Interesting outsourcing:

At North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are checking to see if doctors and nurses are performing a critical procedure: washing their hands.

 That is from here. Interesting to see NYT talking about big-brotherish approaches. This statement is buried deep in the article.

But the incentive to do something is strong: under new federal rules, hospitals will lose Medicare money when patients get preventable infections.

The trade-off is between monitoring workers or losing the medicare money.  

... which one will be more appropriate for eating the loud insects ? May be the spices in the curry will help ? May be just a fry ? How about some green chile ? Stop, do not eat them without talking to your doctor.

Shika Dalmia of WSJ argues for a sexual revolution in India. Not in the usual way, she wants more freedom to have sex before marriage. The key parts of the argument:

Today the average marriage age in India has risen to 22 for women and 26 for men. Yet virginity and chastity—especially for women, but also men—remain prized virtues.

Unlike rape and sex-selective abortion, which represent a genuine devaluing of women, sexual harassment in India is, I believe, an expression not of the power of Indian men but of their helplessness. It's a pathetic attempt to have a sexual encounter, no matter how meaningless and evanescent. Its real cause is free-floating male libido with no socially acceptable outlet.  

What would work? Nothing short of transforming India's puritanical culture and giving men and women more freedom to forge sexually mature relationships outside of marriage.

Very interesting argument.  The downside however is the keyword in the last line: "mature".  There is no model for this. She touches upon the problem:

But the process will take generations. Given India's starting point in ancient traditions, one can hope that it will result in a balance healthier than what has unfolded in the over-sexualized West.

It will be an interesting study to plot how the incidence of rape relates to average age of marriage.

Awesome time lapse video of Cicadas.


Found it here.

T. M. Soundararajan is  no more. What is the first song that will come to your mind when thinking about TMS ? To me it is the sound of "Murugaaaa.... ". May be because of being raised in Palani and listening to it almost all the time.

Brussels doesn't like people messing with their statue. The quote from the artist who place his own statue before the original peeing boy:

Let's face it. Belgium is a boring little country. And Brussels is a boring city. Filled with boring tourists. 

In the center of Brussels there is a horrible little statue. A small pissing boy. Where the tourists gather. 

What would happen if we changed the horrible little statue for something beautiful? 

Like a statue of Petro. Would the tourists even notice?

CDC study finds 58% of public pools have fecal matter in them ! $hit !

India is the among least diverse countries and among the worst countries to be a mother. And the focus is on installing a statue for Tamil Annai.

Georgia Tech (with Udacity) is offering a $6600 Masters degree in Computer Science. That is cheaper than a Bachelor's degree in a private engineering college in India. Great ! Now the in class degree has to have some differentiation for the $40,000 price tag.

Some Manhattan moms and some entrepreneurial people figure out how to exploit the disabled lines. Just to circumvent the infamous Disneyland lines and the speedpass options that takes 45 minutes. Note that it costs $130 an hour.

Reminds me of all the tricks I used to do in the lines to get water, train tickets and rajini movie tickets on Diwali day.

Waking away is not easy. Can you sell Satyam shares when it crashed by 50% on a single day ? Or do you buy more in the hope of averaging ?

Leave Satyam, how about Gold ?

It appears promotion focus will help you walk away. Forget what you lose, think about what you gain.

Why ? Of all the things one could do why would one would install a statue for "Mother Tamil" ?  At least the three awards announced were more meaningful than the statue erecting stuff:

Three new awards – one for translating Tamil literature into other languages; another for lifetime contribution to Tamil and Tamil literature and the third for promotion of Tamil computing – were instituted.

 Criminal waste of resources.

John McCain wants a la carte cable TV. Pay for the channels that you want. I don't need CNN or Bravo or TBS or AMC. Makes sense, right ?

There was a discussion on why a la carte cable TV doesn't necessarily end up reducing the price for consumers in the link in this post.

Vamana Avataram.