Indian Supreme Court Provides a Legal Definition for an Idiot

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, an idiot is defined as, a person affected with extreme mental retardation2: a foolish or stupid person.

The Supreme Court of India felt that it needed to come up with legal definition and so this is how the Indian legal community should define an idiot now

To be legally accepted as an 'idiot',
1. one has to be so dumb as to be unable to count till 20,
2. unable list the days of the week
3. fail to remember the names of one's parents

Also the Supreme Court identified just four kinds of people who could be classified mentally unsound — idiots, the very ill, lunatics and drunks.

Read Supreme Court Defines Idiots to find out more about the legal definition of idiots

Another Sign of Global Pollution?

Disappearing fireflies may be another sign that our globe is changing and for the worse. The question is what do we need to do about it?

Read more about the disappearing firefly

How to Swat a Fly?

Some new research using slow motion video cameras give new insight into why it is so difficult to swat a fly. Also the research gives hints on what is the best technique for a successful swat.

Read more at How to Swat a Fly and next time hopefully you will have a successful swat.

Are Olympcis Worth the Cost?

The recently concluded Olympics in China have been hailed as a huge success, may be the most successful Olympics in modern history. The colorful and extravagant opening and closing ceremonies and off courses the athletics events certainly added to the buzz about this been a very successful Olympics.

But my question is, was the $43 billion spent by China preparing for this event worth the cost of hosting an Olympics? Was the money spent in renovating one city, Beijing, worth the effort? What about other areas in China which are predominantly poor and starved for infrastructure? How will the Olympics benefit these areas? And finally how is the success of the Olympics judged? Is it just by the glittering opening and closing ceremonies, the successful athletics etc? With China setting the bar of $43 billion to stage the Olympics, should the future hosts also spend that much or more to have a successful event?

Raj Thackery wants Marathi Nameplates

After his infamous attack on North Indians, Raj Thackeray has now turned his ire on businesses. His new pet peeve, Marathi nameplate. He wants all businesses to display their names in Marathi only or face the wrath of his men.

This when 1.2 million people are marooned in the worst floods in the Northen Indian state of Bihar. But again do we expect Raj Thackeray to be sympathetic to the situation, when he had made a huge hue and cry to oust the people from Bihar out of Mumbai. In fact I think he will be silently laughing and rejoicing at their plight. Shame on you Raj Thackeray and shame on every Indian who supports him.

How Fast Can Humans Run?

Is there a limit to how fast human's can run? Researchs have been using the world record 100meters times and trying to fit a curve so that they can predict the progression of the 100 meters times. The data seemed to fit a simple exponential curve until Usain Bolt came along.

Read more at Blot is Freaky

Number of Houses John McCain Owns?

This past week, John McCain was asked "How many Houses Doe he Own?". In response McCain huffed and puffed before replying ""I think — I'll have my staff get to you,".

Seizing on the moment Barack Obama started running these ads about how John McCain is out of touch with reality....

No Wonder India has only 3 Olympics Medals

With Sports being lead by people like MS Gill, you cannot really blame the athletes for bringing in only three medals at this years Beijing Olympics.

Read the complete cock-up by our honorable sports minister.

Man with 86 Wives and 170 Children

In an odd news which I heard on BBC a man in Nigeria has 86 wives and 170 children. If you are thinking wow, you are not alone. His advise to other men, not to follow his footsteps and marry 86 women. Even though it is 85 wives too late, atleast he realized.

Read the complete article 85 Wives too Late

US Public Debt - $9.5 Trillion

As of April 2008, the United States owes about $9.5 Trillion dollars to various creditors. And this does not include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other federal entitlements. If these are included the debt swells to $53 trillion. Thats the size of the GDP for the entire world. As for the $9.5 Trillion dollar debt, it is about $32,000 per person in the United States. Imagine that......

Read more at US Debt.

Also see a short film (click on the first clip) by Nigel Holmesabout what this debt mean in terms of sheer numbers.

Vampire Energy

Vampire Energy is the energy consumed by electronic appliances which are plugged in when not in use. According to this video, about 1% of all electricity consumption in the US is due to Vampire Energy.



Video obtained from By The Numbers

What Should be the Legal Age for Drinking?

Amethyst Initiative, a public statement signed by presidents of about 100 university's is calling elected officials and lawmakers to have an informed debate about the current legal age of drinking. The reasoning behind this being, the current legal age of 21 years is promoting binge drinking across campuses in the United States.

Though the initiative is not specially calling for a lowering of the drinking age and is only asking for a informed debate, opponents like MADD are already taking shots at the presidents and colleges who have signed up with the initiative. Whatever may be the outcome, this initiative has certainly started a debate, which was it original intent.

Read more at Leagl Drinking Age

Leroy Sievers - RIP

Leroy Sievers an award winning journalist for NPR passed away this past weekend of cancer.

Leroy made his battle with cancer public by documenting his experience living with the disease in his blog My Cancer. With his blog, Leroy provided a forum for a lot of people who suffer from cancer to share their stories and offer support.

Morning Edition today had a remembrance for Leroy Sievers, Leroy Sievers - A Farewell In His Own Words

India - 61 Years Since Independence and Counting

Marking 61 years since India became independent from British rule, Chetan Bhagat writes an an excellent article about what lies ahead for the dynamic and young country called India.

Home Equity Line of Credit - A Financial Boon for Bank and a Debt Trap for Consumers

Home Equity Loans, where a borrower uses the equity of their home as a collateral to borrow money at a fixed interest rate.

According to a NY Times article, since the early 1980s, the value of home equity loans outstanding has ballooned to more than $1 trillion from $1 billion, and nearly a quarter of Americans with first mortgages have them. That explosive growth has been a boon for banks. Banks’ returns on fixed-rate home equity loans and lines of credit, which are the most popular, are 25 percent to 50 percent higher than returns on consumer loans over all, with much of that premium coming from relatively high fees.

However, what has been a highly lucrative business for banks has become a disaster for many borrowers, who are falling behind on their payments at near record levels and could lose their homes.

The article also cites how clever advertisement campaigns by various banks and financial institutions touting the benefits (i.e. remodeling the house by borrowing against your home, paying for college, etc) of the home equity loan have lured consumers into borrowing on their homes and spending way beyond their means.

Web Security Words Ditigizing Libraries

When you try to buy anything on the website or open an email from one of the free email services you will be asked to enter random words into a text box. This is just to verify that the person entering information or opening the email account is a human and not a spammer computer.

According to Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, "Approximately 200 million of these are typed every day by people around the world. Each time you type one of these, essentially you waste about 10 seconds of your time," he says. "If you multiply that by 200 million, you get that humanity as a whole is wasting around 500,000 hours every day, typing these annoying squiggly characters."

So in order to harness all this man-hours von Ahn came up with a very innovative idea. He knew that lots of libraries have huge efforts under way to digitize their collections. These projects first scan books or newspapers by basically taking a picture of each page. Then a computer takes the image of each word and converts it into text, using optical character-recognition software.

But computers often come across printed words they just can't recognize. "Especially for older documents, things that were written before 1900, where the ink has faded and the pages have yellowed out, the computer makes a lot of mistakes," says von Ahn.

A human being has to look at those words and decipher them. It occurred to von Ahn that he could link this kind of activity to security devices used on the Internet. Instead of asking people to prove they're human by copying random sequences of distorted letters and numbers, he could ask them to decipher mystery words from scanned books and newspapers.

So he got together with The New York Times, which is digitizing newspapers going back to 1851, and a nonprofit called the Internet Archive, which is digitizing thousands of books.

And now, if you go to someplace like Ticketmaster to buy, say, Jimmy Buffett tickets, you'll be shown images of not one but two distorted words.

One of these is the real security word: Type this one correctly and you're in. The other image is something that has mystified the digitizing software.

If people recognize that word, they type it in. This image will actually be shown to several people. If they all agree on what the word is, it will be considered accurately transcribed. And von Ahn says it will be incorporated into the digitized copy of the book or the newspaper that it came from.

Read the complete article on NPR

Russia has Most to Lose in the Current Conflict

Despite Russia’s overwhelming advantage in size and firepower in its conflict with Georgia, the Kremlin may have the most to lose. This according to Joe Biden in a commentary for the Financial Times

Russia The New Bully in Town

Commentator Marshall Goldman says that Russia doesn't care if the rest of the world thinks it's a bully for attacking Georgia and threatening European oil supplies. He tells us why. Listen to the entire story by clicking on the link below.

The Wait is Finally Over

Its never too late to win a gold medal in the Olympics. India's 108 years long wait to win a individual Olympic Gold medal is finally over. Abhinav Bindra has finally fulfilled the dream of a billion people. This is a truly historic achievement what with India winning only 17 medal before this Olympics.

Flush with Energy

Tom Friedman,in his latest op-ed for the NY Times, writes about how Denmark has become almost independent of the middle eastern oil. They did not do it by more off-shore drilling, but by investing in cleaner and renewable energies like wind power.

Mayawati to Install Three More of Her Own Statues

According to the Yahoo India, Mayawati, the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh will install three of her own statues in the state capital.

Who is paying for the expense? You guessed it right... It will be the state government or in other words the Uttar Pradesh tax payers. And the justification of installing these three statues according to Mayawati herself is, "I always felt that memorials should be built during the lifetime of icons."

If by any chance she becomes the next Prime Minister of India, which is highly likely, then don't be surprised if her statues start creeping up all across the country.

But my favourite line from the
article is, "Mayawati's arch adversary Mulayam Singh Yadav has not only condemned her fad for installing her own statues but also threatened to get these bulldozed once he came to power." If Mulayam does come to power and keeps his promise, then who will pay of the demolishing of these statues; the Uttar Pradesh tax payers again. Either way statues or no statues, Mayawati or Mulayam, its win win for the politician and lose lose for the tax payers.

Democratic Capitalism Vs Authoritarian Capitalism

China has been a darling for foreign investors becuase of the economic reforms and its outlandish economic growth over the past few years. But when it comes to political and democratic reforms, thats another story.

Robert Reich , in his commentary for Market Place explores how China may be winning by adopting economic freedom, but may lose the battle by not providing political freedom.

Which Presidential Candidates Energy Policy Will Make a Difference in Price at the Pump?

With energy and high gasoline prices being such an important issue in this years presidential election, NPR had an analysis on the energy policy and solutions proposed by the two candidates.

The bad news is that non of the solutions proposed by either candidate will have an impact on the energy prices in the short term. The only way to reduce prices is decrease consumption.

Listen to the entire analysis at Candidates energy plan analyzed

Microsoft Confirms Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

A recent study by Microsoft of all instant messange users confirms that on an average any two people are seperated by 6.6 degrees.

Read the entire story Six Stories

Also read my post on the same topic

US Consumers Cutting back Spending

If you do a Google search about US Consumers cutting back their spending, you will see about 9.5 million results relating to this topic in 0.09 seconds. The results of the search provide myriad reasons for the cutback including the very obvious ones like rising energy costs, rising food prices, weak economy, weak job market etc to the more non obvious ones like Coke posting a loss due to consumer cutback, Starbucks posting its first ever loss because it is closing several stores because of weakening consumer demand for its $4 coffee and Cappuccinos.

US consumerism which has mostly focused on spending rather then saving might be in for a big shift. This might be bad news for the US economy, which is driven off of consumers spending their hard earned money on items that are good to have but are not a necessity. A Starbucks $4 Cup o Joe which seemed like a necessity during happier times may not seem that enticing now.

But will consumers go back to their old spending habits when the economy picks up again, it is hard to say. But there may be signs that point to a trend that this type of behavior may be here to stay for a while at-least.