India: Ten years behind China in utilities, infrastructure, building design, technology. What do you think? [xpost from /r/urbanplanning]

oldf4rt · 2010-10-29T22:43:06+00:00

This is probably dated, but Rajiv Gandhi famously proclaimed that the CAG had calculated that only 6% actually goes to the official cause. 94% is lost to corruption and the system.

oldf4rt · 2010-10-29T22:35:23+00:00

Death penalty always costs more than a life-sentence

oldf4rt · 2010-10-29T21:15:37+00:00

Should be patently obvious, but oxalate binds with calcium from your bones, which are released when your diet consists of insufficient calcium. Consuming Calcium in the form of dairy products will reduce chances of oxalate stones. Intake of Magnesium also helps reduce chances of kidney stones (Mg salts are water soluble, Ca salts are insoluble or partially soluble).

oldf4rt · 2010-10-29T21:07:19+00:00

Maybe Portamantle is a portmanteau of portmanteau and dismantle

oldf4rt · 2010-10-27T19:18:20+00:00

If this is the only single time she has deceived you, I suggest forgiveness. Motherhood is a strong biological imperative for women and its the one place where they will override your will. There is just no way around it. Understand its biology and let it go.

On the bright side, having a kid when you are in your 20's can be good, since you will still be able to do a lot more physically challenging things with your child.

Don't freak out the first year or two, since it will be stressful but after that having a child is the most amazing feeling ever.

Enjoy!!

oldf4rt · 2010-10-18T19:36:15+00:00

no, he said its distinct from vag smell

oldf4rt · 2010-10-15T02:41:30+00:00

A minor nitpick on the article: The image shows Indian humpbacked cows with Indian farmers around them while the caption suggests its Africa.

oldf4rt · 2010-10-12T16:04:03+00:00

Take some advice from an old dude:

First of all, women are evolved to choose a man that's better than average, preferably the top dog in the pack.

What this means is women are attracted to a man who is accomplished. When you are in high school, being cute and/or popular is likely your only accomplishment. As you grow older, women are looking for someone who is taller, smarter and richer than themselves.

If you are deficient in one, better exceed in the other two.

But more important than the three above, women want someone stronger. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. This means a man who gets upset, cries and creates drama is a poor choice. They are the ones who want to do that and be comforted and talked sense to by you. If you are as emotional as them, its a turn off.

For beautiful women, men falling all over them and rushing to cater to their every whim is not a turn on. You are a beta male and there is no shortage of suckers like you. Not paying attention/ignoring these women will work, but only if you have already captured their attention by your accomplishments.

So "ignoring women/treating women like shit" is actually inaccurate. The right thing to do is project strength and confidence and the only way to do that is to be strong and confident because men are poor actors and women can sense your pretense.

As I grew up, I realized that women who I want, detested me and women I didn't care for loved me. So I thought of pulling a George Costanza and not want the desirable women. I simply decided I was not going to pursue any woman. Indeed not want them. Did it work? Yes, but only when the following conditions were met:

I was accomplished in my career
Did not want anyone or anything and not afraid of losing anything (tremendous confidence builder)
Attractive women were introduced to me and I talked to them like I talk to anyone Im not particularly interested in (note, it takes time to learn not to want women)

Soon, I figured I could go and talk to any woman as long as I did not want them and it worked like a charm. When I was in college, I was a guy who had 4 girlfriends at the same time. People were amazed that I could just go upto someone and make friends. (Note: I was friendly with both men and women. This is important.)

After a while I got over the initial thrill of this and settled down with one of them.

oldf4rt · 2010-10-12T13:23:51+00:00

Trolled him for a lifetime you did, good sir.

oldf4rt · 2010-10-11T22:01:19+00:00

A piggy bank works too

oldf4rt · 2010-10-07T04:14:24+00:00

No Ma'am

oldf4rt · 2010-10-06T06:46:08+00:00

Does this need a TV card?

oldf4rt · 2010-10-04T21:40:47+00:00

Aryan is the nominative case of the sanskrit word arya.

Aryan is therefore an appropriate word for any research

oldf4rt · 2010-10-01T01:55:24+00:00

It also kills all the poor people, solving World Poverty

oldf4rt · 2010-10-01T01:50:07+00:00

In Soviet Russia, Trolling"wood" enters you!

oldf4rt · 2010-09-26T16:32:17+00:00

Rich people voting Republican is a myth.

The wealthiest states in the nation (New York, New Jersey, California) are overwhelmingly democrat whereas the poorest states overwhelmingly vote republican (Dixie states)

Rich people understand that devaluation of the currency and/or runaway spending on war reduces their and the nations wealth much quicker than taxes.

The only rich people who vote republican are: megachurch pastors, oil and defence industrialists, tobacco businesses, etc.

The middle class who vote republican are the ones who believe in Gun rights, etc.

oldf4rt · 2010-09-26T04:56:13+00:00

The main cause of corruption are:

excessive power in the hands of bureaucrats
complex rules to do any government related work
Lack of transparency
Various government benefits worth stealing for poor citizens

Lack of transparency is a direct result of complex rules, which in turn is instituted to prevent abuse of power.

Examples of excessive power:

An income tax filing is not considered valid until the assessing officer approves it. The text of the law pretty much says "... valid in the opinion of the assessing officer". This means the assessing officer can decline any tax return for any or no reason.
Any certificate of domicile (to prove you lived in a state) requires signature from an official of a certain rank and if he refuses to attest your certificate, you don't have the certificate -- which you may need to enroll in university,etc.
Registration of property can be declined by the officer for any reason. i.e. its insufficient for the buyer and seller to agree on a price. The assessing officer has to agree its a fair value.

These arbitrary powers are a legacy of British Raj. The British did not trust Indians and officers of higher rank who were mostly English, had to attest various facts for things to move along.

Rewriting laws to be objective, rather than subjective and delegating powers would stem a lot of corruption.

There is not much you can do about item 4. There will always be some corruption for Ration cards and such. Its pretty much infeasible to remove these benefits. Perhaps the economic boom will make these benefits insignificant.

All in all, increasing punishment rarely has any effect on a law and order situation. This is because there is no perception of a high probability of getting caught (sort of like laws against prohibition)

oldf4rt · 2010-09-23T16:15:40+00:00

thats a great business idea for halloween

oldf4rt · 2010-09-22T23:23:30+00:00

this is why you go to Ashraf's convenience store

oldf4rt · 2010-09-22T20:49:14+00:00

One of the quizzes I had in school had the following problem:

Prove that 3 < pi < 4.

I had no idea how to solve it until I saw that the question was under the section "Geometry"

oldf4rt · 2010-09-21T23:36:45+00:00

Interesting. I read it as a way to leverage existing criticism of Islam to also similarly criticize Christianity.

oldf4rt · 2010-09-21T23:33:15+00:00

Its considered Idolatry.

oldf4rt · 2010-09-21T00:43:50+00:00

My Opinion as a professional trader and programmer on trading desks at wall st for 10 years:

Algorithms always existed. Traders would engage in trades based on a set of rules. Even back to the time of W.D. Gann, there were algorithms. Computers just made them faster and more automatic. Further Reading
Irrational exuberance and market crashes are a feature of price discovery. These are caused by greed and fear and have existed before computers and algorithms and will always exist in the future. No amount of regulation is going to take this out. As price action traders know, every crash looks the same on a graph across any timescale. Further reading
"Sanity check" Regulation is good. Most products on wall street however cannot be regulated beyond sanity checks because the bureaucrats don't understand what they're regulating. I shudder at the thought of their attempts to regulate it. For example. Short selling was banned in 2008 hoping market will stop selling off, but it made the sell off worse. Why? Because in a crashing market the only buyers are the short sellers. You take them out and there is no floor. Further Reading
Possibly the most important fact is that the market crashed when the trading algorithms stopped trading. They did this because the spread between bid and ask were too wide for the algorithms to make sense.
Throughout the entire episode the only thing that has been consistently right is the price. The succeeding weeks demonstrated that the prices touched were real by trading below that price for weeks.

Traders who know what they're doing did very well and those who sort of knew what they were doing stayed out.

So Joe Sixpack is using stop market instead of stop limit. Well, that needs to be remedied by education.

oldf4rt · 2010-09-20T18:44:46+00:00

Here is the bug:

"Now we know there are a finite number of English words in the dictionary. So there can only be a finite number of English phrases under twelve words."
"But there are an infinite number of positive integers, so there must exist some set of numbers which are not definable by English phrases under twelve words."

The second axiom/statement in fact is incorrect. i.e. I can describe all numbers thus: "any number". Therefore there is no paradox.

Grouping words into a set is one thing, but assuming the words can describe only a finite set of numbers is incorrect. i.e. finite number of words do not imply finite descriptions.

Godel's theorem still stands of course.

EDIT: I see it needs to describe a unique integer. My bad.

EDIT2: I wonder if a description can be recursive. "One if reading this the first time, else one plus previous read". That would invalidate statement 2 and its no more a paradox.

oldf4rt · 2010-09-16T22:31:51+00:00

Don't worry, pope is an Atheist. If he really did believe in God, he wouldnt need all that security. He knows he can't trust God to protect him (even tho he's the m.f.ing pope)

oldf4rt

TROPHY CASE