Lazy Desis are still lazy!

Amazing prank

2007-10-18T20:19:00.001-07:00

The best ever!!!
http://www.videosift.com/video/No-Reflection-the-most-brilliant-prank-ever

Tamilnadu govt textbooks available online for free

2007-10-09T20:21:00.001-07:00

Wow! This is revolutionary... something unheard of in Indian education system. Way to go!
http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/

Indian creativity at its best!

2007-10-08T01:20:00.001-07:00

The best ad I've ever seen... amazing creativity!!!

http://canaravideo.com/view_video_new.php?viewkey=d31e82c6ef826f341dae&page=1&category=mv

Nice ad

2006-11-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Blockbuster tries new online rental incentive | CNET News.com

2006-11-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

Blockbuster tries new online rental incentive | CNET News.com: "Subscribers to any Blockbuster online rental plan can use the new 'Total Access' feature. When a DVD rented online is returned to a Blockbuster store, the online system immediately gears up the next movie in the subscriber's queue for shipment, thus cutting down on the lag time associated with mail."

It'll be interesting to see if any of these incremental moves will offset their brick-and-mortar costs.

VeryFunnyAds

2006-08-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

VeryFunnyAds (http://www.veryfunnyads.com)hosts TV Commercials from around the world and categorized them nicely. Check it out.

WikiMapia

2006-06-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

WikiMapia (http://www.wikimapia.org) is a project to describe the whole planet Earth. You can drill down to cities all over the world and not just limited to US. Its very similar to the Google Earth and Microsoft Live maps.

You will be amazed to see the details with which the details such as Squares, Land Marks have been complied.

How to use
Just move the map to find interesting places, click on rectangles. To add an interesting place or object use Add New link. A note from the Creator, Please only add places interesting to everyone.

Click on the WikiMapia Icon on the Top Left Corner to search.

Stephen Hawking takes Beijing; now, will science follow? - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

2006-06-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hawking takes Beijing; now, will science follow? - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune: "China wants to stand up scientifically, as it is beginning to economically, and it is pouring money and talent into the sciences, particularly physics. Jie Zhang, director general of basic sciences for the Chinese academy, said his budget had been increasing 17 percent a year for the last few years as China tried to ramp up research spending to about 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product. By comparison, the United States spends slightly less than 2 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.

Among the big-budget items on the table, Zhang said, are a giant 500-meter-diameter radio telescope in China's outback to study microwaves from the Big Bang and a multinational particle-physics project, known as the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment to study the ghostly elementary particles known as neutrinos."

The Indian dream, at a premium price - Business - International Herald Tribune

2006-06-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

The Indian dream, at a premium price - Business - International Herald Tribune: "Kushal Pal Singh wants to become India's landlord.

He wants to build Wal-Mart superstores for a mushrooming consumer class. He wants to build skyscrapers that generate their own electricity for outsourcing giants like International Business Machines. And he wants to build apartments with a pool for the aspirational young employees of call centers and software parks.

There is a problem: Singh, a New Delhi real-estate mogul whose company turned a $44 million profit last year, needs money.
"

India speaks...

2006-06-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

I have become a big fan of Bharatbala productions ...
Are they the only ones in the business of "promotion" of National integration???
We definitely need more of'em.

[Via Arjun's blog]

Bollywood Performance in CommonWealth

2006-04-11T00:39:00.000-07:00

Indian government spent Rs. 40 crores on Bollywood stars for an eleven-minute performance!

From :

AMJAD K. MARUF (Indiatimesblog)

Spiderman in Japan

2006-04-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

Japanese are too good in handling superheros. This video apparantly is one of the oldest televised episodes of spiderman. I am sure Japanese cherish it as much as Indians cherish videos like "ek chidiya" etc.
This video has everything -- action, comedy, songs, romance and sentiments. Enzoy!!!

Photoshop alters history

2006-04-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

Photoshop contest entries.

Pencils are made of wood too..

2006-04-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

..so why not use them as your furniture? Here are some pencil artworks.

ASCII Films.

2006-04-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

I'm back!!! Man, if you start getting little involved in work, it just sucks you in. So I've decided to crawl my way out of it.

Earlier these ascii arts and ascii videos used to be very rare. Now imaging softwares are sophisticated enough to generate high resolution ascii videos.

Funny shampoo ad :-)

2006-04-02T23:38:00.000-07:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ic_fbC7mlM

2006-03-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

What will India's innovation and booming economy mean for Americans?
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1674437

Dhiraj

Math Trek: From Counting to Writing, Science News Online, March 11, 2006

2006-03-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

Math Trek: From Counting to Writing, Science News Online, March 11, 2006: "Although other scholars tend to agree that Sumerian tokens could have been devices for keeping track of goods, some argue that writing was a largely independent development. These skeptics insist that there's little evidence that cuneiform writing arose directly out of a token-based accounting system. Moreover, it's likely that writing developed independently in different parts of the world—in Mesopotamia, in the Indus River valley, and in Egypt—with each region producing its own unique form of expression for its own purpose.

In response, Schmandt-Besserat contends that she has strong archaeological evidence—thousands of tokens and hundreds of clay envelopes and early tablets—to support her theory.

Schmandt-Besserat is now exploring how the development of writing influenced art by providing a way of presenting stories on vases and other surfaces. Before writing, the patterns were largely geometric; after writing, there was narrative, she says.

At the same time, art influenced writing, helping it shift from a mundane accounting tool to an evocative form of expression, beginning as a way to preserve the names of deceased members of a family."

Matrix Ping-pong video

2006-03-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8079411349144989883

[Thanks Lad]

Raang De Basanti...........

2006-03-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Three days ago, aerospace engineer Tanmay Rajpurohit, who passed out of IIT Bombay and Georgia Tech, Atlanta, also a postgraduate in Economics from New York University, decided to have his fledgling party Lok Paritran, comprising a bunch of highly educated spirited youth, take the plunge into Assembly elections...

Link

Using India's poor as guinea pigs

2006-03-05T22:58:00.000-08:00

Big pharmas have a billion people vying to be part of clinical trials of untested drugs. Areas known only for snakes and heat now have good hospitals after the government passed a law allowing the drug testing and advertised its "treatment naive" patients. By Jennifer Kahn from Wired magazine.

India Rising....News week by Fareed Zakaria

2006-03-04T23:32:00.000-08:00

Every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, there's a star. Not a person but a country. One country impresses the gathering of global leaders because of a particularly smart Finance minister or a compelling tale of reform or even a glamorous gala. This year there was no contest. In the decade that I've been going to Davos, no country has captured the imagination of the conference and dominated the conversation as India in 2006.........

Full Story

Tall drawing

2006-02-05T00:09:00.000-08:00

This drawing is very tall. It extends all the way from God, down to Hell -- and everything in between.

Klueless....

2006-01-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine forwarded the game
Klueless developed by IIM-indore studs!
Let us know the level you are stuck at but dont disclose the
answers plz...

Happy News

2006-01-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

Open a newspaper (or) news website for that matter -- All that you see is killings, destruction, bomb blasts, natural calamaties where nature asserts its supremacy! Should we be bothered about all these sad, sad news every day? How about reading only good, encouraging, positive happenings around the world.
Happy News is here for the exact same reason.
Of course, it wont be as crowd-pulling or saucy or even interesting to many like the say, CNN or "Trash of India" sites but then, its like fresh air blowing over other stinking stuffs getting reported in other sites. Magesh says its worth a visit everyday!

[Via Magesh]

Image-> ASCII Converter

2006-01-07T01:25:00.000-08:00

TEXT-IMAGE.com was started in early 2002 for the single purpose of entertaining people who find their way here. It's funded by Google advertising and runs on a webserver behind the living room sofa. The man who created it is Patrik Roos, now a 24-year-old student of Japanese and physics. He resides in Stockholm, Sweden, where he spends most of the day reading in the bathroom

[Via Ursi's blog]

Virtual CT-scan

2006-01-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

This applet on how the human anatomy will look in a CT-Scan is amazing. The applet takes a while to load though!

Sideways Bike

2006-01-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

Human balance is detected in the inner ear. There are three semi-circular canals positioned at right angles to each other that detect balance in three axes. These canals are separate and distinct. The three types of balance are Left to Right, Front to Back and Rotational (Yaw). Left to Right balance is what people are most familiar with and is the primary balance used for riding a regular bicycle or indeed flying a plane.

We have finally arrived!

2006-01-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Can you believe it? Shikar being screened in Dollar theater, Plano. Well, well, well -- Finally, we have arrived.
We'll now see KKQUIR, KAPMQ etc being nominated for Oscars!!!

Size does matter!

2005-12-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.odt.org/Pictures/poplcart.jpg

[More from the retired shankar]

Awesome visualization

2005-12-31T13:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.brazilianartists.net/home/flags/

[From a retired-lazydesi shankar]

Racial Discrmination....

2005-12-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

Indian-born US citizen Neelima Tirumalasetti announced today she has filed suit in federal court in Texas against Caremark RX, Inc. and its subsidiary CaremarkPCS for almost daily anti-Indian harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.

Tirumalasetti worked in Caremark’s Richardson, TX facility, as a senior IT analyst in quality assurance. The lawsuit alleges that, after Caremark announced in December 2003 that it would be outsourcing Richardson work to IBM India, Tirumalasetti became the target of widespread anti-Indian harassment....

[more]

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. - New York Times

2005-12-20T05:05:00.000-08:00

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. - New York Times: "Mr. Lyons sees his results as evidence that humans are hard-wired to learn by imitation, even when that is clearly not the best way to learn. If he is right, this represents a big evolutionary change from our ape ancestors. Other primates are bad at imitation. When they watch another primate doing something, they seem to focus on what its goals are and ignore its actions.

As human ancestors began to make complicated tools, figuring out goals might not have been good enough anymore. Hominids needed a way to register automatically what other hominids did, even if they didn't understand the intentions behind them. They needed to imitate.

Not long ago, many psychologists thought that imitation was a simple, primitive action compared with figuring out the intentions of others. But that is changing. 'Maybe imitation is a lot more sophisticated than people thought,' Mr. Lyons said.

We don't appreciate just how automatically we rely on imitation, because usually it serves us so well. 'It is so adaptive that it almost never sticks out this way,' he added. 'You have to create very artificial circumstances to see it.'

In a few years, I plan to explain this experience to Charlotte. I want her to know what I now know. That it's O.K. to lose to the chimps. In fact, it may be what makes us uniquely human"

At least now, plant more trees.

2005-12-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

More amazing, creative, original ads at "Ads of the world" blog.

Cruise rocks!

2005-12-18T20:46:00.001-08:00

Kung Fu

2005-12-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

[Via The Ministry of Unknown Science]

When Japanese babies are born!

2005-12-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

Indian rap

2005-12-03T22:49:00.000-08:00

1. Gujarathi Rap (Video) -- Really good one cheh! ;-)
2. One more Ludakrishna,VikramMC rap
2. Indian Chic (audio)

Indian Help Desk on the Conan O'Brien show

2005-12-03T22:43:00.000-08:00

This is a hilarious movie from one of his recent show about the Indian help desk!
http://www.collegedowntime.com//media/files/conanvideoindianhelpdesk.wmv

[Beware of the popups and ads in this webpage. Might turn out to be NSFW]

"Hozur Road" Cartoons :-)

2005-11-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

In Bangalore, all the major software companies are located in Hosur Road. Infy campus is about 40 kms from Bangalore city. Came across these funny cartoons about the pathetic state of infrastructure in Bangalore.
http://www.arjunprabhu.com/blog/archives/2005/09/05/hosur-road-bangalore-cartoons/

[Via Arjun's blog]

Bacterial Cameras

2005-11-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Bacterial Cameras and the Fabrication Future

Unlocking the Code – Science, Systems and Technological Breakthroughs

Jamais Cascio

It may need four hours to take a picture, and even then only create monochrome images, but the bacterial camera made by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, could be pretty important.

Chris Voigt and his team hacked the genome of E. coli, the common food-poisoning gut microbe, to make it sensitive to light by adding sequences from photosynthesizing algae. When activated by light, the new genes can shut off the action of another gene, in this case one controlling the color of the bacteria. A sufficiently large mass of E. coli can then be used to "print" images. Because the "pixels" are bacteria, the resolution is astounding -- over one hundred megapixels per inch.

The goal of the experiment wasn't to produce a slow, massively high resolution black & white camera, however; the goal was to demonstrate the use of light sensitivity as a control for other bacterial functions.

...their success in getting an array of bacteria to respond to light could lead to the development of "nano-factories" in which minuscule amounts of substances are produced at locations precisely defined by light beams.

For instance, the gene switch need not activate a pigment, says Voigt. A different introduced gene could produce polymer-like proteins, or even precipitate a metal. "This way, the bacteria could weave a complex material," he says. [...]

As a method of nano-manufacturing, the biocamera is an "extremely exciting advance" says Harry Kroto, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of buckminsterfullerene, or buckyballs. "I have always thought that the first major nanotechnology advances would involve some sort of chemical modification of biology."

This bio-photolithography would be a good way of using microbes to construct macro-scale structures without having to develop complex chemical signalling mechanisms.

The image chosen for the experiment, in case you don't recognize it, is the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- and clearly this work has been touched by its noodly appendages.

[http://www.worldchanging.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/3615]

History's Most Underrated Inventions

2005-11-14T19:59:00.000-08:00

Great inventions.

Typically that means big-ticket items. One thinks of dazzling intellectual breakthroughs: the telescope, the steam engine, the airplane, the wheel.... Those were all tremendous, of course.

But often it's some mundane little nothing of a device that changes history. It might be no more than a slight improvement on some earlier invention. If it intersects with a historic moment, it can become a pivot. Then, like the lever that lifts the elephant, it produces consequences far out of proportion to the ingenuity of the thing itself. (Read the article)

One Teen's Gigantic Contribution to the Internet - New York Times

2005-11-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

One Teen's Gigantic Contribution to the Internet - New York Times: "The subject is Blake Ross, who began working at Netscape at the tender age of 14. By 19, he had co-created Firefox: a free, highly regarded, open-source Web browser that, in its very short life, has been downloaded 100 million times, in the process stealing over ten percent of the browser market away from Microsoft. He's now on leave from Stanford, where I met him in his studio apartment."

Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering

2005-11-13T00:19:00.000-08:00

Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering: "When computers and people communicate, something is often lost in the translation. Essentially, computers don't know how we think. UC Berkeley computer scientist Maneesh Agrawala is helping bridge the gap. From designing systems that generate clearer driving maps to software that produces simpler step-by-step assembly instructions, Agrawala's research is about leveraging our understanding of how humans think.

'My interests are in computer graphics and human computer interaction, specifically perception and cognition,' says Agrawala, who joined the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences faculty this fall."

Smart Lid to Prevent Scorched Tongues

2005-11-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

At long last, the wonders of technology have brought a solution to one our species' greatest problems. No longer will we have to suffer the agony and humiliation of eagerly gulping down that first chug of morning coffee only to scald our tongues (or, worse yet, the roofs of our mouths) on the boiling hot liquid. The Smart Lid is coming to save us all.

Made from a plastic that changes color relative to temperature, the Smart Lid will alert us that our coffee is hot before we take that first fateful drink. Bright red means "slow down, cowboy."

Sadly, those establishments that tend to serve their coffee at irrationally high temperatures -- mainly gas station minimarts -- will probably be the last to adopt the Smart Lid, as they obviously prefer stocking the cheapest and thinnest membranes technology can create. (Of course, if you're drinking coffee from a gas station minimart, you get what you deserve.) But overall the Smart Lid is expected to cost just a penny or so more per lid than standard plastic coffee lids, and the return in reduced customer fatalities could be tremendous.

[Via Wired.com-gadgets blog]

Patent Busting project

2005-11-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

Start forming your patent busting posses! Here are the EFF Patent Busting Project's ten most-wanted patents—the ones that pose the biggest threat to the public domain. What makes these patents among the worst of the bunch? Try the fact that their owners are threatening and filing suits against small businesses, individuals and nonprofits, not to mention the threats to free expression and innovation that each of them pose.

Email time capsule

2005-11-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

From Forbes: The E-Mail Time Capsule.
Most time capsules involve cramming stuff into a metal box and burying it in a hole in the ground. It's a method that works --but it's so primitive. What if you could write an email to yourself, and be assured of receiving it twenty years in the future?
[Via J-walkblog]

hard(ly) working guys beware!

2005-11-05T00:17:00.000-08:00

check this video!

thanks mukesh...

Suicides in Goldengate bridge.

2005-11-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

This is like Indian cricket stats.... For some reason, I found it amusing.
Well, there's more stats here as well.

Contemporary Origami

2005-11-01T21:37:00.000-08:00

[Via Ursi's blog]

Room temperature ice

2005-11-01T21:33:00.000-08:00

Experiments have proved that it is possible to freeze water at room temperature using energy to trigger hydrogen to bond in the way needed for crystallization. What's more, the phenomenon uses considerably less energy than had been predicted. The catch is that this type of freezing only happens in nanoscale spaces.

The researchers were able to force ice to form in extremely narrow gaps between a gold surface and the gold tip of a scanning tunneling microscope in an electric field as low as one million volts per meter. Previous estimates had pegged the number at one billion volts per meter.

The strength of an electric field diminishes exponentially with distance making it possible for small spaces to have high electric fields. Electric fields of one million volts per meter can be found in nanoscale electrical devices; they also form naturally in extremely small crevices in rocks, and probably in thunderclouds. A household static electric spark generates an electric field of about three million volts per meter.

[Via Smalley's Research Watch]

Diwali

2005-11-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

Wish you all a very Happy Diwali!!
Be careful when you fire crackers and be ruthless while eating sweets! :-)

Namaste

2005-10-18T19:50:00.000-07:00

More wonderful images at Spectraleyes.

How true !!!

2005-10-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

  Law of Mechanical Repair:
  After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

  Law of the Workshop:
  Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

  Law of the Telephone:
  When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

  Law of the Alibi:
  If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

  Variation Law:
  If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now. (works every time)

  Bath Theorem:
  When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

  Law of Close Encounters:
  The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are  with someone you don't want to be seen with.

  Law of the Result:
  When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work,it will.

  Law of Bio mechanics:
  The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to  the reach.

  Theatre Rule:
  At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from  the aisle arrive last.

  Law of Coffee:
  As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your  boss will ask you  to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

  Murphy's Law of Lockers:
  If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent    lockers.

  Law of Dirty Rugs/Carpets:
  The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a  floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the  carpet/rug.

Why kutral stopped swimming?

2005-10-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

I thought it was because he couldn't find a girl friend in swimming and managed to find one(or many) in Anna University. It seems the reason is something else...
http://in.rediff.com/sports/2005/oct/06spec.htm

[Thanks Shailley]

HP recalls 135,000 notebook PC batteries

2005-10-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

Many of UTD junta have bought HP laptops. You might get a free notebook battery replacement. Check if ur model is applicable for a battery replacement.
http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/bpr/

Here's a politician who follows the technology developments!

2005-10-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern Saturday about a free mapping program from Google Inc., warning it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets.

Maths is the toughest of 'em all!

2005-10-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

The World as the Palette

2005-10-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

Created by MIT Media Labs.
I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special "ink" they just picked up from their immediate environment.

This video is a must see...

Lightning Strikes Everyday: Navarathri

2005-10-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

Lightning Strikes Everyday: Navarathri: "The whole I-visit-you-and-you-visit-me amazes me. Because everytime women visit other women's house (its a custom that all women you know come over and visit your house and vice versa) they are given sundal ( delicacy) and a gift. Of course! those gifts are re-gifted to other women. My question is (sorry! but I have hangover from my statistics class) - given the high probability that the social circle of women is highly networked with very little standard deviation -- how come they aren't gifted with something that they had gifted to someone else two days ago. That the gifts did not choose to loop and come back to the same person bugged my engineering senses ( Then again I wasn't bugged so much because I had very little engineering sense). Everytime my mom came back, I'd look at the gifts to see if something we gave out 2 days before came back. Sundals are a cool thing ofcourse. You never knew so many varieties of sundal existed. Now navarathri is like a distant memory in a place where no festivals of this ilk exist. I was pleasantly surprised when my wife kept a 3 step golu arrangement and invited a couple of confused n.indians to give out sundal. Started narrating the spilled-coffee-on-pant-when-chics-visited kind of embarassing navarathri stories to my wife and that ultimately led to this blog."

Ig Nobel Awards'2005

2005-10-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

A gist of award winning entries:
Physics - John Mainstone of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.
Economics - Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.

Walking thro glass???

2005-10-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

No need to shout - "Say Cheese"...

2005-10-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Smart enough to snap a photo only when you smile, next-generation digital cameras are packing the best technology has to offer. They are getting cheaper and easier to use, yet their highly computerized internal workings are literally making good photography a snap.

Canon's automatic smile detection system prototype turned heads at the recent Japanese giant's Canon Expo 2005 in New York, an event also held in Paris and Tokyo every five years.

The camera's artificial intelligence tracks all moving faces within sight and snaps the picture when smiles and bright eyes peak -- a challenge for even professional photographers. It will be a while before this camera hits the streets.

So too for Canon's long-lasting hydrogen fuel cell-powered camera showing in the next booth.

Asia Encourages Creationism in US Schools

2005-10-13T02:31:00.000-07:00

Caste - Its Cruelty

2005-10-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

`In the rainy season,' the woman began, `it is really bad. Water mixes with the shit and when we carry it (on our heads) it drips from the baskets, on to our clothes, our bodies, our faces. When I return home I find it difficult to eat food sometimes. The smell never gets out of my clothes, my hair. But this is our fate. To feed my children I have no option but to do this work.'

This ten-part series in New Internationalist discusses casteism in India (mainly) and in Africa. A very sad read. Take time to read the whole series. I liked the "I, a Brahmin" story too by Jnanpith U R Ananthamurthy- its quite a reflection on not so old past and possibly current mentality of Brahmins.

A Detailed Look at The Monkey's Tail

2005-10-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

The symbol "@" that is used in email has many colorful names around the world. In many languages, they used the word for monkey's tail for the symbol. This WashPost article has a few good ones.

The article links to Heredios where there is a larger list of how "@" was called in the early email days around the world. There is another nice article linked from Heredios on how to avoid gender specific pronouns without turning sentences into pretzels.

Why is 'c' the symbol for the speed of light?

2005-10-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Why is c the symbol for the speed of light?: "'As for c, that is the speed of light in vacuum, and if you ask why c, the answer is that it is the initial letter of celeritas, the Latin word meaning speed.'
Isaac Asimov in 'C for Celeritas (1959)' [1]

"

Awesome Keyboard

2005-10-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

A reconfigurable keyboard. That's what this is. Every key is a display by itself and you can choose what this key must do. What you see below is the keyboard configured for Russian typing and one for playing Quake. The pictures in the last row show the keys in closeup. You can download any image that you want to. I am drooling at the pictures below :

It costs USD 105. I would not mind one for my birthday, any takers (in this case, actually givers :-)).

Cool Adidas Ad

2005-10-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

If you had to find a new way to represent the raw energy, the elemental skills, and the essence of the combat that takes place on a football field, how would you go about it? How about removing the ground altogether, leaving only the lines that define the playing area? Watch this Adidas ad and decide.

PS: I am back to the networked world.

Waging battle on foreign labor | CNET News.com

2005-10-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

Waging battle on foreign labor | CNET News.com: "The research shows that nearly 37 percent of H-1B approvals in 2003 were for workers born in India. Berry estimates that 18 or 19 of the 20 lowest-paying employers, among companies seeking at least 100 visas, are led by Indian citizens or U.S. citizens of Indian descent.

To make this claim, the guild did not conduct an exhaustive study of the companies on its list. Its analysis of the employers' leadership is based largely on a review of surnames and where companies have operations.

Berry denied any ethnic bias in his group's research, defending its methodology as a way to illuminate what he sees as a chief problem of the visa program: tech staffing firms bringing over low-paid H-1B workers even when qualified U.S. employees are available.

'This is a niche that Indians have developed,' he said. 'It helps to understand the problem to point out what the data shows. Body shops are essentially onshore offshoring.'"

Curry and Rice girl from Shaadi.com

2005-10-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

New!! First check the original masterpiece here.
Remember the famous desi RAP from LuduKrishna and Vikram MC
"Welcome to India where cows eat hay". They are back with a
video, this time spoofing Gwen Stefani famous dance number "HollaBack Girl ".
Enjoy!

Thanks Chetan

The New Yorker: Getting in

2005-10-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "By 1908, the freshman class was seven per cent Jewish, nine per cent Catholic, and forty-five per cent from public schools, an astonishing transformation for a school that historically had been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.

As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in “The Chosen” (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically.By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.”

The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell’s first idea—a quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student body—was roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.

The admissions"

Top Graduates Line Up to Teach to the Poor - New York Times

2005-10-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Top Graduates Line Up to Teach to the Poor - New York Times: "Teach for America grew out of a senior thesis by Wendy Kopp, a Princeton student, proposing a national teacher corps. Ms. Kopp quickly got seed money from Exxon Mobil, then, with a small staff, began a grass-roots recruitment campaign that yielded 500 fledgling teachers, who were placed in six regions in 1990. Teach for America has grown rapidly, with backing from corporate partners, philanthropists interested in education reform and Americorps, which provides the teachers with $9,450 after two years, to repay education loans or to pay for future schooling. Since 2001, the group has benefited from the same surge of interest that has brought record numbers of applications to long-established groups like the Peace Corps.

Teach for America is a growing presence in many school districts, including New York City's, which has about 800 of the group's members this year, twice as many as last year. All told, Teach for America has about 3,700 teachers - 2,190 in their first year and 1,520 in their second - teaching in 22 areas, from Los Angeles and Baltimore to the Arkansas Delta and the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. The group only operates in regions certified as high need by the federal government and willing to employ teachers who lack certification.

As much as anything, Teach for America is a triumph of marketing. The group, based in Manhattan, recruits on more than 500 campuses and spends about a quarter of its nearly $40 million budget on recruitment and selection. The bulk of its members come from 141 top schools where it hires students, at about $500 a semester, to help organize recruiting events and act as headhunters.

'It's very intensive recruiting, to meet the goals Teach for America sets for us,' said Mike Kalin, who was a Harvard recruiter his junior and senior years, and teaches in the South Bronx. 'Some of my friends might h"

Kids prayers (wishes) to Mr.God!

2005-10-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

Swan's room

2005-10-01T17:11:00.000-07:00

A very interesting "treasure hunt" type game... Find the bomb in the room and defuse it!
It took me 1 hour to find the bomb itself. Challenge urself before looking for clues on the net! :-)

Cleverkitchen

2005-10-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

The circular kitchen is an innovative high-tech compact kitchen concept for commercial and residential use. This 180° revolving kitchen design features all the characteristics of a traditional kitchen with an incredibly low demand on overall space, less than 1.8 sqm.

Watching World Series Causes Drop In Hospital Visits

2005-09-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Watching World Series Causes Drop In Hospital Visits: "What factors determine whether a medical emergency is truly an emergency? According to a new study, the answer depends on how well your favorite baseball team is doing. A report published in the October issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine reveals that the number of visits to emergency rooms in Boston-area hospitals was inversely related to how well the Red Sox performed in the 2004 World Series."

How are Hurricanes Named?

2005-09-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Wondered why they have a desi touch to the hurricane names!

Hurricane Names

All hurricanes are given names. Why is that? To help us identify storms and track them as they move across the ocean. Remember, there can be more than one hurricane at a time and without naming them, we could get confused and which storm we're talking about.

For hundreds of years, hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred. An Australian meteorologist began giving women's names to tropical storms before the end of the 19th century. In 1953, the U.S. National Weather Service, which is the federal agency that tracks hurricanes and issues warnings and watches, began using female names for storms.

In 1979, both women and men's names were used. One name for each letter of the alphabet is selected, except for Q, U and Z. For Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, the names may be French, Spanish or English, since these are the major languages bordering the Atlantic Ocean where the storm occur.

So who decides what names are used each year? The World Meteorological Organization uses six lists in rotation. The same lists are reused every six years. The only time a new name is added is if a hurricane is very deadly or costly. Then the name is retired and a new name is chosen.

* Atlantic Hurricane Names
* Pacific Hurricane Names
* Retired Hurricane Names

America's shame

2005-09-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

From this Frontline article:

While the citizens suffered in the Superdome, the federal government began to plan for the rebuilding of the city. Lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, a former FEMA employee and Bush's campaign manager in 2000, represents two of the main firms that will benefit from the contracts to rebuild the city: the Shaw Group and Halliburton. On September 7, Allbaugh visited the Gulf Coast, where he told reporters, "I don't do government contracts. I'm just trying to lend my shoulder to the wheel trying to coordinate some private-sector support that the government always asks for."

Nevertheless, Halliburton, Vice-President Cheney's former firm and major beneficiary in Iraq, has been tapped to clean up the Navy bases along the Gulf coast (at a cost of $29.8 million). Shaw earned a $100 million from the Corps of Engineers to rebuild homes (Bechtel, another major player, has been called in to build homes). These are all no-bid contracts.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, 40 members of the New Orleans elite (all established, moneyed, white families) met to discuss the fate of their city. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically, and politically," said James Reiss to The Wall Street Journal's Christopher Cooper (September 8). "I'm not speaking for myself here," he continued. "The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out." Incidentally, when Reiss fled the city before the storm, he flew in an Israeli security firm by helicopter to protect his Audubon Park mansion.

The government and these established families have tried to remove the black poor from the city for several decades. The hurricane's destructive force has done their job for them. Now they will try to keep the poor blacks out. The federal government has already shipped people across the country. Inside the Houston astrodome, military recruiters went among the refugees. On September 7, the military conducted a Job Fair inside the astrodome "as a blatant effort to exploit the despair of masses of Americans evacuated from the Gulf coast", in the words of a community organiser.

Zimbabwe bids adieu to Cricket...

2005-09-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

According to news agencies, the whole Zimbabwean team is going to resign at the end of the current series. No international cricket will be played by or in Zimbabwe after the current test series is over. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU) will also be dissolved. Zimbabwean cricket captain Tatenda Taibu and senior member Heath Streak were unable for comment when contacted by Reuters. President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe described the decision to dissolve ZCU as "a sad day for Zimbabwe cricket". When asked about the reason for the action, President Mugabe said "It is a great loss for the country of Zimbabwe. Not only the cricket team, but the entire nation is demoralized. We could have easily continued playing cricket after losing to any country in the world, but the shock of watching India's captain Sourav Ganguly make a hundred against us was too much to bear. That is all I have to say."

.. a very sad day indeed.

Sky news

2005-09-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

Kleptography : An amazing photo blog

2005-09-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

Learn to sue. Who knows - u could be a millionaire.

2005-09-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

Here is one classic news:
A Hong Kong woman has sued Rolex, alleging that a watch she bought caused her psychological trauma because she had to wear long sleeves to cover up an itchy, unsightly skin allergy triggered by a label on the underside of the luxury timepiece, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Fun with fountains!

2005-09-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Beer and break dance

2005-09-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Cultural vision

2005-09-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

It seems that people from the opposite ends of the earth tend to look at things differently.

A study examining the way American and Chinese students look at photographs that contain an obvious focal point and a complex background revealed distinct differences. The study tracked students' eye movements as they looked at pictures including a tiger in a forest and an airplane with a landscape behind it.

The American students were quicker to look at the focal point and looked at it longer, while the Chinese students made more quick glances around the rest of the picture.

There have been hints of this cultural difference before -- previous studies (1 , 2) have shown that North Americans tend toward the analytical and tend to pay more attention to focal objects, while East Asians tend toward the holistic and tend to pay more attention to context.

The difference also translated to differences in remembering the objects later. The Chinese students remembered the photographs slightly better, but the American students were better at remembering they had seen the focal object before when it was put in front of a new background.

[Via Smalley's Research Watch]

Be Careful Next time you visit a doctor!

2005-09-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

Working long hours is considered a hallmark of a medical residency. But in recent years, concerns have risen about how shifts that can last days affect a doctor's ability to function. The results of a new study quantify the negative effects and show that the performance of fatigued residents is comparable to how they would act after imbibing three or four cocktails. (Link)

Polymer e-reader

2005-09-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

polymer_readius_500x298,
originally uploaded by jujubi.

Pretyy nice huh. "The Readius, a concept gadget from Philips Polymer Vision, contains a flexible, scrollable display. The pocket-size "e-reader" stretches out to provide a 5-inch monochrome screen with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels."

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India sends aid for New Orleans

2005-09-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India sends aid for New Orleans: "India has dispatched an air force plane laden with 22 tonnes of relief supplies to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

India has already given the American Red Cross a donation of $5m to help relief efforts.

US officials now say that fears that up to 10,000 died in the disaster may be an overestimate.

The air force plane is expected to deliver its load on Monday after a first stop at Boston.

The Indian Ilyushin plane is carrying tarpaulins, blankets, personal hygiene kits and sheets, officials say.

Next week, a team of Indian divers and salvage experts is due to fly out to join US rescue workers.

India turned down offers of international help when its commercial capital, Mumbai (Bombay) and surrounding areas were battered by monsoon rains earlier this year that left hundreds dead."

IEEE President's column

2005-09-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

Came across this nice piece of editorial column from
the IEEE president. Talks about the vision of an engineer
for an improved world. He mentions Dr Kalam's vision in
his book "India 2020"

Three-parent embryo research gets green light | The Register

2005-09-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Three-parent embryo research gets green light | The Register:
We moved from asexual to secual reproduction to get more variation, does this work on the same lines. This can be very interesting and scary. " UK researchers have been given the go-ahead to create an embryo that will contain DNA from three people, after the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reversed its decision to ban the procedure.

The technique in question could eventually be used to prevent a series of genetic disorders, known collectively as mitochondrial myopathy, which include muscular dystrophy. These are triggered by defective genes in a woman's mitochondrial DNA. The researchers want to try to prevent these genes being passed on."

Slashdot | Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong

2005-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Slashdot | Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong: "An anonymous reader writes 'According to epidemiologist John Ioannidis, the majority of published scientific papers are wrong. If Ioannidis's own paper is right, a randomly chosen scientific paper has less than a 50% chance of being true. He also says that many papers may only be accurate measures of the prevailing bias among scientists. However, a senior editor of a scientific journal says that scientists are already aware of this: 'When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about.''"

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Catalyst Produces Hydrogen from Water

2005-08-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Catalyst Produces Hydrogen from Water: "The promise of a hydrogen economy, which would lessen dependence on nonrenewable energy sources such as fossil fuels, hinges on the ability to produce and store large amounts of the clean-burning element. New results from experiments on a novel catalyst suggest that it can be used to coax hydrogen from water without the need for severe reaction conditions.

'We have discovered a catalyst that can produce ready quantities of hydrogen without the need for extreme cold temperatures or high pressures, which are often required in other production and storage methods,' remarks Mahdi Abu-Omar of Purdue University. The compound he and his colleagues used is a so-called coordination complex based on the metal rhenium. Originally looking for a method to convert chemicals called organosilanes into silanols, the team combined organosilanes and water in the presence of the rhenium complex at ambient temperature and pressure. After an hour, the reaction had produced hydrogen gas in addition to silanols. According to a report published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the method generates a large amount of hydrogen compared to the amount of water used."

The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question

2005-08-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

If you open any good book on the great civilizations of the ancient world, aimed not at scholars but at a wider readership, you will almost invariably find that Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt are given pride of place ; then come, in mixed order, ancient China, Greece, Central and South America, and the Indus Valley civilization, also called the Harappan civilization. Everyone agrees that this early civilization of the Indian subcontinent was one of the largest in extent, that it made great advances in crafts and technology, in trade and agriculture, and that its social organization appears to have been one of the most efficient, methodical and trouble-free ever ; still, in the end, it will rarely be given more than a few pages where dozens will be devoted to Mesopotamia or Egypt, and today, more than seventy years after its discovery, its existence and accomplishments remain largely unknown to the general public outside the subcontinent — and inside, too.

Subservient Blair

2005-08-28T02:50:00.000-07:00

Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" kicked off a series of subservience videos and here is yet another such video: Subservient Blair. Try the key words - dance, kiss , iraq etc.,

SciAm: Illusions

2005-08-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

I found these illusions on SciAm. The first one "holy cow" is really nice.

-Rajan

Steganography with Flickr

2005-08-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Steganography is not something new, there have been techniques and available programs for hiding data in pictures/audio files for a long time now. However, one step further is using popular online photo sharing sites, such as Flickr in hiding your data, successfully.

[Via /.]

Funny Movies

2005-08-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

Check out these set of funny movies from Netsummary:
1. Cell phone flirt
2. Get slim with AIDS
3. Sign Language

Finger art: Ad from BBC

2005-08-21T01:07:00.000-07:00