bay area: heat wave, job loss, crime and general dissatisfaction

this used to be the best place to live in America. sigh! people are getting disillusioned with tech, and the crime wave and illegal migration/street squatting encouraged by feckless local and state governments is making this unpleasant. 

Quick notes: Kolkata port, Consumerism's ugly side...

• Do me a favor, shut Kolkata port: A victim of militant trade unionism encouraged by three decades of Left rule, the port handled 41 million tonnes in 2013-14, compared to Singapore port's 291.4 million tonnes in the first half of 2015 alone.



• Villages being made to endure consumerism's ugly side: Villagers lock up BBMP Commisioner inside waste plant as garbage menace worsens



• Bhutan has lessons for India: The only place to have turned its back on consumerism and modernism to prioritize happiness and health.



• Slow revolution in Bihar temples: Ram Janaki temple became the fourth holy place in Bihar to have a dalit/mahadalit priest.



• A ‘Telugu garden’ in California: Instead of teaching English, Vidya Tadanki decided to teach Telugu to her daughter and son, her brother’s children and a few other kids of Irvine. Nearly 250 children have passed out of Telugu Thota till date.



• Who is asking for a ban on bull fighting?




• Hate crimes against Indian-origin people on the rise: Fueled by Trump-like utterances?

Hate crimes against Indian-origin people on the rise. Fueled by Trump-like utterances? https://t.co/FOZowZ8nJ7

— Sankrant Sanu सानु (@sankrant) December 28, 2015

"Our thoughts and prayers..."

"As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes".

Quick notes: Soaring pulses, Walmart bribes...

• What India needs -- Make-in-India for Dals: Landed prices of imported arhar are now around $ 2,100 per tonne, as against $ 700-800 a year ago. Urad similarly soared from $ 900 to $ 1,850-1,900. This, in an otherwise bearish global market for agri-commodities.



• Wal-Mart paid millions in bribes in India: Likely to face charges of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.



• Juvenile crime: Delhi bats for trying boys above 15 years of age as adults for rape



• Car-free: Oslo's 350,000 personal cars will be banned from its city center, once and for all



• It’s almost official: Rasogulla is Odisha’s. 



• State-sponsored conversions:

State Sponsored Conversions by Kerala State Govt! Loan Waiver Schemes Only if ur a Convert,Pray Jesus #WakeUpHindus pic.twitter.com/gzVrIBjDv3

— Mahaveer (@MahaveerM_) October 19, 2015

Quick notes: Ceausescu eulogy, Seismic risk...

• What’s Left, Comrade Yechury? Yechury wrote a glowing piece about Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, following a visit to Romania where he had met the tyrant who used toilets made of gold. A few weeks later, Ceausescu was ousted in a democratic uprising. The CPM leader also embarrassed himself when he appeared on Doordarshan to welcome the aborted coup of Gennady Yanayev against Mikhail Gorbachev.



• Heinous crimes: Cabinet clears proposal to try juveniles accused of heinous crimes under laws for adults



• Himalayan Seismic Risk: Although a major plate boundary with a history of large-to-great sized earthquakes, large earthquakes on the Himalayan thrust are rare in the documented historical era. Just four events of M6 or larger have occurred within 250 km of the latest earthquake over the past century.



• Restoring the Los Angeles River: What Los Angeles is building is more like a monument to rivers—artificial, in perfect LA style, but constructed on ecological principles. A once-hostile environment will be terraformed into a hub of human activity. “This is the beginning of a golden time for the LA River”.



• Sri Rajendra Singh a.k.a Waterman:





• Wooden Bike:

Quick notes: Leaders' manual, Roma plight...

• Tulsi Gabbard: Bhagwad Gita is perfect textbook for leaders



• Roma baby refused burial in France



• Delhi's crime rate soars 99 percent



• Multilingual tools: Even Africa is innovating. India should.



• China builds lighter tanks for Tibet border. Can India respond?



• Secularistan:

That is why I said earlier too. Had Tukaram Omble not caught Kasab alive , 26/11 would have been RSS ki saazish
— Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) January 4, 2015

Quick notes: Secularistan in Karnataka, RoP perverts...

• No funds for govt schools, but..: Karnataka govt allocates Rs 47 crore to give honorariums to chief imams and muezzins (who call people for prayer).



• Vibgyor school rape: The CCTV camera footage showed Mustafa dragging the six-year-old student into a room on July 3 afternoon. The camera footage also showed the girl crying. A Bihar native, Mustafa's laptop had videos of schoolchildren being raped. According to the police, a school in Whitefield had terminated Mustafa’s services after his alleged involvement in a sexual assault case. But the matter was not reported to the police.



• Frazer Town Rape: Nasir, 28, the main accused in the case, had sexually assaulted at least 20 other women in the past. He is believed to have shot videos of the incidents and had blackmailed the victims into silence. "None of them have come forward to report the incidents," the officer said. Police have arrested three others who were involved in the 'Frazer Town horror' incident - Mohammed Hafeez (32), Mohammed Ishaq Sawood (32) and Shoaib Shiek Mohammed (27).



• RoP:

  All of us are pic.twitter.com/xmGzBJdxdO
  — GEETA KAPOOR #HDL (@geetababes) June 22, 2014




• Indian superman lifts a motorcycle up a ladder on his head: Not sure if we can be proud of this, though.

Quick notes: Priti Patel, Tesla Model III...

• Second in command : Overworked Jaitely totters on



• Priti Patel: Modi supporter is UK Treasury Minister. Acche Din



• Coming in 2017: Tesla Model III to take on BMW 3



• Another secular rape in Bangalore: Secular Police tries to dilute the case



• Hell on Earth: Urban India consumes; expects rural India to deal with its trash



• Indian Street Food Safer Than Restaurant Food: Fresh ingredients, freshly cooked



• MS Subbalakshmi, engaging the divine:


Song: ninuvinaa naamadi
raagam: navarasa kannaDa
pallavi: ninnu vinA nAmadi endu niluvadE shrI hari hari
anupallavi: kanulaku nI sogasentO grammi unnadi ganuka
caraNam 1: nIdu kathalu vInulandu niNDi unnadi rAma shrIda nI nAmamu nota jElagi unnadi ganuka
caraNam 2: nEnu ecaTa jUcinanu nIvE unnadi rAma bhAnu vamsha tilaka nIdu bhaktuDanucu pEru ganuka
caraNam 3: kapaTamu mATa lella kammanainadi nA tapamu yOga phalamu nIvE tyAgarAja sannuta

Meaning:
Pallavi: Excepting you, my mind rests on nothing else, Oh lord (Shri Hari)
Anupallavi: Because my eyes are filled with your beauty ...
CaraNam 1: Because your stories fill my ears, Raama Your name is constantly being resonated in my mouth ...
CaraNam 2: Wherever I look I see only you, Raama, descendant of Surya vamsha, since I am known as your devotee.
CaraNam 3: Even deceitful words have become sweet, you are the fruit of my tapasya and yoga sadhana.

+ Same song by Yesudas.
+ On Madolin by U Srinivas.
+ On Violin by Dr Jyotsna Srikanth.

Quick notes: Juvenile justice, Sanskrit terminology...

• Lashkar tells its cadres: Claim to be juvenile to escape law.
  Urgent need to change the law. Is the govt listening?



• Maneka Gandhi: Treat juveniles accused of heinous crimes like rape on par with adult offenders.



• Bodhidharma and Shaolin: South Indian monk, Bodhidharma, is acknowledged as the founder of the Shaolin school of kung fu and finds several mentions outside the entry dedicated to him in the India-China Encyclopedia.



• Nikola Tesla and Swami Vivekananda: Nikola Tesla used ancient Sanskrit terminology in his descriptions of natural phenomena.



• Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence: A natural language that can also serve as artificial language.



• Sanskrit at St James School, London:



• Forward Pass: How football has changed things for Assam girls



• Cycling: Raahgiri pioneer Gurgaon still waits for cycle tracks

Quick notes: Indian Oligarch, Tamiflu...

• The Oligarch: "Will not supply gas at $4.2 mmbtu" - Ambani



• Kaangress vote bank: Bangladeshi migrants with Aadhar card ready to vote.



• Tamiflu: Millions wasted on flu drug, works no better than paracetamol



• Land of the brave: Teen suspect in school stabbing charged as adult



• Mitticool's sister: Natural air conditioner cools with the power of terracotta and evaporation

Toxic milk and plastic cows

With garbage and food spilling out either on the road or dustbins in plastic bags, cows end up eating food leftovers along with the plastic. Over time, a huge amount of plastic accumulates inside their stomachs, hard like cement.

The suction machines tend to take more milk out of the cows than what they would yield naturally. And they are often kept on even when udders have become dry, causing acute pain.  

Most cows are unlawfully injected with hormone oxytocin to make them give more milk.  Oxytocin keeps their bodies in perpetual condition of labour, with repeated uterine contractions, destroying their reproductive systems and making them bone thin and eventually sterile.  

India Today: India's toxic milk and plastic cows

Delhi wakes up to shAAP

Police leadership is not there to keep Govt in power but uphold the law! The Law Min should hav been arrested that night and AK for 144/188!
— Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) January 22, 2014

AAP law minister truly represents aam Indian male who can't speak 3 sentences without gandi gaali. Hear his abusive public speech on IndiaTV
— Madhu Kishwar (@madhukishwar) January 19, 2014

THiNK

“Self-proclaimed atonement and recusal for a period are hardly the remedies for what the allegations show to be outright criminality.”

• A bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation, have led to an unfortunate incident that rails against all we believe in and fight for
  Unfortunate incident? An author of Tejpal’s calibre should have chosen better words to describe alleged rape under the new law
  
  
• I have already unconditionally apologised for my misconduct to the concerned journalist, but I feel impelled to atone further.
  Impelled to atone? Has anyone been more regal while referring to what he did to his daughter’s best friend?



• I feel atonement cannot be just words. I must do the penance that lacerates me. I am therefore offering to recuse myself from the editorship of Tehelka, and from the Tehelka office, for the next six months.
  Rarely has an accused judged himself and then sentenced himself to a six-month vacation

Telegraph India: Our ugly backyard

Quick notes: Jobs' last gift, Item numbers...

• One of Steve Jobs' last gifts was left in a brown box and handed out at his memorial service.  Inside the brown box was a copy of "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Hindu guru Paramahansa Yogananda. 



• Next Lok Sabha elections are expected to be the most expensive in history. Those expenses are largely borne by under-the-table payments from Indian oligarchs, who will expect a return for their investments. 



• With the Supreme Court monitoring the probe, Coalgate could well morph from a financial scam into a serious political crisis.  



• India and CBI need freedom from Kaangress: We need freedom from babudom: CBI tells Supreme Court



• Item numbers: The combination of raunchy lyrics and dance movements with sexual overtones, often portrayed by the female lead for a male-dominated on-screen audience, may push persons already primed for wrongdoing towards exploiting opportunities for rape. “Collective encouragement is one reason why many young men fail to appreciate the severity of the crime”.



• USA: Some 95% of 2009-2012 Income Gains Went to Wealthiest 1%



• Alternative Energy: Geothermal growth is on fire! Except in Kaangress ruled India.

Love jihad and other crimes against humanity

British Sikh girls are being preyed upon by gangs of Muslim men who subject them to horrific sexual abuse, a BBC Inside Out investigation has uncovered.  In many cases the men deceive the girls into believing that they are Sikh to gain their trust.  Desperate to hide their secret for fear of bringing shame to their families, girls are often forced to leave home.

Six men were jailed at Leicester Crown Court last week for offences including facilitating child prostitution. The convictions are being heralded as a legal landmark because it is the first high-profile case involving a Sikh victim of sexual abuse which has led to convictions in the UK.

BBC: British Sikh girls exposed to sexual grooming by gangs

Quick notes: Poison pill, populism...

• Telegraph editorial on the white lady's brinkmanship:  The political philosophy of Sonia Gandhi was revealed in her startling statement that if there was no money available for the food security bill, the money would have to be found. She did not bother to suggest where the money was to be found. This defies even the simple common sense of the housewife who knows how to cut her coat according to the cloth that is available. It would be easy to cite Ms Gandhi’s statement as evidence of her utter irresponsibility. Thus she pushed through the food security bill without any guarantees about the delivery mechanism, because she is convinced that it will make her popular.



• White lady's poison pill for Bharat: Make no mistake, the two populist legislations of the past week, the crippling of the rupee and stagnation of infrastructure and industry in the past decade are the equivalent of an economic Hiroshima. Remember how difficult it was to rebuild a broken Japan after World War II? That’s the task that awaits India's next PM. 



• For real innovation, thank the state: The Internet, GPS, touch-screen displays, and even the voice-activated smartphone assistant Siri all received state cash. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency bankrolled the Internet, and the CIA and the military funded GPS. Even the algorithm behind Google benefited from U.S. National Science Foundation funding. So, although the US is sold to us as the model example of progress through private enterprise, innovation there has benefited from a very interventionist state.



• NE excels on women's safety: In Darjeeling, police stations across the district will tell you that in the last decade they have come across only a couple of cases (of sexual crime). That, too, in one an outsider was involved. A cop I spoke to for this article remembered just a single case of “eve teasing” – in 1981. The Khasis of Meghalaya also score very high on gender parity. So do the Nagas, Mizos, Sikkimese and generally the people of the North-East.



Old enough to rape but young enough to escape punishment. God bless India.
— Donald Duck (@WatDaDuck_) August 24, 2013

Mohammedan Law Comes To Rapists' Rescue

A Muslim man has been absolved of charges of illegally confining and raping a minor by a Delhi court which cited the Mahomedan Law that allows a 15-year-old girl to marry against the wishes of her parents.

The IPC treats a girl as minor till she attains the age of 16 years and establishing physical relations with her, even with her consent, is an offense entailing life term as maximum sentence.

IE: Delhi court cites Mahomedan Law to absolve man of raping minor

Dark clouds over Vatican

"There was money of the mafia that was recycled through the channels of the Vatican Bank, and also bribe money to political parties in Italy went through the Vatican Bank," Politi said.

With dark financial clouds hanging over the Vatican, the European Union insisted the bank open its accounts to public scrutiny. An Italian court investigating the bank found documents showing some accounts had been used for money-laundering and other illegal -- and for the church, highly embarrassing -- activities.

CBS: Dark financial clouds hang over Vatican

Presence of mind and some pepper spray

 ToI: Pepper spray saves Hyderabad’s braveheart

China an 'Internet Menace'

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt uses a new book to call China an Internet menace that backs cyber-crime for economic and political gain.

WSJ: Eric Schmidt Unloads on China in New Book