The latest buzz

After an afternoon at the cinema a typical Indian family takes a stroll by the seaside near Gateway of India.

Senator outsources speech

Republican Senator, Frank Morse, of Oregon, read out a speech on ‘‘The Impact of Globalisation on Oregon Economy’’ written by another outsourcing provider in Bangalore called Brickwork India.

Brickworks,, Vivek Kulkarni, could sit in Bangalore and put down a well researched speech copy for a United States politician, who is thousands of miles away even though he is just a technocrat.

‘‘I have written dozens of speeches for former chief minister of Karnataka S M Krishna, who was also the IT minister, when I was the IT secretary. So when senator Morse, who is also a big industrialist, approached us, we knew what to do. We took a couple of weeks to do it, after studying the senator’s earlier speeches to familiarise his style,’’ he said. But again, Kulkarni and his team had to work hard since it was a business speech by a politician.

Brickwork subscribes to a lot of databases, McKinsey, Harvard Press journals, all leading business, trade, industry magazines, all major foreign news papers, publication and business magazines.
A lot of preparation was needed, apart from culling out a lot of ground-level, local, specific information.

Thomas Friedman’s book ‘The World is Flat’ seems to have worked as a global signboard for Brickwork. It was through this book the senator learnt of this company.

Now, I wonder how much Friedman paid for his book!

And on the seventh day you can rest

Money does grow on trees.

If you own a farm you can harvest millions.
If your farm is like Koti Reddy's, surrunded by Microsoft, Polaris, Kanbay, Infosys, Wipro and the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hydrabad.

Koti Reddy ,62, spends the day on a wooden cot under a tamarind tree in front his two-room house, surrounded by his flock of buffaloes and cows.And his net worth is $20 million. He was given this sum for his 5.3 acre farm by real estate developers. And what did Koti do with the money? He “decided to take only a million dollars as advance”, leaving the rest in the “safe custody” of his buyers.

“I have never seen money beyond $2000 in my life and this windfall is just unbelievable. I plan to donate some of the money to
the Balaji temple,” says the farmer from Nanakramguda, in the middle of Cyberabad.

Koti sold his land reluctantly, under “pressure” from friends and relatives who wouldn’t want the offer from real estate developers to slip away .

Govind, Reddy’s son, says he would prefer to invest the fortune in land once again, but a little away from the city. “We know agriculture as the only livelihood. We can’t live without land.”

The family plans to buy around 100 acres for a farm.

Smart move!

Physics Pumpkins

The man


and his law





More physics pumpkins at  Brighton High School, Rochester, NY

The costliest pizza in history, whichever way you slice it.

David Remnick, in The New Yorker article about Bill Clinton has this observation about how history unfolded:

"...if Monica Lewinsky hadn’t been on pizza duty during the government shutdown of 1995 (and Clinton not so predisposed to share the snack) there might never have been a Bush Presidency at all, or a hyped case for war in Iraq, a botched occupation, a skyrocketing budget deficit, a morally and bureaucratically bungled reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and a loss of American prestige around the world. His kingdom for a slice!"

Why did Google buy YouTube when it could have bought Sierra Leone with that money?

Google is shelling out $1.6 billion in hard cash to buy YouTub- a company which lets veiwers post and watch videos for free, by paying out $1 million every month in band-width cost from its own pocket.

With 1.6 billion US , Google could have bought Sierra Leone instead. Consider the numbers. Sierra Leone has a population of 5.3 million whose per capita income is
$220. So the total yearly income of the entire population of Sierra leone is $1.16 billion. Thats less than what Google paid out for a server-in-a-garage.

And this is how Google can buy Sierra Leone- still. Run saturation coverage ads on SL TV, newspapers, billboard, camel-backs and whatever else is the local medium of choice saying that everyone can quit work for a year and will continue to get their usual income now from Google. This would include everyone from the lowliest diamond mine worker to the millionaire politicians, diamond-smugglers and the fighters on both sides of the civil-war-lines. The total outflow of cash outflow would be a a bit over the total inclome of $1.16 billions, factoring in the natural propensity of an average Sierra Leonian to inflate his reported income like the average American.

Let the internal dynamics of the country work out the best way how the country will be handed to you. The most likely scenario will be that the politicians will cash in their Google cheques and move abroad (Swiss villas, ranches in Santa Monica next to the Brins and the Pages, whatever).
The average citizen will gladly accept the Google income and save themselves the drudgery of having to work. So fairly soon the country will be signed over to Google legally and all the citizens could then consider themselves employees of Google.Inc.

And then what? Well if you guys can recover $1.6 b from a server-in-a-garage, can't you make money from a whole country stuffed with diamonds.

If you guys at Google ever decide to do this, remember, you got the idea here and do send me a small percentage of the price of Sierrra Leone.

IE vs Firefox? Confused? Let Mahatma Gandhi help you choose.

The internet is awash with pages from net-gurus who lend you their wisdom on questions like- IE vs FF? Which one is better? - to help you make some choices.

Dilemma? For Gods sake, you are only choosing a browser not a religion. Download and use both. It just amounts to an extra ikon on your desktop.You will soon see that IE is good for certain things and FF is good for some others.

Speaking of religion, its just like a browser. Its what you click on to help you connect and find answers. Religion is not the content, its only a window.

Gandhi kept the ikons of three religions, Geeta, Koran and Bible on his desk. And used all three. See how smartly he took the Christian adage about turning the other cheek and used it to his advantage against the British?

Moral: Browser wars are pointless debates which should be left to the self-serving net-gurus, who are no smarter than you.
You have better things to do with your time

Bill Clinton's blog

As I turn 60, I pause for a rare moment of reflection. For years I was the youngest person in the pack in whatever I was doing - I was the youngest person to be elected governor at 32 and one of the youngest persons to be elected president.
Now I am the oldest person in the group to be doing whatever I am doing- going out dancing every evening, partying with the college kids and generally maintaining a healthy social life. Thats the circle of life, as the Indian sages have written in the Kamasutra.

I have finished two terms as a president at an age when most people start on a political career, and I dont know what to do next. I would like to work for the people at the grass-roots level like Jimmy Carter. Now there's a guy I admire and identify with. Remember Jimmy Carter's interview with Playboy in which he admitted to harbouring feelings of lust and all that good stuff. Thats me entirely.

And unlike Jimmy I never lost touch with the people while I was in office. I was never happier than being among the people and pressing a bit of flesh. I am sure history will remember me for all the flesh pressing I did while in the White house.
Remember Jimmy's malaise speech which put people off, there was no malaise for me when in office, no sir. I was always on top of things and my vigour when on top was legendary. No surprises that Viagra was invented and become a pharmaceutical legend during my presidency. I was the inspiration behind the discovery and popularity of that drug. No questions about that.

I have to post this blog quickly and run now, or I'll be late for the Broadway show.Belinda hates to be kept waiting.

So my last thoughts- I hope to live like this even in my eightees. I want to be the inspiration for you guys with flagging libidos. Come on guys gird your loins and go get them! Remember, life is your oyster. Now oysters, those I eat in plenty. They are good for you, if you know what I mean. Got to run now. Bye.

The new bestseller

If you ping people they will pong you back.

Top 10 list for the neophyte blogger:

1. Blogs about your daily life are utterly boring for 99.99% of humanity. That still leaves 66 million people some of whom may identify themselves with your situation. Go ahead indulge youself.


2. Don't google yourself several times a day unless you have done something extraordinary in-between which you expect the Google-bot to have taken notice of.


3. Don't expect to get instant attention when you join some web-forum. The bigger the forum the less the chances of your being noticed.


4. Surf the net for information, not people's opinions, like this list for instance. Most gurus are no smarter than you are.


5. A page once put on the net will live forever somehwhere. Remember that before you hit the Publish key.


6. I have run out of useful things to say so I will stop. Learn to stop yourself from writing when you have run out of ideas. Any top 10 list would improve if truncated at top 5.