university level. It is a free, non-credit, self-study course that consists of 28 lectures and over 1,400 slides and is updated on a yearly basis.

War Studies Primer is licensed for your use and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.