Paul Krugman wrote (link) about the “stubborn persistence of bad food in England.” Paraphrasing the article, the quality of food in London dropped significantly due to rapid urbanisation that preceded good transportation system that brought fresh food from the farms. This created a big demand for canned food-based diet, and soon the demand for quality
I am unimpressed by Google’s “sting” operation and their accusations (link) against Bing. All Google did was expose a vulnerability in Bing’s algorithm and then cry wolf. Google should have conducted two more experiments before coming to their current conclusion. First, I will explain why the current operation does not mean anything (partly explained here).
Update: One of my friends thinks that Islam-bashing may be too harsh an adjective for the speech. There is a possibility that the speaker may not have intended the speech to be assessed in that manner. I acknowledge that. Apart from the questions I have below, I mostly agree with the rest of his speech
There are many articles on Kashmir without the viewpoint of an average Kashmiri. This post assumes that the protests in Kashmir today are not a product of the terrorist movement, but by average Kashmiris who are trying to make ends meet. I have seen a few points by media, friends, and few bloggers on this
In India, we call them cricket matches, football matches and tennis matches. In US, they call them ‘games’ rather than ‘matches’. Regardless of what they are called, it is interesting to see popularity of sports in different countries. Indians, for instance, cannot comprehend the reason for popularity of American Football in the US. Many of
A month back, my friends and I were talking about funding for different departments and graduate research assistant stipend during summer. I learnt that some student get twice as much during summer than during regular semester. I hadn’t asked my prof about my pay-check then. I did concede that it was partly because I find
Update: This post has been edited for clarity and typos. What prompted me to write this is another post shared by my friend on Google Reader. It talks about Sarabjit Singh, a woman who did not want her husband released in exchange for terrorist. Kudos to her! I really admire her because she put her
Imagine a situation where there is a wealthy businessman, and he has an excellent B-Plan to make more money. He opens a mall in few villages, and offers low prices for an extended period of time enough to drive the mom-and-pop stores out of business. He makes loss over the period but, as he is
Being in India, you are never more than just couple of hundred meters away from a tradition that is followed simply because it has always been followed. Mythology is used to explain most of the weird superstition. A good work (shuba kaarya) is never started the day after a new moon day as the Mahabharata
I did want to post DC and NYC pics, but I will do that later. There are a lot more things I want to say about the place. Roads “There are some people out there in our nation who don’t have maps” (link)… that’s so not true. They may not have world map, but many