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Showing posts from March, 2013

Top 10 Crazy Facts About India

Here's a random list of things. 1.             Indians sometimes prefer to abort a fetus if they find out that it's female. (Or they just kill the new born baby after it's born.) 2.             There are more than 20 million babies born in India. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. 3.             Child labor is so commonplace in India that few notice it or consider it out of the ordinary. Kids work as waiters or dishwashers in roadside restaurants. Sometimes, kids ferry tea to the local police station from a nearby roadside tea stall. 4.             Massive numbers of kids and younger and adult women are employed as maids in middle class to rich households. Middle class houses might pay 200 rupees to a female who comes and washes the dishes. Rich houses might employ women permanently by paying them more. 5.             Cars in the Indian cities are washed in the morning by car-washers who tend to be young men who get paid around 100 to 200 rupees per month for this service.

The Toll for March

We are about halfway through March. Let's make a tally of the dead from road accidents in India so far. Of course this list is less than "perfect" as I am making a tally only of accidents that "made it to the news" and  for that to happen, sufficient  numbers of people have to die. A  dozen school children dying near Jallandar  is clearly good enough to even make it to the Sky News website. But wait, that's a UK website. Didn't Indian newspapers/websites find the dozen deaths newsworthy? Well,  some like NDTV apparently did  though I don't remember it being the top headline on the  prime-time  9PM news that day. Why is that? Is it because Jallandar is not Delhi or Mumbair or Bangalore? Remember that school-bus accident more than a decade ago in Delhi which led to the Supreme Court guidelines about yellow school buses and speed governors and what not? I guess accidents are still happening and SC guidelines  are  still being violated. I see many r

The Genius of Ramanujan and Paul Erdős

Mathematicians are strange creatures. Here's a story about Paul ErdÅ‘s . In addition, as many of ErdÅ‘s's collaborations were handled via mail, and because he dealt with so many people he would sometimes forget what they actually looked like. On one occasion, ErdÅ‘s met a mathematician and asked him where he was from. "Vancouver," the mathematician replied. "Oh, then you must know my good friend Elliot Mendelson", ErdÅ‘s said. The reply was "I AM your good friend Elliot Mendelson." Paul ErdÅ‘s's first paper was a new proof of Bertrand's conjecture which states that there is always a prime number between any number and twice that number. ErdÅ‘s is the most prolific mathematician in history with author credits for 1521 academic papers. He was a prolific collaborator as well and collaborated with 509 authors. Here's Paul ErdÅ‘s talking about child prodigies . Both Erdos and Ramanujan appear to have interacted with G. H. Hardy. Of

Dowry Seekers Please Excuse

If you are a male of a certain age in India, of course you are seeking a suitable alliance. The below is a compilation of the definitive characteristics of the Indian female. This should help the grooms find and choose their perfect life partner. Girls are traditional … and with a Fair complexion too. They carry Positive attitudes and expect the same. Their Priorities are more to family values and Indian culture. They’re often simple and sober. A beautiful girl of high oral values, strong character, righteous... virtuous... kindhearted, God fearing.... straight forward... traditional values and modern outlook... done PG (anthropology **** University).  They’re sincerely from core and strong will power. They’re god fearing and trust on god very much. They’re very Ambitious. my famly believs in horroscope matching so, please provide ur birth details along with ur inteterest. & those who support dowry... please xcuse..

Richard Feynman on God

If you expect us scientists to give answers to all the wonderful questions about what we are, where we are going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and look for some mystic answers to these problems. However, scientist can take a mystic answer ... I don't know because the whole spirit of ... well never mind ... I don't understand it but anyhow ... if you think of it though ... the way I think of what we are doing is we are exploring, we are trying to find out as much as we  can  about the  world . People say "are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" ... "No, I'm not. I'm just looking to find out more about the world. And if it turns out that there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything, so be it. That would be very nice and ... but if it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we are just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the