You See Berkeley

UC Berkeley on YouTube. My alma mater.

Now you can virtually attend many of the lectures and events at UC Berkeley. I will miss Berkeley a little less because of this.

Here’s a video on “Energy Self-sufficiency in the 21st Century.” A bunch of Nobel Prize winning guys discussing that issue.

The Rs 1 Lakh car from the Tatas

I have been reading about the Rs 1 Lakh (about US$2,500) car that Tata Motors is planning on selling soon.

It scares me witless. These days, oil is selling for around US$85 a barrel. India imports most of its fossil fuel requirements. It is a poor country and cannot afford high priced oil — and oil is going to become increasingly costly because demand will continue to rise and supply will continue to fall. That is Econ101. India is also a very small country relative to its population. With 17 percent of the world’s population and 2 percent of the world’s land area, land is at a premium in India unlike say in the US (where the population density is a tenth of what it is in India.) You cannot just have cars: you need fuel and you need space to use the cars in. It is insane to not do basic arithmetic (“Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense”) and realize that cars are not the solution to India’s predicament regarding transportation within its cities.