Personal DNA

Folks,

Check out PersonalDNA.

Its pretty cool - well I liked the interface more than anything else.
The other interesting part of the test is the pysche you/me part of it.

Once you take the test - you can have other people evaluate you an evaluate other people.

The only catch is that you have to take the test first.
Head on over to personalDNA and take the test...

Once you're done you'll get a receipt number. Take the receipt number and then use it to "psych me".

Here's the link to psych me once you're done:

http://personaldna.com/psychyou-psychme.php?for=9b250bc79071

Note that it takes about 15 - 20 minutes....

Cheers,
Akshay

Taxi No 9211 review on rediff

Ppl,
Read the review of Taxi No 9211 on rediff.. Its really funny and pretty innovative i think.

Legal Religious Drugs

The Supreme Court recently ruled that a church in New Mexico was allowed to use DMT - an illegal narcotic - to meet God.

The case is Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal

Church membership is apparently growing rapidly!

Take the survival quiz

I scored 12/17. Many flukes :)

Politics...

There are more where these came from.

I guess I could post a link to the pictures themselves, but BubbleGen is def. a good read...

Check this out

The pics are here

Good ol' Indian Justice

A classic example of how shitty the judicial system is. This was a high profile case in 1999, lost in oblivion in a few months and now after 7 yrs with shit loads of evidence and eyewitnesses, the accused were acquitted. If the powerful can get away with murder, how effective is the judicial system. This is after the prime accused surrendered.

Emotion

Satanic Verses all over again

This is Satanic Verses all over again. I dont understand where do these bastards get off with their shit. Islam has to be the most fanatical religion ever. I know it sounds like generalising and stereotyping, but the history of this religion is proof to the fact that religious Islamic factions are waiting to issue fatwas and it simply grinds my gears that they do it and theres nothing stopping them.
They worship a human being who had a 9yr old for a wife...good lord who does that...
The govts of these countries should be doing something about this.

Train de vie

train of life .... jewish community, somewhere in europe, in trying to escape nazi's, fake their own deportation .... getting hold of wagons and railway engine put together a train with few of the jews playing german guards ....

funny and lively french movie ... very upbeat music ... .. a very abrupt twist at the very end ... well literally at the very last minute ... makes u aware that life is not that beautiful ...

and if anyone is thinking of similarities to the roberto benigni oscar winner, apparently he was offered the role, he didnt respond .... two yrs later comes roberto's movie ..

worth a watch

Half a million Chickens...

& I quote...

India began the slaughter of half a million chickens Sunday, as Health Ministry officials investigated the death of a poultry farm owner from the country's first suspected case of bird flu.

Check out the rest of the article here!

Anybody know anything more?

India

I really did have a blast - wish you could all have been there.

Incidentally am going back for New Years - bookings for Goa are already in progress - anybody else interested?

Check out the pictures!

Tag lines

# Sign on a railway station at Patna:
Aana free, jaana free,
Pakde gaye to khana free.

# Seen on a famous beauty parlour in Bombay:
Don't whistle at the girl going out from here.
She may be your grandmother!

# Sign at a barber's saloon in Juhu, Bombay:
We need your heads to run our business.

# A traffic slogan:
Don't let your kids drive if they are not old enough
or else they never will be.....

# Indian Armed Forces:
Its God's responsibility to forgive the terrorist organizations.
It's our responsibility to arrange the meeting between them and god.

let it snow

diamonds ... r forever?

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?
An old artcile, feb '82, provides an interesting peek into the making of a successful business. Its always about supply and demand, so simply control the supply and the demand! The article details the hugely successful foray of De Beers and its advert agency into mass psychology in creating a veritable public appetite for diamonds in america after the great depression and in japan after the wwII.

As for the supply, well as new mines were discovered especially in ussr, they were incorporated into teh cartel, if there is overproduction, buyback excess diamonds it does'nt control (almost took them down). Its amazing how the subliminal messages in the adverts changed over the years to induce the public into to buy larger and larger diamonds first and then smaller and smaller with the discovery of more mines with low avg. carat diamonds

You've Got Mail !

Anybody read up on the plan by aol and yahoo to charge 1/4 to 1 cent to deliver mail to ur inbox? All it does is messages from companies that pay are not passed through the spam filter. The problem is why should anyone pay if currently spam can get through the spam filters. So looks like, if they want to make money off this model, they will have to make the spam filters a lot more aggressive. There will be a lot more false positives, with legitimate e-mails from ordinary users being put in bulk/trash can.

The idea of charging isn't new, actually microsoft research has been toying with the idea of charging every e-mail sent, though the cost is in not in terms of money but the cpu time. Every senders machine has to solve a crypotgraphic puzzle as a "payment". Idea being that bulk email machines would end up spending a lot of time solving puzzles and thereby reducing spam. Haven't heard about it being rolled out though the project was completed in 2003.

Policing Google

Here's an article about Google caving in to pressure from Beijing to restrict content provided on their new chinese portal. Apparently the Chinese government didn't want links to Tianmen square and other "banned" sites to be displayed. Google obeyed and now stands accused by the US democrats of "putting profits before free speech". Don't the democrats realize that in trying to police Google they are impinging on free speech themselves. Google can block/filter/distil/change or do whatever it wants with their site or can they not? Apparently Yahoo and MS have also bowed down to the Chinese. In fact Yahoo went one step further and recently helped the Chinese government track down one of its "miscreants" who accused them of human rights violations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4672518.stm

In a broader context: Media should be given freedom of expression but policing it cannot be ignored. Imagine if tomorrow the headlines of the ToI erroneously and knowingly said "Pakistan declares war on India". Given its massive circulation it would create immense chaos and probably bring the country to a grinding halt even if there were no war. Should we pardon them saying they can publish what they want or whip them for knowingly disrupting the country? Where do we draw the line between freedom of speech and policing the media for responsible journalism?

Anyone following cricket

The greate Indian batting collapse occurred again and we lost a Test series to Pakistan for the first time in 19 years. Why are we still ranked the #2 test team in the world after the Aussies?