Quodlibet

Norman Pritchard won two silver medals for India in the 1900 Paris Olympics. And after that it was not until 1952, when  Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav  won a bronze in wrestling, India's medal tally rose above one. Besides these two medals India did not manage to win any other events other than in hockey until 1996. At this point in time, for someone judging Indian sports from a 100 year Olympic history, Hockey was a natural choice for a national sport . Because, it seemed, a nation of one billion played nothing but Hokey. But after 1996 India won medals in Tennis, Weightlifting, Shooting, Etc. This year India doubled its previous medal count, a total of 6 medals. This is the best medal count for India in  all of its Olympic history. Despite the increase in medal count India still remains the last in the list of per-capita medals . You can witness this yourself from the chart titled PerCapita Medal History. The Scroll on  the right takes you through 1956 to 2008. The size of th

Ignorantia juris non excusat  If discussing law on your blog was illegal, and you told the judge that you did not know about it you'll probably get a earfuls starting with "Ignorantia juris non excusat.....".  How many of us knew this was Latin? (Latin is now a dead language) How many of us know what it means?   It means, ignorance of law is not an excuse. This doctrine assumes that the law is sufficiently published and distributed. (Ironically, it does not talk about comprehension).  Let us try to assess how well our (Indian) law is publicized. Are we taught law, or its basics in school? No focus is on getting us to remember Dr. Ambedkar's Birth date, his caste, his conversion, his dad, his mom, everything but his work. Yes, we have online documents availeble. In English and Hindi Our law is primarily in English,  and only 10-15% Indians can read and comprehend  English. And the kind of English that legal speaks,...is way out of our league. St

When I was planning on buying a car. I thought I'll buy a used car. Although I was fully aware of  George Akerlof 's  theory  about second hand car market, I decided to take a shot at it.  Because the "reasonable man" , that we so often read about in economics, often has reasons beyond  economics. Reasons like : Leaving the country; don't know what to do with the car;  Bought a new car there is no place to park my old car;  This car is jinxed!   So I downloaded data from  Cardheko  and few other sites and started my cherry hunt. I was convinced that I could use analytics to pick my cherry. Penny (to the Blogger): "Honey, I know you think you are explaining yourselves but you are not." Ok, George Akeflof's Nobel winning theory suggest that there will be no good cars in a used car market because they don't fetch a fair price.  And he refers to good cars as a Cherrys and to bad cars as a Lemons and in the context of