The Big Story - how true?

T. N. Ninan in the Business Standard

.... people have tended to forget that the big story in India, the truly exciting story, remains rapid economic growth. That was underlined by the Planning Commission formally adopting on Thursday a 9-9.5 per cent annual growth target for the five years beginning next April — building on the average of 7.8 per cent in the preceding 10 years.

The last days of Kasturba

Controversy is often raised about the fact that Gandhiji disallowed the new drug pencillin to be used on Kasturba when she was in her deathbed. Here is some additional information.

Bhangra Blowout 18

Here is a photograph from Bhangra Blowout 18:

Arundhati Roy Parody

I know, it is hard to parody a parody, but Great Bong does just that!

Vive La Difference!

 Shahid Afridi, Pakistan cricket captain on Indians:

To recap, here’s an English translation of what Mr. Afridi told Samaa TV, a Pakistani channel, in Urdu at the weekend:


“If I speak truthfully, they just can’t have the kind of heart a Muslim has or a Pakistani has. I think they don’t have the sort of big hearts, pure hearts, Allah has given us. It is a very difficult thing for us to be together or to have a long-term relationship.”

Capitalism and Slavery

This, from the Disunion series on the NY Times, argues that capitalism wasn't incompatible with slavery and that the economic causes of the American Civil War are greatly exaggerated.  Because the Northern and Southern economies were so linked, people expected economic disaster as a result of secession.

Of course, the dire predictions did not come to pass. The northern economy did not collapse without access to Southern markets, a monopoly on cotton did not make the Confederacy invulnerable and economic self-interest did not forestall a bloody conflict. Yet by reminding us of slavery’s importance to the nation as a whole, these prognostications suggest that the Civil War was hardly the result of the inherent hostility of capitalism to slavery.

The Beleaguered Revolutionary

Courtesy Cafe Pyala:  (if you can't follow the whine-fest, Cafe Pyala also has a translation)
An excerpt:  Sir, look our own police is beating us, how can we bring about a revolution? You tell me, you're from the media. If you're with us, only then will the revolution come about. If the police don't beat us up, only then will the revolution come about.

1.21 billion Indians, and counting

Good news is that the growth is slowing, but there are 1.21 billion Indians. The really bad news is that the gender ratio continues to get worse.

A gender breakdown among children showed fewer girls than boys are being born or surviving, with 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6, compared to 927 for every 1,000 in the last census.

Sudarshan Patnaik - Official Site

The sand art of Sudarshan Patnaik is celebrated in the official site.

2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Theory of Everything

Happy Holi!

But

Police rained on the parade of Hindus in Queens when they seized colored powder central to their religious celebration Sunday, community leaders said.

For some 25 years, Hindus in Richmond Hill have held a parade to celebrate the ancient religious holiday Holi - the Festival of Colors. Participants traditionally throw colored powder at one another, but Sunday cops seized loads of the powder from paradegoers. "They walked around and started grabbing from anyone they saw," said parade organizer Vishnu Mahadeo, 50, president of the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council. "They said the law said you can't have powder.

"What law is that?" Mahadeo said the powder was harmless talcum powder. The Police Department declined to comment.

The Richmond Hill parade is one of the largest Holi celebrations in the country, attracting up to 25,000 people. Held during the last full moon of winter, the holiday celebrates good luck for the spring.

Civil War Scrap Book

Want to keep a reference to this from the NYTimes, from the American Civil War.

Messenger to Mercury

Nasa's Messenger spacecraft has successfully entered into orbit around the planet Mercury - the first probe to do so.

Balu: Introduction to Dharma and Ethics

Part I:


Part II:


Part III:


Part IV:

Song

Sometimes a song infects the brain.  One such for me.  Then too, I love the sound of Shreya Ghoshal.
This song is supposed to be from the movie "Black and White".  Here's the version I found on youtube.

PS: The male version is apparently what appears in the movie:

Weaknesses leading to systemic failure

From Systemic failures: Challenges and opportunities in risk management in complex systems, Venkat Venkatasubramanian  (emphasis added)

Table 2. Some Typical Examples of Failures at Various Levels in a Systemic Failure
Individuals

•  Poor operator training or inexperienced operators leading to human errors
•  Not enough personnel due to downsizing

Equipment

• Poor maintenance and wear-and-tear leading to equipment failure
• Wrong material, capacity, or equipment

Procedures

• Standard operating procedures not followed, workers make up their own or perform short cuts
• Past mini-accidents and warnings ignored
• Process hazards analysis (PHA) not conducted thoroughly
• Poor emergency planning and training

Safety Systems

• Safety systems not tested and maintained properly
• Back-up and/or emergency systems not on automatic but on manual

Management • Failure in communication between ranks

• Safety is not made priority #1, cost cutting is
• Senior management lacking the background to appreciate the risks inherent in complex process plants – too much emphasis on financial spreadsheets and not enough on process flowsheets
• “Performance at all costs” culture encouraging excessive risk taking and unethical behavior among its employees

Corporate Board

• Rewarding short term performance instead of long term
• Setting up perverse incentives that are detrimental to the long term survival of the company

Government: Policies and Regulators

• Laissez-faire regulatory policies, reliance on self policing
• Policies not strictly enforced due to limited resources or inherent conflict of interests of the regulatory bodies (as seen in SEC and MMS)

National: Political

• Anti-government or anti-regulations sentiment dominant
• Sustainability warnings ignored
• Celebration of greed

You are being lied to. What's new?

The story about the pensions of state employees causing states to go bankrupt, etc., is a bit overblown.

Most of the pension shortfall using the current methodology is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are today. This is by far the major cause of pension funding shortfalls. While there are certainly cases of pensions that had been under- funded even before the market plunge, prior years of under-funding is not the main reason that pensions face difficulties now. Another $80 billion of the shortfall is the result of the fact that states have cutback their contributions as a result of the downturn.

Strange deformation in rail in New Zealand earthquake

http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2010/11/02/the-canterbury-earthquake-images-of-the-distorted-railway-line/



Another:

The Republicans' Crony Capitalism on Display

The Wisconsin bill that seeks to eliminate unions of public sector employees also has stuff like this:

“Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”

As Paul Krugman explains:

What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”

Thunderbolt

This blog had mentioned Light Peak, a new computer peripheral/electronics interconnect technology from Intel and the speculation that Apple would leapfrog USB 3.0 and go for this technology.

Well, it did, under the tradename of "Thunderbolt". Here is the Intel page and the Apple page.

The promise is of 10 Gpbs of throughput in both directions, daisy chaining, 10 watts of power for peripherals, simple (cheap???) adapters to connect Thunderbolt to USB and Firewire devices and general joy and salvation for the world.