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.
Continue reading →

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.

Do you know how much Google plans to raise with its IPO? The answer is here

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For the sake of my readers’ sanity, I refrain from making any jokes about irrationality and any plays on ‘e’, but those interested can follow the trackbacks to the link to the Marginal Revolution post I have provided.

(The subject was the angelic face, the exposition was mine
He was my confidante, now he is my rival in love)

Just as I was typing the “edit” part of the previous post, I realised that “oversight” has two senses ( 1. Supervise 2. Overlook) which often end up meaning two opposite things.

Question: Name the word, which when used in the software sense, means the exact opposite of what it did originally.

Phones are now the dominant technology with which young people, and urban youth in particular, now define themselves. What sort of phone you carry and how you customise it says a great deal about you, just as the choice of car did for a previous generation. In today’s congested cities, you can no longer make a statement by pulling up outside a bar in a particular kind of car. Instead, you make a similar statement by displaying your mobile phone, with its carefully chosen ringtone, screen logo and slip cover. Mobile phones, like cars, are fashion items: in both cases, people buy new ones far more often than is actually necessary. Both are social technologies that bring people together; for teenagers, both act as symbols of independence. And cars and phones alike promote freedom and mobility, with unexpected social consequences.

The article is in the Economist and it is a good read. But then I repeat myself.

Read it before next friday, for then it will move to the premium section.
(Edit: By a strange oversight, I had put the quoted part into “more text” instead of “blockquote”)