Saturday, December 25, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Save Delicious, Yahoo- It is not yet dead, you are killing it.
Delicious is going to be shut down. It is all downhill from here.
Please take a look at the gadget left of this post. This is the best I could do.
It was much more than a bookmarking site for me. It helped me learn the value of tagging, still haven't mastered it, though- but everywhere I share and post, I am looking for ways of adding tags. The tag feature is the one that tells me the site means business.
Read Write Web has a great article on it.
Please take a look at the gadget left of this post. This is the best I could do.
It was much more than a bookmarking site for me. It helped me learn the value of tagging, still haven't mastered it, though- but everywhere I share and post, I am looking for ways of adding tags. The tag feature is the one that tells me the site means business.
Read Write Web has a great article on it.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
An Outrageous Pat Down- will this be America's Draupadi-gate?
Image via WikipediaLong time readers of this blog will remember that we had no illusions about Obama. In fact, we preferred George Bush.
The recent incident at Mississippi airport, where the Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar was subjected to a humiliating pat-down, proves our fears right. Not that we expect the Airport Authorities to grant our ambassador any special priveleges- our babus enjoy far too much already. It is just that this is not the right thing to do, not to any person, least of all a woman.
What happened is that, though according to regulations, the lady is entitled to for a private screening (ick!), her request was rejected, and she was subjected to the pat down in " a clear box where two officers searched her in clear view," reports Sepia Mutiny.
And what does a pat-down entail? When you read it, you understand why Ambassador Meera Shankar felt so humiliated, she said, "I will never come back here."
According to Aclum.org,
"TSA says that during the new standard pat-down, a screener of the same sex will examine your head, shirt collar area, and waistband, and may use either the front or back of his or her hands to feel your body, including buttocks, around breasts, and between the legs, feeling up to the top of the thigh. Women in tight skirts that don't allow an agent to feel the thigh area may be asked to remove the skirt in a private screening area and will be given a gown or towel to put on."(Thanks, Tory, for the link)
We don't know how far they got ahead with the pat-down, but ambassador or not, this is plain humiliation for no reason. I think this is a proof, if we ever needed one, that the legislative authorities in US have lost their head.
It is a sad state of affairs, given the constitution of that nation, and the ideals enshrined by its founding fathers.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Chrome Web Store
I suppose you know all about it, Google has unveiled its Chrome Web Store today, whatever it is. I've been caught up with it, and wasted about three hours or so- installing and uninstalling applications. Much of what appears in the store looks useless, being links to websites, but I found some gems. Do take a look at this application, for instance- Write Space
Image by kengo via Flickr
Image by kengo via FlickrSaturday, December 4, 2010
The Paranormal Powers of Erotica!
Elegant writing, but if ever there is a justification to go WTF!, this is it- you already knew erotica turned you on, but even your paranormal powers perk up, you knew that?-
"How strong do they need to be? That bring us to their most philosophical point: They say the experiments were "exploratory" work, where the researchers didn't define what they were looking for or how they would know they'd found. In the experiment with the erotic pictures, Bem, they write, "tested not just erotic pictures, but also neutral pictures, negative pictures, positive pictures, and pictures that were romantic but non-erotic. Only the erotic pictures showed any evidence for precognition." That's an exploratory experiment, or, as they call it, "a fishing expedition." Lemuel Moyé calls it "data dredging.""
Friday, December 3, 2010
The Outsourcing of Health
The outsourcing of drug trials-
Many of today’s trials still take place in developed countries, such as
Britain, Italy, and Japan. But thousands are taking place in countries with
large concentrations of poor, often illiterate people, who in some cases
sign consent forms with a thumbprint, or scratch an “X.” Bangladesh has been
home to 76 clinical trials. There have been clinical trials in Malawi (61),
the Russian Federation (1,513), Romania (876), Thailand (786), Ukraine
(589), Kazakhstan (15), Peru (494), Iran (292), Turkey (716), and Uganda
(132). Throw a dart at a world map and you are unlikely to hit a spot that
has escaped the attention of those who scout out locations for the
pharmaceutical industry.
The two destinations that one day will eclipse all the others, including
Europe and the United States, are China (with 1,861 trials) and India (with
1,457)."
It does no good to anyone, of course-
"Once upon a time, the drugs Americans took to treat chronic diseases, clear
up infections, improve their state of mind, and enhance their sexual
vitality were tested primarily either in the United States (the vast
majority of cases) or in Europe. No longer. As recently as 1990, according
to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, a
mere 271 trials were being conducted in foreign countries of drugs intended
for American use. By 2008, the number had risen to 6,485—an increase of more
than 2,000 percent. A database being compiled by the National Institutes of
Health has identified 58,788 such trials in 173 countries outside the United
States since 2000. In 2008 alone, according to the inspector general’s
report, 80 percent of the applications submitted to the F.D.A. for new drugs
contained data from foreign clinical trials. Increasingly, companies are
doing 100 percent of their testing offshore. The inspector general found
that the 20 largest U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies now conducted
“one-third of their clinical trials exclusively at foreign sites.” All of
this is taking place when more drugs than ever—some 2,900 different drugs
for some 4,600 different conditions—are undergoing clinical testing and
vying to come to market.
With possibly terrible, lethal consequences-
One big factor in the shift of clinical trials to foreign countries is a
loophole in F.D.A. regulations: if studies in the United States suggest that
a drug has no benefit, trials from abroad can often be used in their stead
to secure F.D.A. approval. There’s even a term for countries that have shown
themselves to be especially amenable when drug companies need positive data
fast: they’re called “rescue countries.” Rescue countries came to the aid of
Ketek, the first of a new generation of widely heralded antibiotics to treat
respiratory-tract infections. Ketek was developed in the 1990s by Aventis
Pharmaceuticals, now Sanofi-Aventis. In 2004—on April Fools’ Day, as it
happens—the F.D.A. certified Ketek as safe and effective. The F.D.A.’s
decision was based heavily on the results of studies in Hungary, Morocco,
Tunisia, and Turkey.
Read more of this great article at Vanity Fair
Books of Poetry
Sharing more content. It looks like that is all I am capable of at this moment. Anyway, this is better than anything I could possibly come up with out of my head
This is about poetry- it is alright if you like to read poems, but the experience of reading a book of poems by an individual poet is an experience that is not of the ordinary kind-
Reading a poetry book cover-to-cover is a vastly different experience fromreading individual poems. It can be exhausting, as watching an entire opera can be exhausting. ....
I have gotten to know several poets through their books of verse. While, ofcourse, “the narrator is not the poet,” the composition of poetry is an actof personal exposure and the publication of poetry is an act of public intimacy. ....
... In *Tantalus in Love* Alan Shapiro records the inside and outside of a dying marriage with exquisite skill and filigreed detail: his wife’s beautiful body, poised in yoga each morning, just out of touch; his children, watching their parents dancing and laughing together for the last time. Autobiographical or not, volumes of poetry feather open the writer’s human heart and lay it, pinned and spread, on butterfly pages.....
This experience of an emotional or intellectual journey is probably the most valuable, and the most difficult, reward of reading entire volumes of verse.The binding threads are more likely to be ideas or perspectives than characters or conflicts. ...
Read more at Curator, In Praise of the Book.
The Real Big Fight
This rings true, though I believe more than eighty percent of us would feel sceptical about it-
"I am happily out of the political business. But I can offer some friendly advice to members of Congress, new and old. A thousand pressing issues come with each day. But there are only a few that you will want to talk about in retirement with your children. The continuing fight against global AIDS is something for which America will be remembered. And you will never regret the part you take."
In an earlier passage, he writes,
"During a presidency often forced to focus on issues of national security, the fight against global disease was sometimes viewed as an anomaly or exception. It wasn't and isn't. America has a direct stake in the progress and hope of other nations."
True or false, sincere or not, his observations are worth noting.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
The Qatar Conundrum
Why and how did Qatar get to host the world cup? A great, well reasoned analysis with a brilliant, informed conclusion-
"What differentiates Qatar, however, is that its case to win the World Cup by legitimate means — for all the reasons I have outlined above — would seem to be relatively weak. Several months ago, oddsmakers had put its chances at about 6-1 against, versus 5-2 against for the United States — and that was before FIFA designated it as high-risk. From the point of view of Bayesian statistics, that makes the probability of bribery greater.
If anything untoward occurred, it will probably be discovered, eventually. But whatever the reasons for it, FIFA’s decision is hard to understand."- Qatar a Questionable World Cup Host - NYTimes.com
Linking to Specific Paragraph and Sentence in New York Times
Check this link- it takes you straight to the quoted para-
"It may be the most unnerving evidence of the complex relationship — sometimes cooperative, often confrontational, always wary — between America and Pakistan nearly 10 years into the American-led war in Afghanistan. The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, make it clear that underneath public reassurances lie deep clashes over strategic goals on issues like Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and tolerance of Al Qaeda, and Washington’s warmer relations with India, Pakistan’s archenemy."
While reading the New York Times, and when you want to quote any particular para, click the shift key twice. Little marks appear left of the start of every para. click one of those marks- you get the url of the quoted para in your address bar!
There is another cute way of linking to NYT- click this link, and you will see the emphasised sentence highlighted in colour-
The h7s2 sort of command does the trick.
Adding the hashtag at the end of the url, followed by para number and sentence number links to the relevant quote.
Substituting h for p (page number) highlights the quoted sentence.
Thank you, NYT., you are my favourite magazine.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Would we Come to Need WikiLeaksLeak?
Image via WikipediaThe ultimate irony of whistleblowing: or may be the yin-yang of secrets and public interest-
"With the American embassy cables, Assange contacted the State Department personally to ask for the government’s input. On November 26th, he wrote to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and said, “WikiLeaks would be grateful for the United States Government to privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed.” Assange even noted—without irony, it seems—that “WikiLeaks will respect the confidentiality of advice provided by the United States Government and is prepared to consider any such submissions made without delay.” Needless to say, the Obama Administration declined his offer and demanded that he return all of the cables."
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