The average citizen of the global community is still pretty much clueless how towards the end of 2007, the smartest men in the world working for the best banks in the business could lead an entire planet to near bankruptcy.  But given that he understands football a little better than sub prime mortgages, he can get some help from JP Morgan Chase, which was kind enough to release a set of football predictions before the World Cup. JP Morgan used what they call a quant investing model to analyse how the World Cup would pan out, and thus gave an insight into the thinking that goes behind spectacularly wrong investments.

The predicted line-up was interesting even from the quarter final level, where it expected England to beat France, a team which didn’t make it to the last 16. Or Slovenia to defeat Argentina. Slovenia, alas, didn’t make it through the first round. To the reasonable question of how any analysis can get Slovenia into the semis, a perusal of the report is necessary, but pointless. It has used valuation metrics (Fifa ranking), market valuations (probability of winning as defined  by bookmakers), price trend metrics (trend in change in probability to win, change in Fifa’s ranking), Market and Analyst Sentiment metrics (expectation of result based on past performance, recent team shape), Fundamentals Metrics (which has this impressive but suspiciously meaningless formula: Average (Probability of Winning) /Max (Probability of Winning)—Min (Probability of Winning). Having crunched all these metrics, it came out with the winner: England. 

There is an attempt to hedge against ridicule through the advice that all this be taken with a pinch of salt. But that is what the investor must not do. For, there is no investing model, quant or otherwise, that has been correct over a period of time. In the mid 1990s, Long Term Capital Management got Nobel laureates to create mathematical models to beat the market. It showed impressive returns for a while before going bust.

JP Morgan is not the only bank treading into the football stadium with an egg on its face. Goldman Sachs also came out with a semi final line-up: England, Argentina, Brazil and Spain. One of four correct is as good as a guess, and would not be enough to pass your exams. But when it comes to your hard-earned money, it’s all par for the course.

As the mammoth task of issuing unique identification numbers gets underway, the less ambitious and long-awaited e-passport scheme seems to be ready for take-off. Four months after External Affairs Minister SM Krishna inaugurated the e-passport Seva Kendras in Bangalore, the city’s residents can look forward to the first e-passports being issued to them in September. An electronic chip attached to the passport will contain all personal information on the holder, including biometric data. The new passports have been designed by the Central Passport Organisation, New Delhi; India Security Press, Nashik; and IIT, Kanpur. India is among the first emerging countries to introduce e-passports.

A beleaguered CPM, banished from the Darjeeling hills after it opposed the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state in the early 1980s, is now planning to use Rabindranath Tagore to regain a toehold in the district. To celebrate the Nobel laureate’s 150th birth anniversary, the party is  organising seminars, poetry and painting contests and workshops over the next few weeks, beginning with a gala celebration in Darjeeling.  Tagore had a long, intimate association with the hills and its Gorkha inhabitants—he penned a number of poems and pieces during his visits there. Outfits like the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which is spearheading the Gorkhaland agitation, won’t be able to oppose the celebrations since the Hill people have a special love for Tagore.

Meet Oscar, the world’s first bionic cat. After he lost both back paws in a painful accident with a combine harvester, his owners had little hope of his survival and much less of his ability to bounce around. But thanks to an incredible three-hour operation—the first of its kind—by Irish-born veterinary surgeon Noel Fitzpatrick, Oscar now sports prosthetic paws that allow him to be fully active once again, if only indoors. The implants, known as Itap (intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics) are a work of biology and engineering mechanics that hold hope for other wounded animals. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to keep him alive,” the overjoyed surgeon has been quoted as saying about making medical history with his feline friend.

The World Cup is over. But players have still not figured out how to control the notorious Jabulani, the tournament’s official ball. Most long range shots flew wide off the target. Goalkeepers struggled to judge its flight. Perhaps, ‘Jabuloony’ would have been a more accurate name for it.

The interesting thing about the Jabulani is this. Its flaw is flawlessness. Geeks at the Institute of the Science of Movement in Marseille, France, inferred that the ball was too round to travel straight. “The stitches of the Jabulani are internal, so the ball resembles a perfect sphere,” Eric Berton, the institute’s deputy director, has been quoted as saying. “Because of the shape, the time of contact with the foot is reduced. As a consequence, it practically doesn’t spin. The ball travels a little less far, and will have a floating and unpredictable trajectory, whether for a striker or a goalkeeper.” The absence of pronounced stitching also means less air resistance, resulting in a less-controlled flight.  

What makes a perfect football then? Experts believe that some of the more traditionally stitched balls used in past World Cups, like the Telstar (Mexico 1970) or Tango Espana (Spain 1982) are much better for  football.