Quick notes: Placebo effect, Wind damage...

• What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? New research is zeroing in on a biochemical basis for the placebo effect — possibly opening a Pandora’s box for Western medicine.






• Ecological imbalance from Wind Farms: In the Western Ghats, wind farms have reduced the abundance and hunting activity of predatory birds like raptors. As a result, wind turbines are creating a “predation-free environment” that is changing the behavior and even the form of creatures lower down the food chain.



• China Telecom's Internet Traffic Misdirection: The improper routing caused some US domestic Internet communications to be diverted to mainland China before reaching their intended destination.



• Democrats will back Trump on Trade war: “Even though Democrats and Republicans disagree on many issues, they hold exactly the same negative opinion of China.” 



• Widebody jet: China, Russia unveil life-size model of planned widebody jet.... Question: Why is China the only country that seems to be challenging the USA for global dominance?  




• 10 Indian workers die in Gulf every day: At least 24,570 Indian workers have died in six Gulf countries, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE since 2012 till mid-2018



• KK Mohammed ex Regional Director, ASI: Temple existed

I was the only muslim during excavation of Ayodhya. I wrote there was a temple, shd be handed over to Hindus. Left historians made hue and cry. I was suspended.. 😬
KK Mohammed ex Regional Director, ASI pic.twitter.com/FNG8Tbr7U0

— SahaJio (@oldhandhyd) November 6, 2018




• Rafale deal: 36 Rafales cost 40% more than Dassault’s earlier offer





• World University Rankings 2019: IISc, IIT Indore top Indian institutes for physical sciences. NO Indian institution finds spot in top 200 globally



• Sai Nikhil Reddy Mettupally: Indian student’s algorithm helps in leading driver directly to empty parking spot 



• 'Chiplets', the future of processor fabrication: Instead of printing a whole circuit on a single chip, a number of chiplets can be put together in various configurations allowing multi-die processors tailored for specific tasks such as machine learning or cloud computing.

Quick notes: Vatican takes a deep bow, Paki reply...

• Vatican-Chini bhai-bhai: Pope genuflecting to China. ‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says senior Vatican bishop.



• A brutal Paki reply to Trump: “This is Pakistan giving a small taste of what it’s capable of”... The military-grade explosives, not widely available, used in recent Taliban and ISIS attacks in Afghanistan point to a state sponsor, likely Pak. 



• Padmashree V Nannamal: At 97, yoga guru is India's oldest Padma Shri




• India needs more researchers: We need more public funding for research including the creation of a National Foundation for Research in Science, Technology, and Humanities with an annual non-lapsable grant of at least Rs 5000 crore to give research grants on a competitive non-discriminatory basis.



• Mobile video viewership: Indians addicted to mobile videos



• Teenagers no longer use Facebook: Less than half of American internet users between ages 12 and 17 will be using Facebook this year



• Free transport: Germany considers plan for free public transport in polluted cities... Environmentalists brought court cases aimed at banning diesels from parts of some city centres. And fears millions of drivers could be affected spurred Merkel into action.



• China leading here too: Electric Buses Will Take Over Half the World Fleet by 2025

Quick notes: Hybrid plane, Spewing power plants...

• Hybrid electric plane: The turbine powering the generator will run on jet fuel and provide power for the electric engine. Any excess power from the generator will be stored in banks of batteries in the fore and aft holds with the stored energy to be used during take-off and landing... Similar to the Serial Hybrid architecture in Chevy Volt.





• Surround Delhi with a deep ring of forests: Not only will this modify the weather within the city, but the forest will absorb a major portion of airborne dust from across the Thar Desert and from Pakistan. Without afforestation, even if you take all cars off road, it would just scratch the surface of Delhi's smog.



• Pollution from power plants: The worst of this pollution runs from north of Patna in the state of Bihar to south of Raipur in the state of Chhattisgarh.




• BJP feeds the hostile media: Modi govt spent Rs 3,755 crore on publicity blitz - 1,656 crore on electronic media and Rs 1,698 crore on print media. The govt's allocation for pollution abatement in the last three years has been only Rs 56.8 crore.



• Marxist-Leninist-Maoist: Left alliance sweeps Nepal elections, Oli set to return as Nepal PM



• Oneness:




• Satya Nadella's off-break: Microsoft's Redmond campus to have a cricket field.



• You are being programmed: Facebook and others had succeeded by exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology... Facebook lies about its ability to influence individuals based on the data it collects on them.



• Sri Rama Setu is man-made:

Are the ancient Hindu myths of a land bridge connecting India and Sri Lanka true? Scientific analysis suggests they are. #WhatonEarth pic.twitter.com/EKcoGzlEET

— Science Channel (@ScienceChannel) December 11, 2017

Quick notes: Executive compensation, Radio-inactive...

• Amid IT job cuts and bleak outlook: Infosys offers hefty stock compensation to top executives 



• Radio-Inactive: Switzerland to phase out nuclear power and replace it with renewable energy



• Radioactive math: “Nuclear waste processing is an extremely complicated technical problem. We haven’t fully cracked it yet.” 



• Countering OBOR: The US has revived two major infrastructure projects in South and Southeast Asia in which India would be a vital player.



• Kashmiri tragedy: Nehru was distrustful of the army, interfered in military operations, and succumbed to civilian advice in 1948 just when the army was gaining initiative and could deliver far larger gains if they were allowed to do their job. In 1962, he trusted Krishna Menon’s assessment over the professionalism of his army chief even when Chinese troops were killing Indian soldiers.



• A classic Telugu song composed in Chinese language:




• Instagram worst social media app for young people's mental health: Only YouTube had a net-positive effect among the respondents. Every other social network came back with a net-negative effect. (In order from least negative to most, they were: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.) "It is easy for our perspective of reality to become distorted. Socializing from behind a screen can also be uniquely isolating, obscuring mental health challenges even more than usual."



• Solar Hazard! How do you shut down a photo voltaic system in case of fire? On the PV array side of the switch, the conductors are generally energized during daylight hours—typically at voltages of 300 volts dc or more. On the other side of the switch, often connected to an inverter with large input capacitors, the capacitors and parallel PV array circuits can keep that part of the circuit energized long after the switch is opened.

Quick notes: Drug smugglers, Laser weapons...

• Drug Smuggling: Saudi Arabia Beheads Sixth Pakistani in Three Weeks



• Ground Zero report: How Bangladeshis infiltrate into India



• Defense: China develops laser to take out small UAVs



• Aviation: China's COMAC developing C919 jet to compete with 737 and A320.



• Bike-friendly cities: Rent-A-Cycle expansion awaits Bengaluru nod



• Repress Yourself: If you're stuck and scared, perhaps you should not remember but forget. Avoid.



• Kishori Amonkar, raga Hamsadhwani:

"Love People, Not Pleasure"

In 2004, two economists looked into whether more sexual variety led to greater well-being. They looked at data from about 16,000 adult Americans who were asked confidentially how many sex partners they had had in the preceding year, and about their happiness. Across men and women alike, the data show that the optimal number of partners is one.

This might seem totally counter intuitive. How can it be that these very things can give us unhappiness instead of happiness? We look for these things to fill an inner emptiness. They may bring a brief satisfaction, but it never lasts, and it is never enough. And so we crave more. We can’t quite pin down what it is that we seek.

This paradox has a word in Sanskrit: upadana, which refers to the cycle of craving and grasping. As the Dhammapada puts it: “Like the monkey seeking fruits in the forest, he leaps from life to life... Whoever is overcome by this wretched and sticky craving, his sorrows grow like grass after the rains.”

Declaring war on our own basic desires, on these destructive impulses, is not about asceticism or Puritanism. It is about being a prudent person who seeks to avoid unnecessary suffering.

|| न सुखात् लभते सुखम् ||
Desirelessness is the the highest bliss

NYT: Love People, Not Pleasure

Quick notes: Mother tongue in playschools, 787 glitch...

• Centre wants all teaching in playschools to be in the mother tongue or the local vernacular language. "Once you start in the language that the child is comfortable in, it is very easy to move to the next level. Starting in the mother tongue gives a tremendous boost to the child's development."
  
  Some commonsense, finally. Foreign language medium in early education will ensure that we remain a nation of imitators, longing for all things phoren.



• Pakistan's Frankenstein: Taliban claim killing of Pakistani General



• Boeing's 787 Dreamliner suffers another glitch: A Norwegian Air Shuttle flight couldn't handle the full weight of the 250 passengers on board.



• Speculators exploit ethanol credits: Ethanol credits, which cost 7 cents each in January, peaked at $1.43 in July, and now are trading for 60 cents. “These things weren’t designed to become a speculative item. For the life of me I can’t see the justification for it.”

Quick notes: Dance bars, evil night owls...

• Supporters of the dance bars fail to notice that they are validating a cultural environment that objectifies women as ‘social currencies'. It is a documented fact that dance bars were a front for prostitution and trafficking. Many of them perform in illegal dance bars and others prostitute themselves in Mumbai’s red light districts.



• Buddhist Monk blames Time magazine for Myanmar bombing.“Since their plan to fight me via Time Magazine has failed, they are now targeting my ‘dharma’ events, and the devotees, with explosive devices,”



• GM managed to fudge emissions tests on its models in India.



• The parliamentary committee on finance asks govt to ensure that Reliance Industries delivers for shortfall on production at $4.2 per mBtu rather than getting new pricing for previous commitments.



• Psychologists find that people who stay up late tend to have more evil personality traits than early risers. Related post: Morning People Happier Than Night Owls

Before You Fall For That New Phone..

A 1080p display doesn’t look much different from a 720p display at normal viewing distances. A quad-core processor doesn’t provide much of a real-world benefit over a dual-core one. Photos from a 13-megapixel camera don’t look significantly better than photos from an 8-megapixel one, and shutter lag on most good smartphone cameras dropped to near zero a year ago. The improvements in the latest, most premium phones aren’t really that big of a deal. This is the bitter reality for Android phone makers right now.

Time: Diminishing Returns: The Cold, Hard Truth for CES Smartphones

--
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What is unclear is why the major platforms have gone to 4 cores (or 8 the way Samsung cou.nts) since the PC experience already shows that more than two processors is useless for most things (and people aren't running photoshop on their phones). It turns out that there are no strong technical reasons, it seems to be entirely down to marketing since the number of processors is used for differentiation, even for the end-user. Using process technology to get the frequency up 15% is better than adding cores beyond two.

SemiWiki: Mobile SoCs: Two Cores are Better Than Four?

Preparing for a test

Researchers say they've pinpointed the two best ways to prepare for a test: spreading out the studying over time and self-quizzing before the big day. Surprisingly, other common methods, such as rereading and highlighting, get low marks when it comes to effectiveness, researchers say. 
These recommendations might benefit only motivated students who are capable of using these strategies.

Live Science: Best Ways to Study for a Test Found 

  
  

Taking a test works better than a number of other studying techniques in helping us to learn. By remembering information we are organizing it and creating cues and connections that our brains later recognize. “I think that learning is all about retrieving, all about reconstructing our knowledge”.

NYT: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test

Beyghairat Brigade - 'Aalu Anday'

A satirical music video put up on Youtube by some youthful Pakistani pop music artists calling themselves the "Beyghairat Brigade" (Dishonor Brigade) has gone viral.



For the Punjabi-impaired, you'll have to read the subtitles on the bottom of that video. And for the politically-impaired, here is an explanation of those subtitled song lyrics:

http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/18/enjoying-aaloo-andey-with-the-people.html

The song, entitled "Potatoes and Eggs" starts off with the motif of some schoolboys disgusted with getting the same thing everyday for lunch. But the song soon shows its true intent - to take aim at the stale political myths routinely propagated by the mainstream media in Pakistan, in service of the Pakistani establishment.

Reason Evolved to Win Arguments

It may be that the human capacity for reasoning developed as a tool to win arguments and debates, rather than as a path to find the truth, say researchers.

Cosmetic Makeover?

I was going to post about the fiasco over the crackdown against Baba Ramdev's followers in Ramlila, but I came across Barking Mutt "discussing" it on NDTV, and couldn't help but notice her new look:



Her normal pug-faced appearance is now suddenly replaced with what looks to me like a new cosmetic makeover. Has she had surgery, or something? Unlike SRK's gradually Aryanizing face, it seems like she's had some sharp modifications. Besides the new hairstyle, she looks like she's gone in for some liposuction, like Star Jones from The View. Like Michael Jackson, maybe she'll eventually try to go all the way - blonde perhaps?

Many Questions Being Asked About Pakistan

Rachel Maddow asks some pointed questions about Pakistan:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bill O'Reilly asks some hard questions about Pakistan:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4673508/a-great-day-for-the-usa/?playlist_id=87937


John Bolton appears on FOX:



MSNBC:

'Moderate Pakistan' is a Myth

A TIME article bursts the myth of "moderate Pakistan".

More articles coming out along these lines:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/new-more-serious-terrorism-threat-pakistan_553981.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703386704576185843562595056.html

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/34166

US Threatens Cross-Border Ground Offensives at Pak

US media outlets, led by the NYT, have leaked alleged plans by the US govt to launch ground offensives across the border into Northern Pakistan. Predictably, this has triggered much anger and consternation in Pakistani circles.

But are these sudden rumors of a new shift towards ground raids based on reality? My personal impression is that these rumors are being deliberately floated by US officials in response to Pakistan's recent outing of the CIA station chief in Islamabad over the drone strikes.

My feeling is that the US is using its media to deliberately issue such "leaks" as a way to send warning signals to Pak, and apply pressure on it. The US is telling Pakistan that if it endangers the drone strike program, then this will force the US to consider options that will be much more unpleasant for Pak, like ground offensives. In other words - accept the drone strikes or else.

Presumably, the US wishes to preserve drone strikes as its preferred strategy, because it views this as the least risky way to go after the terrorists, since it doesn't require putting any troops in harm's way.

'MC Kash' Self-Styled Separatist Rapper

BBC highlights Kashmiri separatist activist Roushan Illahi has styled himself as a rapper for the separatist cause,"MC Kash" .

China Building Its Own Al-Jazeera

NYT reports again on how China is building its own version of Al-Jazeera, a globe-spanning news network that can report on news with a favorable slant to them.

China's Corporate 'White-Tie' Events

The latest business fad in China is not the black-tie event, it's the white-tie event. Chinese businesses are renting caucasian people to make their businesses look more important or multi-national.

Pak Always Bite Hand That Feeds Them

The US invited a group of Pakistani legislators on a free trip to the US - and of course the Pakistanis took full opportunity to shriek about the treatment they experienced at the hands of the Americans.