Take a moment to think about Copernicus, the man who came up with the idea of helio-centric universe. Google is paying tribute.

I am not against death penalty. I may not be for it too. It depends. Hanging someone without informing the family is a new low for the family-run congress government. “Our worst enemies couldn’t have done it better.” says Fali Nariman.

We can all sleep better. Asteroid flyby and Meteor blasts will not change our commitment to keep drinking high quality alcohol. We asked and Maker's Mark listened. The Whiskey will not be diluted. Let us drink and write more songs, like Loosu penne !

Doesn't it take lot of guts to start a song like "Loosu Penne ... Loosu Penne" ? May be one has to be just a little crazy ?

Bill Gates argues in his letter that measurement is the key to improving human condition.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal-in a feedback loop similar to the one Rosen describes. This may seem pretty basic, but it is amazing to me how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right.

What to measure ?

Given a goal, you decide on what key variable you need to change to achieve it-the same way a business picks objectives for inside the company like customer satisfaction-and develop a plan for change and a way of measuring the change. You use the measurement as feedback to make adjustments. I think a lot of efforts fail because they don't focus on the right measure or they don't invest enough in doing it accurately.

Also buried in the long letter

Ethiopia found a successful model for achieving this goal in the Indian state of Kerala, which had lowered its child mortality rate and improved a host of other health indicators, in part through a vast network of community health care posts. 

The data oriented way to approach to solve  lot of problems is like a CEO and they can back it up with success stories.

Why will there be such a rule ?  Makes the position sound like a job.

I was discussing this with a colleague the other day. If you are in Mexico thinking about crossing the border in the next year or two, what will you do ? Will you do it now and try to take advantage of the immigration reform bill or will you wait till next year ? That is also brought up in this WaPo article on the new urgency to cross the border.

“Mexico was beautiful,” he said, “but man, it sucks to be poor.”

Why will the Indian government hang someone without informing his family ? It is not as if the Justice was swift. The actual crime happened in 2001. Why such a hurry now ? Upcoming elections ? Nithya Ramakrishnan in The Hindu asks an important question

A constitutional republic that is insecure about letting a man in chains say his final goodbyes is something that we all need to worry about. Is a state that resorts to secret executions out of fear of demonstrations and protests capable of dealing with the many serious challenges that face this republic?

What are you looking for ? Cute Dogs or the very neat Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100? All of them are on sale.

NPR Story on the Ikea Effect talks about this paper.

Our account suggests that labor leads to increased valuation only when labor results in successful completion of tasks; thus when participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the IKEA effect dissipated.

The logic is the love is due to the labor, sense of accomplishment. From there,

Mochon's experiments actually have serious big-picture implications. The world over, companies and managers fall in love with their own ideas — and reject better ideas from the outside because they were not designed in-house.

Is it true for everything you do ? Does your expertise in the task count ? Personally, I have different bars for assembling furniture vs the work I do.

People are fighting to make new vaccines. Idiots avoid the vaccines and end up bringing back the diseases. What a mess !

Somebody is starting to pay attention to the - "going to the back of the line" -  rhetoric in the immigration debate. Daniel M. Kowalski is trying to explain the myths about the immigration line in Washington Post. This is something I mentioned sometime ago in the post about the what is left unspecified in the proposal to address the illegal immigration. Daniel is an immigration lawyer, so knows what exactly he is talking about. The key point is the lines are too long and there is quota of how many people can get a green card every year. A reform that doesn't address the quota is impractical.

For comprehensive immigration reform to work, Congress will have to substantially increase the number of green cards available each year in every visa preference. This may mean, for example, allowing a one-time surge of visas to wipe out the backlog, then doubling or tripling some quotas.

When the broader immigration reform does not address which line illegal immigrants will get into (employment based or family based), the proposal to include same-sex couples certainly looks like family-based lines. Both lines are useless without changing the quotas.

The telegraph is out with a story that will be impossible to publish in India now. Was Gandhi really the saint as he is portrayed now ? They quote Nehru:

Mahatma Gandhi’s pronouncements on sex were “abnormal and unnatural” and “can only lead to frustration, inhibition, neurosis, and all manner of physical and nervous ills… I do not know why he is so obsessed by this problem of sex”. 

Add to that his suggestion to the woman of East Bengal to commit suicide to avoid being raped. (I wonder what will be say to the woman of New Delhi now). All the white-washing and the nursery rhymes portraying saint-like quality of the man can mask his eccentricities only so much, isn't it ?

Amazon Valentine's Day Deals:Offers on Hearts . May be you are not a jewelery person, but there hearts abound even in the Kitchen and Dining.

Former first dog Barney is dead. The picture is a an oil painting of Barney - painted by the President himself. Another reason to like that man.

but I will defend to the the death your right to say it" - "The Friends of Voltaire".