Readers of this blog know for a while that good ol’ Tommy is one of my favorites. So when I stumbled upon a list of “50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005” and found him listed at number 7 squeezed between number 6 (Michael Jackson) and number 8 (Judith Miller), I was thrilled. He’s in good company — Pat Robertson, Dick Cheney, and George W Bush come in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, respectively in the list.

C N R Rao is a “real Bangalorean” and laments that Bangalore has become an awful city in a recent opinion piece in Outlook titled ‘If IT Is Going To Take Away Our Values, Burn Bangalore, Burn IT‘ and the subtitled ‘IT squeezed Bangalore dry, hasn’t given anything in return. The signs are worrying.’
Before Bangalore became an IT city, it was a city full of not just science, he says. “There was more poetry and music here before the IT boom. The city we have created in recent years is …

Lee Kuan Yew begins an article in Forbes.com with:
Even though the [Indian] economy’s annual growth rate has been 8% to 9% for the last five years, India’s peaceful rise hasn’t led to unease over the country’s future. Instead, Americans, Japanese and western Europeans are keen to invest in India, ride on its growth and help develop another heavyweight country.

John C Dvorak writes in PCMag “One Laptop Per Child Doesn’t Change the World.” (Hat tip: Shiv Senthilvel.)
He quotes some figures from the world hunger site:
In the Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty.” Every year, 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness …

The nation of India and the ideology of Islam have a long history. India was subjugated by Islam for many centuries and it bears those wounds till date. Now the entire globe is feeling the pain that Islam inflicts on what it calls “Dar ul Harb” or the “Land of War” (as opposed to it’s own dominion the “Dar ul Islam”.) India is unfinished business for Islam — as many high-ranking officials of Islam do remind us from time to time. In the Islamic division of humanity into two distinct …

In the earlier post on Public Investment for Solar Power I had advocated that the government of India should spend a huge deal of money in research and development of the technology for using solar power.
This is a brief response to a couple of comments to that post. First, let’s recognize that the current state of the art does not allow the harnessing of solar energy on a scale that will make conventional fuels obsolete or even make a significant dent in their demand. That is precisely why more …

The details are fuzzy as I had read this story long time ago but the lesson is clearly imprinted on my mind. Once upon a time, in land far away, some company — let’s call it ACME Corporation — put up a huge billboard advertising their ketchup. The billboard was an eyesore and the local people complained to the authorities to have the company take it down. Fact was that ACME was not breaking any city ordinances and so they refused to remove the billboard. One enterprising woman in the …

This just cracked me up. (Hat tip: Anup Nair).

It is a brilliantly composed song and the video is packed full of very clever references. Here are a few lines that matter here:

blog blog blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small
blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex
blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb
blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song . . .

19 cities of the world with
20 million people in the
21st century
See 19.20.21 for a quick overview of the defining megatrend of the 21st century: the rise of supercities.
In the year 1800, less than 3% of the world lived in cities. Most people lived their entire lives without ever seeing one.
In 1900, 150 million people live in the world’s cities. That number has now surged past 3 billion and last year crossed another tipping point: more than half the people on earth now live in cities. By 2050 – …

The most famous coyote (I like the “kai-o-tee” pronunciation) in the whole world is Wile E. Coyote and his supplies from the ACME corporation, but I am sure that Charlie is going to be pretty famous on the internet.

From “The Daily Coyote“:
Charlie came into my life when he was just ten days old, orphaned after both his parents were killed. He lives with me and a tomcat in a one-room log cabin in Wyoming.
Definitely not work-safe as it will distract you no end. But it is food for …

All processes in our universe, from the sub-atomic to the super-galactic, involve the use of energy. The fundamental laws of thermodynamics attest to that. So it should come as no surprise that energy rests at the core of all human advancement and economic growth. The story of human civilization is principally that of an increasing ability to find and exploit energy sources. Until relatively recently in human history, animals and humans were the principle sources of energy. Slavery was an unfortunate consequence of that need for energy. Coal later powered …

The Dec 2007 issue of Pragati is out. Click on the image below for a pdf copy of the magazine.

I have a piece on why India should invest in solar power R&D (which is posted here on this blog.) Quick look at the content below the fold.

Republic of the Sudan is a pretty large country with a total area of 2.5 million square kms and 40 million people. The United States is about four times larger in land area and over seven times larger in terms of population. The US is also about 70 times richer per capita (official exchange rate) compared to Sudan. There are other stark differences between the US and Sudan, of course, some of which are causes and others the consequence of the immense income disparity. Here are some (Sudan, US):