When War turns to peace - all in the spirit of christmas

During the first Christmas of World War I, warfare took second place to an unlikely match. As notes from "Silent Night" floated across the Western Front, German soldiers lit candles on Christmas trees. Troops on opposing sides of the front lines called for a spontaneous ceasefire. And then, in the spirit of goodwill, the men decided to play a match of soccer.

The Christmas truce of 1914 was a unique moment in history. During the ceasefire, German, French, British, and Belgian soldiers met in the middle of No Man's Land in Flanders, Belgium. They shook hands, buried the remaining dead, and even exchanged rations and gifts, including chocolate cake, liquor, and tobacco.

In this atmosphere of goodwill, soldiers decided to throw down their caps and helmets and use them as goalposts. As one soldier recounts in Stanley Weintraub's book Silent Night: The World War I Christmas Truce, "No Man's Land had seemed ten miles [16 kilometers] across when we were crawling out on a night patrol; but now we found it no wider than the width of two football [soccer] pitches."

After trying to catch rabbits hiding under cabbages, British and German soldiers (called "Tommy" and "Fritz" respectively) began playing soccer on the frozen ground. One letter later published in a newspaper describes a British soldier who was "given a bottle of wine to drink to the King's health," from a Saxon. Then his regiment "actually had a football match with the Saxons, who beat them [the British] 3-2!!!" The 133rd Saxon Regiment recorded this game in its official history.

Other matches occurred that day. "Everywhere you looked, the occupants of the trenches stood about talking to each other and even playing football," said Hugo Klemm of the 133rd Saxon Regiment.

"It was hard to think we were at war with one another," wrote another soldier quoted in Weintraub's book.

Some soldiers wanted to continue the truce beyond the Christmas holiday, but officers on both sides were becoming anxious for their missions to continue. Lt. Gustav Riebensahm of the 2nd Westphalians wrote in his diary, "The English are said to have told the 53rd Regiment they are exceedingly thankful for the truce because they simply had to play football again. The whole business is becoming ridiculous and must come to an end."

With calls for renewed combat, the truce was mostly over before New Year's Day. The war would last another three Christmases, but there would never be another such truce.

—Christy Ullrich

My all time favorite economic scale - The Big Mac Index

The Big Mac Index is published by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and provides a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It "seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible".

The index takes its name from the Big Mac, a hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.

AS THE yen plunges and sterling soars, economists are being forced to revise their currency forecasts. To help them get their teeth into the subject, The Economist has updated its Big Mac index, which seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible.

The Big Mac index is based upon the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Supporters of PPP argue that in the long run, the exchange rate between two currencies should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of an identical basket of goods and services in each country.

Our “basket” is a McDonald’s Big Mac, produced in 110 countries. The Big Mac PPP is the exchange rate that would leave hamburgers costing the same in America as abroad. Comparing actual rates with PPPs signals whether a currency is under-or overvalued. (For more details on the index, and ten years of its findings, see our Focus.)

The third column calculates Big Mac PPPs. For example, dividing the Japanese price by the American price gives a dollar PPP of ¥109. On April 6th, the exchange rate was ¥135, implying that the yen is 19% undervalued against the dollar. Three years ago the index suggested that the yen was 100% overvalued against the dollar. Likewise, the D-mark is now only 5% overvalued, against 50% in April 1995.The first column of the table shows local-currency prices of a Big Mac; the second converts the prices into dollars. The cheapest Big Macs are now in Indonesia and Malaysia, where they cost $1.16. At the other extreme, Big Mac fans in Switzerland have to pay $3.87. Given that Americans in four cities pay an average of $2.56, the rupiah and the ringgit look massively undervalued, the Swiss franc massively overvalued.

The Big Mac index is not a perfect measure of PPP. Price differences may be distorted by trade barriers on beef, sales taxes, local competition and changes in the cost of non-traded inputs such as rents. But despite its flaws, the Big Mac index produces PPPestimates close to those derived by more sophisticated methods. A currency can deviate from PPP for long periods, but several studies have found that the Big Mac PPP is a useful predictor of future movements—enabling the hungry investor to get rich by putting his money where his mouth is.

Why we should de-criminalize Drug Addiction (30 sec trivia)

Countries where drug addiction was decriminalized and regarded as a public health problem, there were decreases in crime, decreases in the number of addicts, and improvements in overall public health. Portugal, for instance, decriminalized the use and possession of drugs in 2001. 


By setting up clinics where heroin users have access to needles and methadone, along with medical treatment for addiction, Portugal reduced its number of users, especially among young people and addicts. 


The number of new cases of HIV (from dirty needles) fell from 907 to 267 between 2000 and 2008, and researchers also reported a reduction in household burglaries.


Courtesy - http://www.livemint.com/ 

JQ- Jugaad quotient! Swaminomics at its best.

I love this article by Swaninathan Aiyar on the TOI. Just had to share it. It puts a square around India and the all important JQ- Jugaad quotient.

People ask me, what exactly is jugaad? Global management experts attribute India's rapid economic growth to jugaad. In a recent survey by the Legatum Institute, 81% of Indian businessmen said jugaad was the key reason for their success.

Many years ago, innovative Punjabis mounted a diesel irrigation pump on a steel frame with wheels, creating a vehicle they called jugaad. It was ultra-cheap but did not conform to vehicular regulations. Over time, jugaad came to mean grassroots innovation to overcome any constraint.

In the West, innovation is done by scientists using expensive equipment. In India, it's done by every housewife, farmer, transporter, trader and industrialist. It does not require high-spending R&D: it simply needs creativity and imagination. Anil Ambani once said Reliance succeeded through innovation, not invention.

The hawala market, for instance, is used by drug lords for money laundering. But it is also an example of jugaad, enabling poor migrants to remit money across countries, faster and more cheaply than any formal bank system. Hawala was legal for centuries before modern governments declared it illegal.

Dhirubhai Ambani was the master of jugaad. The licence-permit raj made it impossible for him to progress legally, so he exploited the corruption and cynicism of the system.

He exported junk to get profitable import entitlements. He created industrial capacities vastly in excess of licensed capacity. He imported huge textile machines as "spare parts". He engineered highly profitable changes in rules for polyester imports and telecom licences. The jugaad he used to overcome hurdles was not distinguishable from crony capitalism.

Yet when the licence-permit raj gave way to a more open and deregulated economy, Dhirubhai used the same jugaad to scale dizzying heights of productivity and become world class. His giant refinery complex in Jamnagar had the highest refining margins in the world, beating the Singapore refineries. He converted to reality his vision of making telephone calls cheaper than a postcard.

Dhirubhai showed that manipulation and world class productivity are two sides of the same coin called jugaad. If governments create business constraints through controls and high taxes, jugaad will be used to overcome those hurdles. But if deregulation abolishes these hurdles, the main business constraints become lack of quality and affordability, so jugaad shifts to improving productivity, quality and affordability. That ultimately makes you world class.

Rocky Balboa

"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place... and I don´t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it. You, me or nobody, is gonna hit as hard as life. But ain't about how hard you hit... It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward... how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That´s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you worth, go out and get what you worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits. And not pointing fingers saying: You ain´t what you wanna be because of him or her or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain´t you! You´re better than that!" (Rocky Balboa)

Is it too late?

For what its worth its never too late,To be whoever you wanna be,it has no time limit,stop wherever u want,u can change or stay the same,there are no rules to these things,we can make the best out of worst times,hope u make best of it.
hope u see things u never shown to u, hope u feel things u never felt before,hope u meet people with a different point of view,hope u live life u r proud of,if u find that u r not, hope u have the strength to START ALL OVER AGAIN......- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

"Happiness is only real when it's shared"