Here it is

Actually I still want to write that post about the foreign origins issue even though it is moot now, but it will turn out to be a long one and I won’t have the time for it for some time. So I want you people to do the hard work for me.

Defenders of Sonia Gandhi’s becoming PM point to the fact that she is a citizen and hence she is entitled to the post, period. Yazad asks me if I am having second thoughts about the rule of law, which is one of the principles I hold dear.

Actually no. But a law is supposed to have a rationale behind it. So my question is, why have the citizenship requirement at all?
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Interviewer So where did you graduate from?

Applicant: Are you saying that one cannot get a job with you unless he graduates?

I: Not really. Take Bill Gates for example. He runs the world’s biggest software co and he isn’t a graduate. But then he has other qualities that compensate. He is smart and has good leadership skills, etc.

A: So are you saying that I am not smart?

I: Hardly. I don’t really know you, so I have no way of knowing whether you are smart or not… I don’t even know if you have any experience at all…

A: Which means that you can’t really say that I will do badly on the job?

I: Well let’s try again. Do you know any programming languages?

A: Which languages are you looking for?

I: Actually we have projects in all major languages…

A: So are you saying that anyone who joins knows all the languages you people work on?

I: Not really, at the most they will know a couple.

A: So anyone who joins your company won’t know most of the languages you work on. So I really don’t see why you are claiming that knowing a programming language is a prerequisite to joining.

I: I must say that I am impressed by your logical reasoning.

A: See? You haven’t come up with a single reason why I should not join your company. Where’s my offer letter?

Before I start off on my promised Anti-Sonia tirade, yesterday’s crash wasn’t caused by any dark conspiracy by the BJP. There was no Ketan Mehta or Harshad Mehta style manipulation this time. It was entirely due to FIIs pulling out. So unless you think that Yashwant Sinha’s son and daughter-in-law have such disproportionate influence on the FII community as to influence decision-making among all of them, your conspiracy theory is simply over the top. The crash was caused by FIIs losing their nerve and pulling out, because of the loony statements that the Left was making.

I can see that there are serious differences among the Cartelian co-ordinates (Any suggestions for names of Members of the Cartel that does not involve math geekery?) on the issue of Sonia and her foreign origins. I think that Sonia Gandhi is enough of a disaster for the country as it is, and her origins make it worse.

This is to announce that we at The Examined Life shall come up with a reasoned justification of why Sonia’s origins matter. Plus: Examined Life exclusive! Sonia Gandhi’s job interview techniques!

People seem to be quite happy that the natural party of government is set to take over.

Ramesh Shah, a stockbroker at the Bombay Stock Exchange, had a foreboding that some bad news awaited him this morning but he never expected that Asia’s oldest stock exchange would shut down its operations for three hours and his earnings would take a huge dip.

“I knew that this new government will not be market-friendly, but I never thought that something this bad will happen to the stock markets. (Prime Minister-designate) Sonia Gandhi is bad for our country and also for the economy. Sonia Gandhi and all her allies have no economic programme,” says Ramesh.

“Everyone is panicking here with communist leaders making statements like they will disband the divestment ministry and not let labour reforms go through,” Ramesh rues.

Asked how much money he lost, his broker friend Asmit Desai intervenes and says, “He has lost ‘ek khoka’ (Rs 1 crore or Rs 10 million) and I have lost around Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million).”

“This is all because of Sonia Gandhi. She has no sense of business and economics. She should have laid common minimum programme first and only then allowed these senseless Left leaders speak about economic policies. Because of their statements, FIIs (foreign institutional investors) are running away from the market. Both of us have lost money in blue chip companies like ONGC and Infosys,” laments Desai.

(Rediff.com)

I think by now everyone has received this chain mail which extolls the virtues of India. It contains the line “India has never invaded another country in the 10000 years of its history. (The whole text is here.)

The problem is, that sentence is false even if you take a very generous definition of India to include Afghanistan. For example, this column details the exploits of the Chola kings in South East Asia.

You know what I am leading upto right? Here is your question. Give me another example where Indians have invaded another country. Remember that I am literally stretching the map of India, so anything that the Mughals might have done in present day Afghanistan is out. There might be more than one answer. The specific event I am thinking of happened within the past three hundred years, but any other examples are also welcome.

Shanti finds this medical breakthrough disgusting.

Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time “saviour siblings” have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team.

In other words, parents are having a child just to provide stem cells to an earlier child. Earlier, doing so had a one in five chance, i.e. you needed to have five children on an average before you got a kid with the right genetic makeup for your elder kid. Now, the chance has increased to 98%. I think though I cannot be sure, that technology has improved the chance of detection at an early stage, so you still need to abort an average of four foetuses very early in the cycle, i.e. within a month of the pregnancy.

So why does Shanti find it abhorrent?

Has anyone once stopped to consider what kind of people are these babies going to turn into when they find out that they were designed to fulfill the needs of another person and not for themselves?

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You know why the EU fined Microsoft recently? Because it bundled Windows Media Player along with its operating system, so that people. Windows Media Player, is a very basic program, but the advantage is that people who just need to listen to a song can do so without going through a complicated download process.

On the other hand, I’ve heard people cribbing about IE because, you know, it does not provide native popup blocking capability, unlike superior browsers like FireFox. But then IE also provides an excellent toolkit which enables people like Google to come up with their own toolbars which incorporate popup blocking.
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Rewrite the Google IPO prospectus in a way that will reduce its clarity and remedy the shocking underuse of business jargon in the document.

This incident reminds me of that event in George Orwell’s 1984, where in the midst of the “Hate Week”, it turns out that the enemy had changed from Eastasia to Eurasia (or vice versa) and everyone made the required mental adjustments without batting an eyelid.