This is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid. This song is from the movie Sholay, arguably the biggest Bollywood hit in history. My parents had the song on tapes and I think maybe even an LP. It’s one of those songs that just is permanently part of my life’s soundtrack. And, it’s such a good song too. Some more background about the movie from Wikipedia:
Sholay is the highest grossing film of all time in India. It has earned Rs. 2,36,45,00,000, equivalent to US$ 60 million, after adjusting for inflation. When first released, the film was declared a commercial disaster. Word of mouth convinced movie-goers to give the film a chance and soon it became a box-office phenomenon. It ran for 286 weeks straight (more than five years) in one Mumbai theatre, the Minerva. Sholay racked up a still record 60 golden jubilees across India and doubled its original gross over reruns during the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Sholay was the first film in the history of Indian cinema to celebrate silver jubilee (25 weeks) at over a hundred theatres across India.
In 1999, BBC India declared it the “Film of the Millennium”; Indiatimes movies ranks the movie amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films. In that same year, the judges of the 50th annual Filmfare awards awarded it with a special award called Filmfare Best Film of 50 Years.
Bollywood films, especially from that era, always feel campy to me, but I think I might have to give this another viewing soon.
Bonus video from the 1965 film Gumnaam. This song, Jaan Pehechan Ho, also appeared in the movie Ghost World (which, if I’m remembering correctly, is the first movie my wife and I watched together):
We always wonder if her neck hurt after shooting finished…
(PS. I’m actually reasonably impressed that I can translate much of both songs without looking up words… considering my parents don’t speak Hindi in the house (we’re Gujarati), I think that’s an accomplishment)
December 18th, 2004 at 2:02 pm
Ok, so I am not smart when it comes to these things (esp economics). So, could someone answer some questions for me (or help explain this in a basic way)? From what I understand, Bush wants to allow a small portion of what we put aside for our SS to be used for private investment.
1) Would this money be mandated to invest by the government or would we just receive a little bit more take home and be expected to invest it?
2) If we are just give extra money to take home and are “expected” to invest it on our own, what would happen if after 40 years some people didn’t? Would we have to implement programs to help cover the costs for them, or would they just be out of luck and have to deal with whatever situation they have?
It seems to me after reading through this blog, you could make more money if you did invest it on your own in private funds (which is the basis for most retirement systems now and give a larger portion of money to retirees than SS). I understand that there maybe some exceptions where some people invest in options that lose money or don’t gain. But, on average, it seems private would make more than SS. The problem to me seems (and please correct me if I am wrong), that the average person (that doesn’t make over 60, 70, 80+ k) would probably not invest it or end up investing it correctly. I know my mom falls into this category. She makes about $15000/year and if she took home an extra 1-3%, there is no way that it would go into a separate investment account if it was solely left up to her to do so. So, I believe the average salary right now is around 33k/year (give or a take a little), and I can’t see a majority of these people doing this with an extra $25-50 a paycheck. Which would mean that these people would have less money when the retire than if all the money is just left in SS as it is now (even at a lower rate than private funds would have got them), and since we are a country that is “somewhat concerned” with our elderly and wanting them not to live in total poverty, we would have to then come up with a program to supplement their living.
How far am I off base and what am I missing? Thanks for the help.
December 18th, 2004 at 10:04 pm
We get a lot of traffic, so having trackbacks means that all the spammers in the world would come to our blogs at weblogsinc.com and try and link to their Viagra blogs.
Trackbacks in the blosphere are basically dead… no major blog has them anymore and if they do they are abused to the point of being worthless. I think the best thing to do is just search Technorati, Feedsteer, etc.
December 18th, 2004 at 11:55 pm
the spam problem is, of course, the same for trackbacks as it is for comments. Enable one, enable them all IMHO. I can think of at least one major news site (News.com) that is putting some effort into trackbacks and pingbacks.
Can you comment on how much traffic you get compared to some of the top tier political blogs (Instapundit, Daily Kos, Eschaton, etc)? Of those three, Eschaton uses Haloscan for their comments and trackbacks. Kos only has comments, and Instapundit has no user or community participation. I chose these because they all use sitemeter so you should get a good idea about their traffic.
Slashdot does not, of course, but it hardly qualifies as participatory journalism as they investigate little and merely point. If we’re comparing to that site and those type of blogs, I suspect you might be right. However, the News.com example might be another way to look at the benefits of trackbacks.