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.'"