Dictators in exile

Once upon a time, two priests, one old and the other young, were crossing a stream when a passing woman asked the young priest to carry her across the stream as she could not swim.

After the young priest had carried her across, the old priest reprimanded the younger one for having touched a woman. To this, the young priest said, “I put the lady down after crossing the stream, but it seems that you’re still carrying her with you (in your mind).”

That’s the one-time blue-eyed-boy of chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy and Infosys’ former director of marketing – Phaneesh Murthy. He’s using the analogy to explain the current status of his relationship with the older priest – and no prizes for guess who he’s referring to!(Economic Times via Ramnath)

So you behave irresponsibly and forget all about it. Your boss punishes you for behaving irresponsibly. Your boss is at fault?

Swami, do you also know that I am the top search result for Parveen Bobby Living, though The Examined Life has never carried a story on the life of a Scotland Yard policeman named Parveen.

I am also the top result for Searchking vs google and for india average height men women and I come in the top ten search results for dravidians, why war is good iraq, just to mention some of the search terms that landed visitors to my place in one day.

Interesting isn’t it?

[Swami dozes off…]

This is the Golden Section, which equals 2/(sqrt(5) -1). The ratio of two succesive numbers of the Fibonacci sequence (F(n)/F(n-1)) tends to the Golden Section.
This is one of those magic numbers, like pi, which occur at odd places in nature. An article in the Guardian on the special properties of this strange number.
Update: Corrected. It is 2/(sqrt(5)-1), not sqrt(5)-1

Posters bearing the name of the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islamia (HUJI), stuck on the main walls of a mosque in Shahdara Sharief in the border district of Rajouri, asked women to quit government jobs by January 25.
The posters … also directed all families to get their daughters, who have reached the age of 15, married immediately.(Rediff.com: Militants’ deadline for Muslim women to quit jobs)

Where do these one-fatwa wonders spring from? Do they actually hope to gain anything from these except visibility? If I didn’t have full faith in the incompetence of the government, I’d have been convinced that these things are part of a disinformation campaign to discredit the terrorists.

In a major boost to enhancing world-class research facilities at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), two of its alumni have given a whopping USD six million donation to their alma mater as a “give back” during its golden jubilee celebrations.Indian Express

Of that, 1 million went to my Alma Mater
In view of recessionary conditions in the economy, I think I’ll postpone my own donation … by a couple of decades.

• In summer, the evenings are hot. The water is cool.
• There was no rainy season this time, but I remember that the water is generally cool during rainy season.
• During October-November, evenings are cool, but the water is waterwarm.
• In December, evenings are cold, but the water is freezing.
• In January, evenings are as cool as in November, but the water is still freezing.

I have thought of an explanation that uses day time temperature, convection, etc., but I am not sure whether it is physics or psychology that will give me the right answer.

The inspectors stumbled on the warheads in a bunker at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area, about 90 miles southwest of Baghdad. The trove included 11 empty 122-millimeter chemical warheads and “one warhead that requires further evaluation,”
(Inspectors find empty warheads in an Iraqi Depot.( NY times -Free registration required))

The teams of UN inspectors sent to investigate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal made a stunning breakthrough last week when they uncovered evidence of Iraq’s attempts to build an atom bomb. (The Telegraph)

In addition to smoking being good for children, it now seems that it also improves your memory.
scientis?s in North Carolina will describe how they tested the [nicotine]patches on 11 senior men and women to counter deteriorating memories.After several weeks of treatment, the subjects experienced significant improvements in their abilities to make decisions quickly and recognize objects (The Globe and Mail )

Perhaps it is better to die of cancer than to lose your memory…

Someone visited this site searching Google for Gandhiji + Machines

Nothing surprising in that, except that my blog entry- I have come to bury Gandhiji– is the first site that comes up in the search!

Which is more, notice the fourth result? It is another blog entry written by one N S Ramnath responding to my polemic! I hadn’t seen that earlier. He makes some interesting points. In particular, he interprets non-violence in a way that would fuel an arms race.

This means either that:

1. Google’s algorithm still somehow gives a high weight to blogs ( because of linking, frequent updates, etc.) OR
2. My site has become wildly popular. OR
3. Gandhiji’s actual views are badly underrepresented on the net.

The encomium comes from CBS’ highly-regarded 60 Minutes, the most widely watched news programme in the US, which in a rah-rah story last Sunday told its more than 10 million viewers that “IIT may be the most important university you’ve never heard of.” (IITs better than US institutes, says CBS – The Times of India)

Uh.. OK. Hyperbole aside, IITs are good, but they can be better. The high standards come from the rigorous selection procedure, and from the fact that the creme de la creme (ahem!) have fewer choices than they’d have in the US. The last should change if the current efforts to upgrade RECs to IIT standard are taken seriously.

And then the comparison between the IITs and the Ivy league colleges in the US can be made on merits.

Should you be constantly talking about your impending product launches, as Microsoft does? Joel Spolsky on why it is better to keep your Mouth Wide Shut