The population myth

What's a constant and what's a variable? In an age when one can't even be sure of the speed of light, we at SC are comforted by one constant that cannot be challenged in theory or practice. The 'Olympic constant' is this magic number 30 lakhs, which is the ratio between the population of a country and the number of medals it won at the Olympics. It applies only to the US and only at the 2012 Olympics but is treated as a universal constant.
Let's take a moment to understand the significance of this constant. Given a medal tally, you can arrive at a country's true population. Why's that so interesting? Well, India's population, given the rich haul of 6 medals, stands at 1.8 cr, not 120 cr as reported in the media and by social scientists. What is really going on here?
This means that India has only 1 big city. Take another moment to digest that. Mumbai and Delhi are actually the same place. Bangalore and Hyderabad are of, course overtly the same city which is why you see a signboard that says 'Bangalore -->, Hyderabad <--' near the Bangalore airport. And all these 4 are the same. Throw in a Chennai and Kolkata if you want. All same. That's incidentally why that Chatur fool was playing a Tam but sounding Bong in 3 idiots.
Why would we have people believe India has a population of 120 cr when we actually don't have that many people? SC believes this has something to do with the growth story and wage rates. If people realised labour's actually in short supply, wages would increase, profits would come down, India'd no longer be an investment destination of choice. I mean we need to be ahead of China in something, no?

Global Warming Conspiracy

It goes without saying that global warming theory is a conspiracy. The smarter reader does not ask if it is a conspiracy but who instigated it? Who can benefit from panic of warmer climate/higher sea levels? It has eluded greater minds than yours.

Is it corporations making air-conditioning equipment or aerosol substitutes? or is it wannabe presidents who don't have any other agenda? Research organizations looking for funding? pah.. you have to dig deeper Watson!

Ofcourse we yet again provide the only plausible explanation. and here it goes.. Have you ever realized that the  most expensive real estate always lies on sea coasts?  see the world map with high expensive real estate regions highlighted.

No shit Sherlock.. Now what can in-land cities do to compete with the natural disadvantage of not having a sea next to them. I see the faint ray of realization dawning upon you. Obviously the in-land cities have to conspire, cartelize and indulge in mis-propaganda to gain a vantage point; and what better scare can there be than rising sea levels, to fight the rising popularity of coastal cities. Washington DC, New-Delhi, Moscow and even London, the great power centers are all ofcourse part of this conspiracy. And with their political and intellectual power they can easily influence the world thought. No wonder the Global Warming band wagon has risen so fast.

PS: we have taken a new initiative of making our own maps to avoid copy-right issues and deliver superior research to our audience (i.e. you)

Optimising the Satyamaev Jaiyate format

Aamer Khan's stepped up as usual, to save us from ourselves. Even a usual TV show has several economic transactions among the channel, advertisers, producers, actors and so on. With impassioned calls to 'action' (i.e. sms), this show has even more. This is where the SC team simplifies things for you. Today we apply one principle to Satyamaev Jaiyate - eliminate the middleman.
To donate to the cause for example, the channel recommends you sms 'sucker' to 56565. Instead, donate directly to the NGO in question so the service provider does not pocket a margin. Pesky middleman #1 eliminated!
We move on to the most suboptimal part of the show, i.e. the show itself. (Yes, we get it. We were against dowry even before all the emotional blackmail). The economic transaction is as follows. You watch the show - your eyeballs are worth something to the corporates because of the advertising and prospective sales, say 5 cr. The corporates keep 1 cr and give 4 to the channel. The channel keeps 1 and gives 3 cr to Aamer Khan. Our desk recommends that TV viewers pool in cash every week and pay off Aamer directly to not appear on the show, thereby saving 2 cr instantly!
The beauty of the solution is that the middleman here between the victims and the audience, a hamming over-the-top Aamer Khan is also eliminated. That's 3 middlemen gone in one stroke!
Above all, kudos to the SC desk for saving you that one precious hour on Sundays.



 

Goa has only one beach

Ever felt a sense of deja vu stepping into a beach in Goa, even if it's one you're sure you've never set foot on? Also, ever wonder why Goan roads are never straight? It's not your mind playing tricks on you, dear tourist. Goa has only one beach. SC's mystery audit team posed as foreign tourists from Nepal this weekend and did a covert mapping operation of the entire beach town. The real map of Goa is the one above. The approach routes are expertly looped to give tourists an illusion of going to different beaches every time. And then sell them another set of the same stuff - breezers, stale french fries with flies, sunbathing cots and oil massages. So settle down in one beach next time.

Emran Hashmi is Himesh Reshamiya

We aren't kidding. Check out the snaps for yourselves.
Isn't it remarkable that two stars were created with that epic hit song 'aashiq banaaya aapne'?
Too remarkable to be true. There's just one dude.
Himesh was a budding composer who wanted to make it big in acting as well - a not-so-secret ambition. The first character he played was in real life and was one that he wrote himself - to turn into Emran Hashmi. Why did he do it? Well, let's say you manufacture shampoo - don't you want to have brands for each strata of society? Hashmi kisses for the A-graders and Himesbhai cracks the B and C centres with his ridiculously bad movies. The brand names don't dilute each other.
It's good to note that Emran/Himes pulled off this mindboggling duplicity with his trademark wry sense of humour. If you anagramise "Himesh Reshamiyan", it reads "Emran Hashmi is he". Need I say more?

Facebook's questionable business model

The SC team has a very 'first principles' approach to business models which has always stood it in average stead. Facebook, which has a habit of making public, information about all and everything, except about itself, has been on our radar for a while now.
To figure out who pays facebook, we started with a more fundamental question - Who really benefits from facebook? The advertisers - surely not, nobody really even sees those facebook ads, leave alone buy anything off them. The users? - don't make us laugh now. Ever since the privacy options came in and all attractive women locked up their profiles, facebook doesn't really serve any purpose to the final customer. What about the standard answer - gaming sites? No one plays those crappy farmville types anymore either. That leaves us with an improbable but true answer (in Holmes style), facebook itself!
This is borne out by the revenue sources report we dug up.
Facebook : Total Revenue 3 gazillion dollars
Microsoft : 1 million dollars
Zynga : 50 dollars
Facebook : 2.99999... gazillion
Now facebook pays itself and books a small profit every year. The valuation multiple for social networking sites is 10^15 as of today. Which explains the valuation. Now facebook sells some stock, say to microsoft and has a few trillion, with which it can start actual businesses, like textiles, rubber plantations and porn and make real profits. Magnificently devious scheme- it takes one to know one as they say.

Why actually do buses come in threes?

There has been lot of hue and cry about why buses come in groups. Hell infact some one has even written a book about. All the research has been secondary in nature without any primary evidence. But given the relentless efforts of SuperCraponomics researchers the truth has been found to be something else. Its not mathematics or queue theory as come claim it is but the dynamics of chai sipping.

To crack the problem wide open our researchers visited the BEST bus depot in Worli. There was a solo bus driver trying to finish his chai, but as can be imagined thats quite boring for the party involved. So he asked his friend (obviously another bus driver) to join him. Given the curious nature of humanity a third driver started nudging into the group hoping to get some bits of gossip. Soon this small crowd attracted the attention of the supervisor who dispersed it with appropriate methods. Thus started the three buses together from Worli Depot. Ignorant of tea dynamics several fake economists tried to develop complicated theories around the "three buses in a row" paradigm. But SC with its allegiance to the truth has unveiled yet another complicated  phenomenon.

As a support to our analysis we are attaching some supporting evidence. The men here may not look like worli bus drivers, but trust us if you take average of both these pictures u will get three amchi drivers sipping hot cutting masala chai.