Time travel and foreign exchange

I had some random thoughts in our finance class today. All the fin gods are requested not to kill me after they read this. Remember the Grandfather Paradox in time travel? You go back to the future and kill your grandfather before your father is born. What will happen? This is an argument against time travel.

I thought up of another, actually what I came up with proves that you can't use time travel to your exact benefit (for e.g., know the outcome of a match so that you can bet on it). The limitation of my theory is that it cannot explain the example I just gave, but as I said, some random thoughts.

Theory: In hedging, you consider the futures rate of a currency and decide whether or not to hedge. So I take a time machine, go to the future, find out the spot rate and take a position accordingly. Now I think I have benefitted. But the very act of me taking that particular position has affected the futures price of the currency, thus effectively negating the gains.

This theory proves that to gas around, you can even know absolute bullshit and seem knowledgeable (probably this is one reason for the present economic crisis, too many people like me out there :P). Tell me if the theory made any sense to you, I am not sure it did to me!

India and the Oscars

The whole country went ga-ga when Slumdog was nominated for the Oscars and when it won various other awards. My question is, is all the hype justified? Rahman has won two Oscars, that's fantastic and there was Pookkutty for the sound mixing. But is the general hype justified?

As Ustad Amjad Ali Khan has said, this is not Rahman's best music. The movie is not Indian (remember, the movie got the best movie award, not the best foreign language film). The day we get the latter, we should really be proud. What was showcased to the western world was India's poverty and conditions in the slums. The movie did not even do well in India. What are we patting ourselves on the back for (other than Rahman obviously)?. A friend of mine put up his status message as Rah-maniac...that is one thing that actually seems justified :)

Another point to be noted. This movie was made in India with an Indian (and of Indian descent) cast. But the director was not Indian. Smile Pinki (forgive me if the spelling is wrong) got another Oscar, the film maker was again not an Indian. So what does this prove? We have the potential to make good movies, we just wait for somebody from outside to make use of that? Aishwarya Rai and Mallika Sherawat landed miniscule parts in The Pink Panther 2 and The Myth respectively, but then again there was a lot of hype.

One one hand we have the hype and on the other we have people who think we should not hanker after western approval but should concentrate on making our own brand of movies. Both make sense actually. So we have to decide which path we have to take!

So media, stop hyping everything that can sell! Maintain some standards for god's sake! Today's Delhi Times (I detest that paper, it's a tabloid disguising itself as a newspaper, but yes I still go through it at times) was full of stuff about the movie. Let this movie actually act as an awakening call to our government about the appalling conditions of our slums and of street children. There was an NGO that came to our campus recently. The person in charge spoke well, but ended up grossing us out bygiving us certain details which could have been avoided. When will the government awaken to this situation?