Small car collision statistics: Idiotic arguments

Over the past 10 days or so, we see “reports” about the safety of small cars. Like this “opinion” of wall street journal, where they conclude that small cars are inherently unsafe. WSJ did a follow up with this article.

There are two arguements against this idiotic arguement, one satirize their point of view by taking it to an extreme. The argument in this case is fairly straight forward. The crash tests conducted were between small cars and mid-sized sedans. These tests wer.e for head-on collisions, where the total momentum is higher.

For a fair comparision, of the severity of the crash results, it is important to compare the results for small to mid-size car collision to mid-size to full size cars, full size car to SUV and SUV to an 18 wheeler collisions. Furthermore, an accurate description of the so called “Safety” of various cars would be a head on collision with the highest momentum generating vehicle on the road.

So, we should see the results for a small car, mid-size car, full size car and a SUV against a fully loaded 18 wheeler. Ofcourse that detail would not be given out. If a small car was not “Safe”, then the safest mode of transportation would be an 18 wheeler for everyone.

That argument sounds ridiculous… because it is.

Ultimately every auto crash is a question of momentum, and momentum is generated by weight “and” speed of the vehicle. Then we would also have to consider probability theory. Questions related the probability of an occurance of this sort happening should also be considered before a judgement of the viability of small cars is made.

Any opinion degrading small cars and their so called “safety issues”, with out delving into these issues is utter rubbish and should be treated for what they are, idiotic arguments.

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What does the “Singing Sensation” Susan Boyle tell us about our Society?

I would be surprised if you have not yet heard or listened to Susan Boyle considering the saturation coverage this singing sensation has recieved. On the off chance that you haven’t, here it is…

You would agree that she has exceptional voice and unusual vocal range and she is evidently well trained. It is conventional wisdom now, that she is a great talent, that susan boyle is the kind of discovery that makes the efforts of shows like “Britian’s got talent” and “American Idol” worth while.

To realize the real reason she is a singing sensation, watch the video again and pay attention to the visuals of the audience as Susan speaks. Here are a some of things you notice.

When Susan says, “its a collection of villages” you can hear the audience sniggering, and when she says she is 47 (Remember the first time she was asked the same question when she wasn’t on stage, she says she is almost 48. Was there a friendly tip then to say she is 47?), the audience laugh quite loudly and the panel of judges roll their eyes.

If this isn’t humiliation, i don’t know what humiliation is!

Wait there’s more…

Simon Cowell asks her what is the dream and Susan says, “trying to be a professional singer”. The camera focuses on a good looking young women in the audience who does an exaggerated eye roll. And when susan says i would like to be as famous as Elaine Page, the camera again focuses on a woman in the audience who is commenting, we do not know about the comment itself but by this time you feel the vibe of the audience, which probably started off with the eye roll of the panel of those judges.

Everyone in the auditorium, including the panel of judges thinks she is a middle aged country women with high hopes of making it big, and they laugh at her and are already against her. But then she starts singing, and the expressions of the panel of judges show they don’t believe what they are hearing. As the song progresses, audience support moves to support her strongly and the camera man catches a couple of obviously elderly ladies and their reaction when comments were made by the panel. Towards the end, camera doesn’t show many young people but audience members who are either middle aged or elderly or do not fall into that “ideal” body type. The delightful laughter of relief on the face of a women towards the end of the comments, is the evidence of strong swing among the audience. Panel of judges acknowledge her obvious talent and a star is born.

To me, the story here is not about Susan Boyle, though obviously, she is the conduit which depicts what human society as a whole has transformed into. The story was depicted by that online producer, and cameramen of the program, who managed to build a narrative of the feelings and emotions of the audience and panel of judges regarding this women who thought she had a certain skill, but they were discriminating against.

Human beings as a society have become superficial. We no longer respect intellectual achievement, we don’t think being able to think in the abstract is an achievement, we do not think, as people age and gain experience they get more wise, we think people who do not live in an urbanized landscape can achieve anything. Did you notice the level of disapproval for people who are aged, people who do not come from an urban area, people who do not fall into the same pegion hole of body image face in our society?

Bryan Williams was being mild when he said, “She beat expectations and perceptions”. He was being polite, not to Susan Boyle, but to his own audience. Susan Boyle did not just beat expectations and perceptions, she managed to break through the unseen boundaries of a globalized world that descriminate aganist age, body image and rural people.

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Duplicity: Funny and intelligent; Unusual for a movie

I saw this movie a couple of weeks back but did not immediately write my review, since too often, the initial impression movies such as this make, pale with time. In this case, iam happy to report, time doesn’t do much damage.Tony Gilroy has already proved his abilities with the “bourne” movies and ofcourse with michael clayton. If any validation was needed this movie offers it.

The movie moves back and forth in time, which appears to be a gimmick initially (Remember, similar technique was used in michael clayton). But as the movie progressed, i realized the advantage of this layered narrative in keeping the viewer glued to proceedings. A linear narrative in this case would have been character and / or action driven and that would have drained the movie of the charm and intelligence it has in its current form. (In fact the movie does not have any “Action” sequences to speak of).

And ofcourse the humor. I have always been a fan of situational and dialogue based humor rather than the slap-stick variety and so i may be biased in my judgement. I thought, the situational and dialogue humor scripted were of very high quality and added to the intelligence of the movie.

Julia Roberts and Clive Owens give fantastic performances. Above mentioned non-linear narrative ensures that neither is caricatured. Both end up bringing a lot of charm to the drama.

I cannot sustain interest in feature films that i get to see, and usually i start getting bored in the first 10 minutes of the movie. In that time, i already know the probably story line and scene sequence and start waiting for either spectacular locales or set pieces of action or random humurous lines to get through to the end.

This is one of the few movies i can say, never lost its grip on my senses through out its duration.

Final Word: Highly recommended.

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Killer satire on the daily show

One of the best daily show episodes i saw…

Here it is and it is a must watch!!!!!!

Here is the best quote of this entire show:

“Isn’t the dow jones industrial average, just a short twitch numerical representation, of a bunch of guesses, about other people’s assumptions, about the financial well being of, an arbitrarily chosen group of 30, out of ten’s of thousands of possible companies?”

That or some thing similar to that is what i would expect any sensible financial journalist to say, but there aren’t too many out there who can say and keep their job. Especially not on CNBC, the network which is taken to the cleaners in the first segment of this episode.

Then this insight, which i think is one of the best thoughts about the bailouts of all these banks and insurance companies. It takes a total outsider to come up with some thing like this, and this is out of the box thinking. Regardless of this not being considerate of accounting practices and what not, this statement shows us how legislators should start thinking…..

“We are paying billions of dollars to the people who insured those crappy loans, and we are paying billions of dollars to the people who made those crappy loans. Aren’t we paying for the same crappy loans twice?”

Jon Stewart is probably the best news commentator out there, all because, no one takes the court jester seriously, but by virtue of that immunity, a court jester can criticize the king and tell the truth and get away with it.

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Media in general and CNBC crowd in particular – You Know Who’s…

If you were watching CNBC or even follow MSNBC, you would have noticed this idiotic rant from one of CNBC’s so called market analysts.

Earlier we had Jim Cramer had a similar rant.

Notice how in the earlier instance, jim cramer was ranting about Ben Bernanke was doing all the wrong things and should cut interest rates and so on and on and on…. The reason mentioned is… People will loose jobs. Who are these people? It is those same market traders and other financial market workers.

Now that they have had their bailouts, “and” recieved their bonuses for the year, and assured of future bailouts as well, these people and their cheerleaders in CNBC want no bailout to home owners!

Rich, isn’t it?

When these guys get hit by a bus, it is a problem of the whole world and government and legislators and tax payers should bail them out, but when others get hit by a bus it is a question of personal responsibility. Even if those others, were suckered in by these very same wall street types into all those ALT A mortgages, sub-prime mortgages and liar loans.

What happened to all those questions of philosophy when house voted out the initial bailout and the stock market tanked? What happened to these rants when wall street executives cut sweet heart deals to pay themselves bonuses even as the tax payers were pumping in the money to save their companies? Ofcourse, this CNBC crowd probably never ventures out of their comfort zones of stock market trading floors and well appointed studio’s. No wonder this particular “reporter” waves his hand at all those traders to say “this is america”. He should really try his own cool aid and visit smaller towns and rural areas of america!

If home owners are not bailed out, then lets also un-bail out financial institutions, and when society degrades to tribal warfare, it will be all those construction workers, factory workers and manual labor who will, for once have an edge, over these masses of over weight and greedy you know who’s.

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Interesting program on PBS

Its called “Inside the meltdown” and full of left-liberal pundits, but it is a pretty good description of what went on during those crucial months last year.

Here it is…

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American recovery and reinvestment plan…. Whatever!

House passes the granduosly named American recovery and reinvestment plan, and, it is irrelevant at this point. For this plan is not far sighted enough nor does it change the game in any way. But don’t blame the president for this, for he was just working with in the boundaries of consitution. Fact is this is a failure of politicians and ultimately the citizenry. When will legislators realize that idelogy, either left or right, never gets anything done?

Not till, citizens of the country actually kick out politicians off their positions.

Let me elaborate…

Politicians are “ALWAYS” behind the curve in accepting reality, and when idelogy dominates clear thinking, they become spectators rather than take part in actively shaping the future. “Main street” has been hurting for years now. Politicians never really managed to understand that. Why would they? The re-election rate for house is close to 90% and for senate it is about 75 or 80%. And they make the laws. What incumbent would really have to think and adapt when they have a pretty secure career?

So much for my rant, but think about this stimulus plan and i may make sense.

There is a generally accepted, “Conventional Wisdom” (in John Kenneth Galbraith’s words), which says that tax cuts will be spent. Even liberal economists argue that tax cuts for the lower income will be quickly spent. This need not be correct!

Who pays taxes? Thanks to progressive taxation policies, income tax is paid by people who make more than a certain amount of money every year. Sales tax is paid by people who actually buy stuff. Property taxes are paid by people who own property, capital gains tax is paid by people who have invested some capital and inheritance tax is paid by people who inherit.

Except probably for people who have to pay inheritance tax every one else is not in a position to pay any tax. People who loose jobs do not have an income to pay tax on, those who have invested haven’t had any return worth mentioning and other’s who have invested in property are going ask for re-assessment. Finally, given 24 * 7 news cycles, the internet and personal experience pretty much every one out there knows that times are bad and so will conserve their expenditure and so, sales taxes tank.

In this environment, what is the impact of any kind of reduction in taxation? Zilch would be an attractive answer, but i would say negligible is a better answer.

Similarly, cutting business taxes doesn’t make businesses expand during a down turn. It is just a way to improve profitability of businesses there by improving their ROI. Will that impact the “Main Street” in any way? Sorry no dice.

Given all the above, what are all these tax cuts going to achieve apart from bloating up the stimulus plan? Nothing…

Finally, what will actually work? Get people to work, and that doesn’t mean just “Shovel Ready”. Get people to work at a visionary level, some thing like a moon shot, but here on earth. What are the immediate possibilities?

There may be many based on your own perspective on a large number of issues, but… we desperately require some thing huge, visionary, game-changing, “conventional-wisdom” busting, paradigm shifting, build a new framework for the society of the future, in nature.

Green Energy.

This implies, give tax breaks of “very” sizable nature to any thing that will make anything “GREEN” profitable. Hybrid cars? yes. Infact, hybrid anything is a big yes. How about incentives to making homes, public buildings, private buildings etc. reduce energy expenditure? Big yes. Roads, bridges? Big yes. A new power grid? applause. Broadband internet connectivity to every single town / village in the nation? Go now!, a mobile phone infrastructure that actually doesn’t drop calls even with in large cities? big smile,  a national plan to build high speed rail lines across all the big cities? That should get a resounding, collective thumping of the tables across house and senate.

Will that happen?

I doubt.

Elected representatives for the most part don’t need to fear loosing, and when that is the case, they can participate with elan in ideological gamesmanship.

USA is the economic engine for the whole world and the magnitude of the current economic situation doesn’t suit small acts, small moves and small minds.

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Tim Russert will be missed

As you all probably know by now, Tim Russert is dead, and there is no doubt he will be missed.

I have been a viewer of Tim Russert, on “Meet the Press”, for a short time now and was amazed at the respect he was shown by all his guests. Watching the show, it was clear that respect was not put on, it was earned by years of hard work and integrity.

Even in these days of  media spin, watching “meet the press” i felt, here was a program which focussed on “real” news and  never partisan. If democracy depends on people who are aware of the issues, then Tim Russert was the guy you would depend on to gain that awareness.

Whoever takes over from Tim, has extremely large shoes to fill. We need that some one very fast.

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A poor case of financial journalism by NYTimes

This isn’t the kind of financial journalism i expect from nytimes. Today, they have an article titled “Conventional Wisdom, Foiled Again“. The article refers to a study conducted by a couple of professors who find that those stocks which have been dropped from Russel 2000 index tend to perform better then their replacement over a period of time.

While the article has enough “ifs and buts” to cover itself, it does not make good financial journalism at all. First of all, the title conventional wisdom, foiled again is mis-leading. Unless you are a stock market trader, an analysis of stock market technicals does not help an average person. In that sense, this article does not have a place in nytimes. Over and above that, the article does not mention any thing about real conventional wisdom, from the likes of Benjamin Graham, which is, if you look deep enough into any set of statistics you will find a random pattern. Most importantly, the article does not take a critical look at the possible causes of the pattern, nor does it evaluate the effects of trading volume, financial results of the company or sectoral performance.

This would have been a mis-judgement on the part of an incompetent editor, if it were not the kind of article that may incite an average person to get into stocks dropped from Russel 2000. As it stands it borders on being irresponsible.

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