tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post4368710865884932618..comments2023-08-25T17:30:36.937+05:30Comments on Business Musings: Economics Gangnam StyleRameshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-71674431603759095492013-07-27T08:18:45.965+05:302013-07-27T08:18:45.965+05:30Hey, dementia has not set in yet, and I remembered...Hey, dementia has not set in yet, and I remembered your post when I read this:<br />http://t.co/EvDxbjPMIv<br /><br />"Chinese companies build iPads, high-speed trains and world-class telecom gear, but they can't seem to make their own fancy handbag."Sriram Khéhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06724218458246880137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-38486475956855632632012-10-28T20:50:47.872+05:302012-10-28T20:50:47.872+05:30@sriram - Oh yes, Ban Ki Moon , being Korean, has ...@sriram - Oh yes, Ban Ki Moon , being Korean, has been asked a few times to do a Gangnam style jig. Now you are the only one still holding out :):)Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-34504735568421637232012-10-27T22:23:45.540+05:302012-10-27T22:23:45.540+05:30A nerdy follow-up:
Caught this in the news feed:
h...A nerdy follow-up:<br />Caught this in the news feed:<br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20053091<br />Yes, Gangnam-style at the UN :)Sriram Khéhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06724218458246880137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-50706005767044148352012-10-18T09:45:05.112+05:302012-10-18T09:45:05.112+05:30Ellen Degeneres is a TV personality. She has our o...Ellen Degeneres is a TV personality. She has our own show called the "Ellen" show. And yes, I am NOT offended. The only time I watched that show was when she had the distractingly attractive Kylie Minogue as her guest.Pranavhttp://www.radiocremebrulee.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-71213902211923864672012-10-14T19:03:15.716+05:302012-10-14T19:03:15.716+05:30@Sandhya - No post is ever complete without a love...@Sandhya - No post is ever complete without a lovely comment from you. Next time you write the word stupid, I am going to bash you on your head :):)<br /><br />China actually has as much an ageing population problem because of the one child policy. They are ticking time bomb in terms of ageing. The country really best placed on this is India.<br /><br />Disagree that the Chinese can't handle transparency. In my belief, that's a myth. Its better to gradually transition to an open system rather than remain so bottled up - one day the pressure will explode. Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-45978465197027926012012-10-14T17:44:34.711+05:302012-10-14T17:44:34.711+05:30the only place where you can find a tough competit...the only place where you can find a tough competition for your blogs is your comments section. we are so lucky to have the priviledge to have known both. <br /><br />this time, it is even better than ever because it did not have my stupid comments clogging the flow in between :-)<br /><br />Here goes my stupid views (given that i always take that liberty with you)<br /><br />First, i dont believe that Gangnam video would have hit that 400 M + views that facebook shows. I think, some smart tech cookie has found a way to hit that number. <br /><br />But having said that, given that every one is talking about, its still an achievement for the guy PSY. but not to the extent that world is talking about.<br /><br />I think what south korea has got right (as rightly pointed out by one your commenters - in the zeal to excel Japan), there is a high public spending in Research.<br /><br />However, by following Japan, they have created the same challenges that Japan got itself into - Ageing population which is where i believe China has an edge. <br /><br />I also believe that given the vastness and the imperfections that exist within China and its own ulterior political ambitions beyond the boundaries of their country, the black box economy is what works best. Otherwise, the chinese market will be suddenly thrown upon to challenges of transparency that they have no capability to handle. I feel, china can still handle the failure of Huawei, they have the scale for that, but they cannot hold the reigns if their horses prance. i dont think, they are ready<br /><br />B.t.w - seriously impressed with your Gangnam knowledge. you are amazing.Sandhya Sriramhttp://sandhyasriram.sulekha.com/blog/posts.htmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-15204036359554345792012-10-14T08:36:06.173+05:302012-10-14T08:36:06.173+05:30@Pranav - Can I offend your sensibilities by askin...@Pranav - Can I offend your sensibilities by asking who Ellen DeGeneres is ?? :)Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-20260189618174994532012-10-14T03:12:45.365+05:302012-10-14T03:12:45.365+05:30In all fairness, PSY seems like a "nice enoug...In all fairness, PSY seems like a "nice enough" guy and he knows his hit song is just a novelty track. I don't think he sees himself as some musical messiah. I doubt he'd be interested in an interview with me and my station. He is too busy shmoozing with the likes of Ellen DeGeneres etc.Pranavhttp://www.radiocremebrulee.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-90822770387684851682012-10-13T10:28:13.573+05:302012-10-13T10:28:13.573+05:30@J - Ahhh - fine taste indeed :)
Yes, apparently ...@J - Ahhh - fine taste indeed :)<br /><br />Yes, apparently it was making fun at a suburb of Seoul where the nouveau riche live.<br /><br />@Ravi - Et tu Brut ? Then fall Caesar !<br /><br />Hit & Giggle ??? Lovely :)Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-32806131460444593242012-10-12T18:14:31.329+05:302012-10-12T18:14:31.329+05:30I have to say that while watching the T20 hit-and-...I have to say that while watching the T20 hit-and-giggle final, I found glipmses of cricket. The opening spell of the Sri Lanka (before their resident chucker Malinga got into it) was stupendous bowling. It was fascinating to someone who trundled his medium pace at 3rd Division English clubs for several years. Pinpoint accuracy - just outside the offstump to provoke errors but not so much to risk a wide, and pitched so that the ball cramped the batter. To reduce West Indies to 30-2 in ten overs was world class, in my opinion. The ball that got the opener was a gem. In test cricket, there would have been a sigh as the ball split the batsman in half. In T20, the guy swung, the ball ballooned and it was comfortably taken. COme on - stop being such a Luddite.Ravi Rajagopalanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17321251570712041230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-87340488072786993872012-10-12T05:12:36.461+05:302012-10-12T05:12:36.461+05:30Did not expect to see you blog on Gangnam style! Y...Did not expect to see you blog on Gangnam style! You have revealed your fine taste in music :) Great comments too. Interestingly, the Atlantic had done a piece analyzing how this song was actually making fun of the nouveau riche in Korea and hinting at how shallow they are. So it may not be so far removed from economics :)Jnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-88958058433974516582012-10-11T22:54:56.911+05:302012-10-11T22:54:56.911+05:30@Filipino - What have I done to you that you want ...@Filipino - What have I done to you that you want to inflict the torture of a Telugu movie on me :)<br /><br />Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-49395402255653011952012-10-11T22:54:08.349+05:302012-10-11T22:54:08.349+05:30@Vincy - Wow, you are really hip - maybe your son ...@Vincy - Wow, you are really hip - maybe your son introduced you to it !!<br /><br />Loved your Korean by the way :)<br /><br />@Ravi - You are not supposed to write a learned treatise on recursion. You are simply supposed to agree that T20 is not cricket :)<br /><br />@Pranav - Why don't you interview PSY for your station. At least he comes across as a sane guy, instead of the weirdos who inhabit popular music. Loved your opinion of the music, but why are you raving against whoever gave him a record deal - lesser worthies have gotten away with blue murder. I am squarely in PSY's camp simply because he is not a weirdo.Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-64083525579714862462012-10-11T22:19:20.770+05:302012-10-11T22:19:20.770+05:30gangnam style! I was expecting there would be post...gangnam style! I was expecting there would be post on this but did not expect you to link it to South Korean eco! btw gilsu dancing for gangnam style!! LOL ROTFL <br />But you should really watch a telugu movie :)) Heard REBEL is awesome ;)Appuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11943787484240840432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-80147696456240878202012-10-11T20:50:18.966+05:302012-10-11T20:50:18.966+05:30Love the connection between economics and gangnam ...Love the connection between economics and gangnam style! I also have to thank you for the big shout-out you gave my radio station. I don't know what was better - the "shoutout" or you referring to me as an "esteemed reader" of this blog. I agree with everything in your post. I just hope people don't delude themselves into believing that gangnam style is going to bring k-pop to the mainstream and keep it there. The virality of the song lies in its music video. Without the video, it is generic trash with 90s music samples (I would know since I was quite the pop fanatic in the 90s in high school - I kinda still am!). I am still waiting to see the expression on the face of the person that gave PSY a multiple album record deal just based on gangnam style - when he realized what an idiotic investment that's likely to be!Pranavhttp://www.radiocremebrulee.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-60923054649773828212012-10-11T16:04:37.220+05:302012-10-11T16:04:37.220+05:30When you wrote "Even the West Indies team, on...When you wrote "Even the West Indies team, on winning the T20 World Cup, gave an energetic rendition of Gangnam Style (note the absence of the word cricket in this sentence !)" -- you gave the perfect example of a self-referring or a recursive sentence.<br /><br />Older readers may recall the classic "Godel Escher Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter. The author explores in detail recursive and other patterns in music, art and mathematics. The artist Rene Magritte painted "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (tr. This is Not a Pipe) which had a giant pipe as the subject. MC Escher drew pictures of never-ending staircases and patterns of doves that became blackbirds in the same drawing. Bach composed wonderful fugues full of repeating patterns of greater complexity. And Godel proved that there was at least one theorem in Russell's "Principia Mathematica" that cannot be proven using ONLY the constructs in that compendium of mathematics.<br /><br />Recursion is a recurrent theme in computer science but we can have a lot of fun with it in daily life.<br /><br />Sorry - could not resist.Ravi Rajagopalanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17321251570712041230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-57100109807606217792012-10-11T10:50:13.444+05:302012-10-11T10:50:13.444+05:30I didn't know about Gangnam style! Thanks for ...I didn't know about Gangnam style! Thanks for introducing! Enterprise Mobile Apps and Beyondhttp://www.enterprisemobilehub.com/topic/enterprise-mobile-apps-and-beyond?utm_source=TWA&utm_medium=SEO&utm_campaign=EMHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-1669924159878501312012-10-11T10:03:12.196+05:302012-10-11T10:03:12.196+05:30I should have seen this coming.. yet I didnt. Trus...I should have seen this coming.. yet I didnt. Trust you to link Econonimcs to Gangnam style. and mind you other than those two words (economics and Gangnam, thankfully i had watched the video recently), everything else was education to me). <br /><br />Bow to thee. Pye-ha 폐하Vincyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05575941564548214423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-17797820383256774642012-10-11T09:55:19.350+05:302012-10-11T09:55:19.350+05:30@Sanjay - Yeah; Korea has built a nice image for i...@Sanjay - Yeah; Korea has built a nice image for itself. Although as Kiwi says their reputation when it comes to children borders on barbaric !<br /><br />@Asha - Ha ha; it could very well be a Telugu movie :):) Apparently its a suburb in Seoul with very well to do people.<br /><br />@Deepa - Yeeeaaa Yeeaaaaaa - I'm hip :):)<br /><br />@Ravi - The old fogey would have never heard of it but for a pretty Malaysian of Chinese origin who lives in Australia, but whom I met in China tipping me off !!! Ah the wonders of an interconnected world.<br /><br />There's something in the Rajagopalan conjecture. I would submit that democracy is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for style. After all Switzerland has democracy but can you imagine anything more boring than that lot :)<br /><br />@sriram - You better become hep if you want those pretty students to drool drool :):)<br /><br />Yes,I agree with the Rajagopalan conjecture (what a name !). Russia is a particularly great example given how incredibly stunning Russian women are naturally. Haven't been following the Pussy Riot story - did they get one of them out ??<br /><br />Aww, I'm much tickled if I can confound a distinguished Professor :)Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-51868450465942857452012-10-10T22:14:25.810+05:302012-10-10T22:14:25.810+05:30Hey, last night, before drifting off to sleep, I r...Hey, last night, before drifting off to sleep, I read the New Yorker (yes, the old-style--print version in my hand!)and after scanning through the cartoons, which is what I always do first, I settled on reading about K-Pop. <br />(http://goo.gl/M8hZw)<br />I hadn't known that K-pop and K-drama are such huge hits in China, Japan, ... <br /><br />Now, I read your blog, which is also about K-pop. I better start listening to K-pop and impress the hell out of my students, eh ;)<br /><br />I like that conjecture that style is proportional to democracy. Remember how bland and boring the Soviet fashions were--from their clothes to the cars to the planes? And now, it is Pussy Riot!<br />(BTW, the Russians freed one member and not all the three? What's up with that?)<br /><br />You threw in a word "Huawei" and I had to do a Google search for that ... hey, write about things that I know, for a change ;)Sriram Khéhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06724218458246880137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-54494065412145461682012-10-10T12:26:07.651+05:302012-10-10T12:26:07.651+05:30My six year old, who is rapidly becoming the arbit...My six year old, who is rapidly becoming the arbiter of pop culture in the family, discovered PSY and Gangnam style, just as she cottoned on to Kolaveri a few months back. Indeed, I am surprised that an old fogey like yourself (I say this in the nicest possible way) is now shaking a leg to this new craze!<br /><br />O Tempora! O Mores!<br /><br />On a serious note - the coming to age of South Korea happened in the 80s, when in reaction to the killing of students at Kwangju and other such high-handed behaviour, the "managed democracy" of post-war military governments was discarded and the country became a proper democracy. The collective sigh of relief was palpable. The highly successful 1988 Olympics set the seal on a country that had truly arrived. People felt free to experiment with notions of style and trend without being labelled as decadent and not sufficiently ready to pick up a rifle and defend the border. The siege mentality post 1953 dissipated.<br /><br />China suffers from it still, as you have pointed out time and again in frustration, as the instinct to try and do the right thing by people is tempered by the inability to shed the past. China will need genuine political reform. <br /><br />And hereby I pronounce this the Rajagopalan Conjecture - the ability to produce style is directly proportional to the availability of democracy in the country.Ravi Rajagopalanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17321251570712041230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-15858596156953440892012-10-10T10:35:33.802+05:302012-10-10T10:35:33.802+05:30:D you are truly hip if you have seen the video! S...:D you are truly hip if you have seen the video! So many of my friends don't even have a clue. Deepahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16149267172223745802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-63133986914636024412012-10-10T08:34:16.284+05:302012-10-10T08:34:16.284+05:30Brand south korea - yes, they were leaders in elec...Brand south korea - yes, they were leaders in electronics too.( don't know now).We were fans of Hyundai tall boy 10 years back itself, though we shifted our priorities to Honda 6 years back.<br /><br />Oh yeah! Gangnam style!! Everybody from gayle to djokovic to tom cruise to Ramesh is mesmerized. <br /><br />Amazed at the way you have correlated economics to gangnam. <br /><br />Watch business musings going oppa Gangnam way!! <br /><br />(When i glanced at the newspaper and saw "gangnam", I thought was a telugu movie.)Ashahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01853943313848326731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-16765198601695581322012-10-10T08:23:46.891+05:302012-10-10T08:23:46.891+05:30Long time ago, I had seen a documentary on how Sou...Long time ago, I had seen a documentary on how South Korea wants to excel in manufacturing everything that Japan does and do it better. It is this passion that has made them virtually the new Japan of the world. Now we will be happy to buy and pay more for "Made in Korea" (P.S. Mango people in Banana Republic have a long way to go to come to this). But of course we are No 1 perhaps in Corruption <br /><br /> <br /><br />Sanjay Balachandranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07962362448349011124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4740849900073154554.post-32296047086667000052012-10-10T08:19:17.325+05:302012-10-10T08:19:17.325+05:30@Kiwi - Oh yes, the Korean "dragon mother&quo...@Kiwi - Oh yes, the Korean "dragon mother" syndrome is frightening. I observed it when I was in China. I don't think there is any society on earth that pushes their children more than South Korea. <br /><br />@Vishal - Ha Ha, I am managing to trick you into believing my musical awareness ; Hurray :):)<br /><br />@Gilsu - I am imagining Gilsu dancing Gangnam style. Make a video please :)Rameshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11782192840421019943noreply@blogger.com