Wired 14.03: A Nation of Guinea Pigs

Wired 14.03: A Nation of Guinea Pigs: "Little by little, however, Kalantri began to see the problematic side of outsourced trials. 'When I try to explain that a drug is experimental, that it might not work, the understanding is not there,' he observes. 'One woman said to me, 'What do you mean, the drug might not work? All drugs work!''"

132 (number) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

132 (number) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "If you take the sum of all 2-digit numbers you can make from 132, you get 132: 12 13 21 23 31 32 = 132. 132 is the smallest number with this property. But there is no number that, when added up to its own digits, adds up to 132, making it a self number.


When counting in binary with fingers, expressing 132 as 0010000100 results in the isolation of the middle fingers of each hand, a gesture generally considered rude. The corresponding one-handed gesture is the representation of 4."

drinking buddy

This term symbolizes a good friend who you can actually relate to. How many of us have a drinking buddy ?
Just 'buddy' wouldnt mean the same thing, and a 'drinking buddy' does not mean best-friend too. Well I guess I am too cold and shielded to understand what best-friend means anyways. Somehow after my BE I hardly have found any "drinking buddies". Many I time I wonder if this is because everyone gets occupied with their lives more than others. But then when I meet up with old friends things just fall in place.
Is it because that till then I wasnt living with a diverse group. I am usually comfy with bambaiyyas. Funny how I dont know a single bambaiyya in my everyday circle. Bombay rocks baby  !!

Power chip inventor speaks out : Techworld.com - Q&A:

Techworld.com - Q&A: Power chip inventor speaks out: "Among IBM’s conspicuous successes is its Power processor, invented in its northern US outpost, the labs in thermally challenged Rochester, Minneapolis -- also the birthplace of the AS/400. The chip’s in many of its servers and powered the Apple Mac until recently. Designed to work in both parallel and uni-processor designs, there are 64,000 of them in Blue Gene, the most powerful supercomputer in the world.

We recently travelled to Rochester and spoke to Frank Soltis, chief scientist at IBM’s iSeries server division. Soltis was a key member of the team that invented the Power chip, and spoke to us about the chip’s birth, the thinking behind its design, and something of what the future holds."

Is Ritual Circumcision Religious Expression? - New York Times

Is Ritual Circumcision Religious Expression? - New York Times: "Americans pride themselves on their commitment to freedom of religion, but how much religious freedom is too much religious freedom? At the moment, the thorniest dispute over the issue concerns a male-circumcision ritual practiced by some Hasidic Jews in New York. The ritual is called oral suction, or metzitzah b'peh. After removing the foreskin, the mohel, who conducts the circumcision, cleans the wound by sucking blood from it. According to city health officials, the ritual may have caused three infants circumcised by the same mohel in 2003 and 2004 to contract neonatal herpes (one of the infants subsequently died). New York's city health commissioner recently issued a warning about the dangers of oral suction, leading some Orthodox Jewish leaders to complain that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had reneged on promises to let religious authorities handle the issue. Meanwhile, secularists like the writer Christopher Hitchens have attacked the mayor for banning smoking in restaurants while failing to protect helpless children from diseases transmitted by 'religious fanatics.'"

Results: What kind of subatomic particle are you? - Quizilla Quizzes

Neutron -- You don't take sides, you just sort of

hang out and blend into the crowd. If someone

lets you loose though, you can cause some

serious damage. If you are arround too many

other neutrons you get bored and start to

decay.


What kind of subatomic particle are you?
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276 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 872 times.
32% of people had this result."

Results: What kind of subatomic particle are you? - Quizilla Quizzes

Results: What kind of subatomic particle are you? - Quizilla Quizzes: "Neutron -- You don't take sides, you just sort of hang out and blend into the crowd. If someone lets you loose though, you can cause some serious damage. If you are arround too many other neutrons you get bored and start to decay.

http://www.quizilla.com/redirect.php?statsid=56&url=http://www.quizilla.com">Quizilla

276 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 872 times.
32% of people had this result."

Should You Buy Stock Funds or Fund Company Stock?

Morningstar.com - Should You Buy Stock Funds or Fund Company Stock?: "'I decided there was only one place to make money in the mutual fund business—as there is only one place for a temperate man to be in a saloon, behind the bar and not in front of it . . . so I invested in a management company.'
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson uttered those words at a 1967 Senate hearing on financial legislation, but it doesn't take a genius to see the truth in it. We compared the returns of the shares of publicly traded mutual fund companies with the average returns of their mutual funds and found Samuelson's quip to be as incisive today as it was nearly 40 years ago. In most cases investors would have done better with the firm's stock than with its average stock fund."
The difference between fundholder and shareholder returns was often stark. U.S. Global Investors' GROW shares rose 24% on an annualized basis over the 10-year period ending in December, or five times the gain of the small shop's average equity fund. Over the same time period Eaton Vance EV shares rose more than 33% on an annualized basis, which was quadruple the average return of the typical Eaton Vance stock fund. Meanwhile, the shares of Alliance Capital Management AC increased by an annualized 25%, or more than three times the return of the average AllianceBernstein equity fund.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Delhi fashion shops demolished

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Delhi fashion shops demolished: "'We were doing good business and getting foreign revenue. The mall was a success story but a lot of people could not digest that,' he said.
One designer who preferred to be unnamed said they had been selectively picked up for action by the municipal authorities.
'Municipal officials should demolish all such structures in the city together. They should not pick and choose,' he said.
The Delhi high court, which has ordered the demolitions, recently remarked that action should be taken against the 'powerful and the influential of the city' to send a message to the common man that he was not being discriminated against."

If they were illegal they should have been demolished I guess, even if they were targetted demolitions.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anger grows over Muhammad cartoon

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anger grows over Muhammad cartoon: "The caricatures from Denmark's Jyllands-Posten paper included drawings of Muhammad wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb, while another shows him saying that paradise was running short of virgins for suicide bombers.

The offices of Jyllands-Posten had to be evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb threat.

The paper had apologised a day earlier for causing offence to Muslims, although it maintained it was legal under Danish law to print them.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed the paper's apology, but has rejected calls to punish the paper, saying the government cannot censor the press. "

Again freedom of speech vs being sensitive. But I think I can understand why muslims feel this way.