Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is defined as the cost of writing off the second best alternative. For example, if you have money enough to either afford a dinner or a visit to the movies, then choosing to dine entails the sacrifice of the pleasure of watching a movie. This pleasure, then, is the opportunity cost of choosing to dine over going to the cinema.

Nothing, nothing at all, drives home the concept of opportunity cost as watching all those pretty women on Fashion TV.

However, attempting lousy diplomacy, I emphasize that opportunity cost is still about the second best alternative.

Python

Begin post:
I generated the Fibonacci series using Python this morning. Just two basic observations:

• I enjoy writing code, when I am not being paid for it.
• I haven't improved since first semester; its been seven years since. My basic logical faculties remain rather basic.

Should you decide to leave a comment or two on this post, please begin with either:

• # or,
• /

End post:

Aspects of a song

The Indian national anthem is excruciating in its detail and correctness. It is blatantly geographic & the slight element of poetry lies, in my opinion, in putting such details to verse. Contrast this to the national song which, essentially, describes, from the poet's point of view, the Indian experience - never mind the constituents which the anthem places more stress on. So while Tagore documents the primary rivers of India, Chatterji dwells on the quality of these waters. The anthem, in its historical context, is also servile in its theme; while the song, since the day it was composed, remains the most powerful evocation of Indian nationalism. The full poem - and only a part of this is the national song - is also a wee bit polemic because of its particularly strong Hindu flavour second stanza onwards, the fact that its language never fit any accepted form or grammar, & that it was written in parts over a period of time.

The many governments of India, primarily of the Congress party until recent years, has always deemphasized the revolutionary period of the Indian struggle for Independence of which the national song was an inseparable voice. And while the martyrs hardly find a place in public memory, the song continues to capture generations of Indian psyche in its wake just like it did more than a century back.

Or, at least, that's what I like to think.