It is universally accepted that politics is “messy”. Getting a bill passed by the Indian Parliament is ultimately a political issue. All the political parties and their constituencies need to agree on the various aspects of any bill. The Lokpal bill is an unprecedented bill in Indian history for many reasons. For the first time, we have a bill that is being openly discussed in the public domain — on the Internet, at social events, in yoga groups, and even religious circles.

Click here to read the rest of the article in the Economic Times.

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Boy, its been a hectic week of news. In other words, too much happening to even formulate an opinion! Meanwhile, there are scores of theories on every issue, as always, and thanks to the www we have easy access to so many of them.

Carly ($21.4 M richer overnight, so its hard to say “poor Carly”) was fired, Bloglines (the founder has done it again, he last sold the groups company to yahoo) was acquired by Ask Jeeves, Ash was on Letterman (which I missed because of the last minute change in the date), South Africa thrashed England (like someone thankfully hit the reset button just when England thought they were getting ready to conquer the world again!), Condi Rice has hit the road immediately following her confirmation (check out the recent follow on news about Richard Clarke’s clear warning to her in Jan 2001), Howard Dean is the DNC chief (ok, but don’t give him the microphone!), Chalabi is back in favor in Iraq (man, what a change in fortunes!)…… and oh-oh, finally Harvard University chief is continuing to battle the repercussions of his “.…

biological factors should be explored as a possible explanation for why fewer women than men succeeded in math and science careers” comment as heavy weights at Stanford, MIT and Princeton get ready to weigh in their views!

Note: NYT and SJ Mercury require registration, but its free.

Some interesting links I have come across lately.

• Interesting report about growth of blogs in China.
• Amazing how a blog launched after the election has gained so much momentum and continues to do so. Classic example of cashing in on a defeat. Great idea nevertheless!
• Nice short quiz to know more about yourself.
  

And finally, some funny junk mail (someone creative has some time on their hands!)

1. NIIT : Not Interested in IT
2. WIPRO : Weak Input, Poor & Rubbish Output
3. HCL : Hidden Costs & Losses
4. TCS : Totally Confusing Solutions
5. INFOSYS : INFerior Offline SYStems
6. SAPIENT : Silly And Puzzled Idiots Exploring Network Technology
7. HUGHES : Highly Useless Graduates Hired for Eating and Sleeping
8. BAAN : Beggers Assosciation and Nerds
9. IBM : Implicitly Boring Machines
10. PARAM : Puzzled And Ridiculous Array of Microprocessors
11. C-DOT : Coffee During Office Timings
12. AT&T : All Troubles & Terrible
13. CMC : Coffee, Meals and Comfort

Check this out. Really cool look into the future of Digital Media. If anything like this were to come true, its bound to have significant implications on practically every form of online content (highly personalized manuals, training materials, for instance)

Check this out. Never knew something like this existed. Nice way to raise a stink and still be commended for it!

• If you observe, you’ll find a number of cops hanging around perfectly safe areas in the US. For instance, drive down Castro Street in Mountain View, California once, and you’ll find at least a couple of cops driving by. I agree there is a police station not far from there, but why do these folks have to hang out in such a safe places? Don’t we distribute our cops so areas with a higher crime rates have more cops deployed? I guess the constant joke about cops hanging out at donut shops definitely has some merit.

• Sounds like Russia is headed for more blatant dictatorship. More terror => introduce more controls => Instill more fear => Consolidate power (patriot act, color coded threat levels, detention without hope for due process etc.). The World now has another dictator to deal with, perhaps its time to re-draw the axis of evil and think pre-emptive(!!), I suppose.

• Most of the Indian newspaper websites (TOI, Sify, Chennaionline etc.) have started displaying those annoying, intrusive flash ads. The interesting thing is that all of them started displaying these pretty much at the same time almost like identical dance steps seen in hindi films. Ironically, there was picture of President of India, Abdul Kalam and a report about something he said about education and just when I started reading it, across flashed an ad for Golden Eagle beer!!

• John Kerry appears to be dropping behind in the polls. Edwards is all but missing. I have never seen a mention of his name in the newspapers for several weeks now! The Bush-Cheney team is crusing along since their very well orchestrated convention. The recent international survey findings about the US presidential race were interesting, but not surprising.

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