Male Female Ratio...

While browsing the internet on male-female ratios across the world, I came across this website where they have listed male-female ratios among people of various racial origins in USA.

None of the ratio's have more than 10% difference. In fact many of them have less than 5% difference in ratio. I am positive that the ratio will be similar across the world. In fact, I am equally positive that it will be a less than 10% difference for all such species in the world. (Is there any species where the ratio is skewed?)

Is the only scientific explanation for this, probability?

Katrina

Watching CNN, Katrina refugees were heading to Houston for shelter. The CNN reporter said that the city of Houston was making a "great" "sacrifice" in letting people in from the neighbouring states and "allowing" them to stay in one of it's superdomes.

Kalam...

Kalam gives five key areas of development for India -

1. Agriculture and Food Processing
2. Education
3. Information and Communications Technology
4. Networking of Rivers
5. Self-reliance in critical technologies

I am impressed with the order of these 5. Importance of 1 and 2 for India cannot be overemphasized.

He talks about the importance of PURA and administers a couple of oaths among school children - one to have a vision for India's development and another not to support any religious, caste and language differentiation.

When asked who his role model is, he replies that it is his science teacher Sivasubramanya Iyer.

It is so refreshing to read news about Kalam.

Two movies and the director...

Needless to say, Quentin Tarantino has his own style of film making. From what I have seen in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction", he considers a movie as a bunch of scenes. He takes special effort in sculpting each scene - with sparkling dialogue full of wit and humor. Many scenes are movies in themselves - with so many "take-aways".

But the movie as a whole always seems to miss something. It is almost as if that missing something is an intentional omission. There is no definite word for that something and the closest I can get to what is missing is a strong storyline.

They are good movies, nevertheless.

After the movie is over, when you sit and think why Tarantino made this movie, it is very difficult to come up with an answer. Except that, maybe he wanted to have fun.

Puzzle Time...

You might have seen these puzzles before -

USSR
USA +
-----------
PEACE
-----------

SEND
MORE +
-----------
MONEY
-----------

Can you characterize exactly when such strings make a unique valid sum?

God Hypothesis...

Nancy Gandhi paints a beautiful picture of Coonoor. She also says that God, and associated beliefs, are theories of convenience.

I recall the anecdote involving Laplace and Napoleon. When Napoleon asked Laplace why there wasn't any mention of God in one of Laplace's books, Laplace apparently replied that there was no need for that particular hypothesis.

Advani - The Opportunist!

How irresponsible is this? Makes me think that the only good thing happening to Indian politics over time is probably that such politicians are aging.

My first photo upload...

Google Vs. Yahoo!

Couple of days back, trying to find driving directions to Crater Lake - I searched Google (my first choice)... And I got to here.

I then had to go to Yahoo! (second choice) to find what I wanted.

Same thing happened today trying to find a SSN office here and then here...

Maybe I will switch my first and second choices soon...

Journalistic License

Because this article has Pune as its theme and highlights it as the future silicon valley of India, it had to say this -

While Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad suffer from the accent factor, the BPO industry has Pune to look to, for a large English speaking public.

I would really like to know from a BPO industry expert on this. Does a city like Bangalore really have an "accent factor"?? And is there something called an "accent factor"?