One look at this baby and I am sold! Red never looked hotter and greener!

The Tesla Roadster is an all sleek, all American, 100% electric car that does 0 to 60 mph in less than 6 sec! Needless to say, it has won every award since its debut including the cleanest startup award for 2007 from TechCrunch !

The Torque curves of Roadster are, of course, stellar. They are promising peak torque even at 0 RPM! So, no auto gear changes and high energy efficiency even for the highest acceleration possible !! Apparently, it is alarmingly quiet for the kind of acceleration and power it provides ! That is amazing!!

You know what else is cool ? Its carbon foot print ! It is all electric so you only need to look got your state board’s carbon chart to worry about . I found out from his blog that the CEO of Tesla powers his home off of a solar panel grid !

The looks are a killer and the price is north of 100G but, given its startup mode, it has been sold out every year so far!! That truly speaks for how cool this car is !

A 5000 USD refundable deposit starts the process and locks in price. An additional 50 grand would lock in your delivery date as well.

Image via Wikipedia

If this is what it means to be called beta, man does it feel good! The wired ran a story of Eratosthenes and his legendary scientific acumen. It is amazing what he has contributed to modern science with the limited tools he had in his day. The story really tells us how few men could open our doors to a future that was deemed impossible only a few moons ago. It does take courage and some crazy vision but every minute of self search feels worth it, when you hear stories like this one! Who knows? There could be a little “beta” hidden inside you !

Eratosthenes was an all-around guy, a Renaissance man centuries before the Renaissance. Some contemporaries called him Pentathalos, a champion of multiple skills. The breadth of his knowledge made him a natural for the post of librarian of the library of Alexandria, Egypt, the greatest repository of classical knowledge.

His detractors, however, mocked Eratosthenes as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. They called him Beta, because he came in second in every category.

He invented the Sieve of Eratosthenes, an algorithm for finding prime numbers still used in modified form today. He sketched the course of the Nile from the sea to Khartoum, and he correctly predicted that the source of the great, life-giving river would be found in great upland lakes.

Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it from the bottom of a deep well, and a sundial cast no shadow. Yet, to the north at Alexandria, a sundial cast a shadow even at the solstice midday, because the sun was not directly overhead there. Therefore, the Earth must be round — already conventionally believed by the astronomers of his day.

Flu of Slashdot writes

“Sweden’s major engineer newspaper NyTeknik writes about a new technology which is used to automatically convert 60.000 aerial photographs of Stockholm, Sweden, into a 3d-world, similar to Google Earth’s rendering of major buildings in some US cities. But unlike Google’s laser-measured rendering, this technique took less than 8 days (including the photography) to automatically generate the 3D-model of Stockholm — which includes every building and details as high as individual trees! The program was developed by C3, a subsidiary of the Swedish defense industry company SAAB, together with a PC gaming company called Agency 9. The complete article is available (sorry, Swedish only), but the 3D-rendering of Stockholm is available as a Java applet from the Swedish phone-dictionary service Hitta.se (tick the checkbox — it’s an ordinary disclaimer, and click ‘Till 3D-kartan’).” The technique used gives a cool water-color look to the scenes, too.

I found an interesting piece of information very interesting from the standpoint of India.

For most part, Indians would agree that population density is an issue that has hampered the progress and growth of our country. The government does add to the concept by actively promoting population control measures to the point of providing better benefits for nuclear families - 4 or fewer. There were paid programs in the 90s to help men go through family planning - vasectomy , coupled with literacy, was perceived as the magic bullet that no policy maker opposed. Even men over 50, in need of money, would go through the surgery sometimes - leave alone single men that never probably stood a chance with a woman.

We had literacy drives too at some point but the concept of family planning runs so high on our annual budgets to this day that the 2008-09 talks in length about various programs meant to address couples of all demographics. I am not sure how much of this actually happens but this annual budget from the Ministry of Health, India allocates the following amounts (in crores of Rupees, 4 crore rupees is a million USD).

Free Distribution of
Contraceptives 2211 0.60 ... 0.60 0.04 ... 0.04 0.50 ... 0.50
(Other than Condoms) 3601 56.40 ... 56.40 36.15 ... 36.15 57.00 ... 57.00
3602 1.00 ... 1.00 0.07 ... 0.07 1.00 ... 1.00
Total 58.00 ... 58.00 36.26 ... 36.26 58.50 ... 58.50
51.02 Social Marketing of
Contraceptives (Other
than social marketing
of condoms) 2211 45.00 ... 45.00 25.42 ... 25.42 27.02 ... 27.02
51.03 Free distribution and
Social Marketing of
Condoms for National
Aids Control Organisation 2210 247.50 ... 247.50 275.00 ... 275.00 270.00 ... 270.00

Other Services
59. Area Projects
59.01 India Population Projects 2211 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
3601 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Total ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
59.02 EC assisted
SIP Projects 2211 0.01 ... 0.01 0.01 ... 0.01 0.01 ... 0.01
59.03 USAID assisted
SIFPSA Project 2211 50.00 ... 50.00 50.00 ... 50.00 50.00 ... 50.00
59.04 UNFPA
assisted
CP-6 Project 2211 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Total - Area Projects 50.01 ... 50.01 50.01 ... 50.01 50.01 ... 50.01

The figures above tell me that we,as a ball park figure, plan to spend over 58 crores INR in free condoms, 27 crores in social marketing about condoms (very justified), another 270 crores in free condoms under AIDS prevention and finally, about 50 crores towards revitalizing Area projects for Family planning in places such as Uttar Pradesh. Now, thats a lot of free condoms !!

Just so you get a better picture of the magnitude, we plan to spend about 317.1 crores in Adult Education and Skill Development schemes in 2008-09.

You might want to ??

Image via Wikipedia

For our lyrics lovers, here are the lyrics of Race Hindi movie film (2008) title track - Race Saanso Ki Race Chahat ki.

Race (Hindi movie 2008) is a contorted, contemporary thriller starring Saif Ali Khan, Bipasha Basu, Akshaye Khanna and Katrina Kaif. The plot reminds us of a classic nigerian lottery email and revolves around two brothers trying to kill each other in pursuit of money! So, the race for money and power ensues and the older one (Sai Ali Khan) prevails. This is one of those movies where the story takes so many unexpected turns that you sort of begin to expect the unexpected and it ceases to be a thriller anymore. But, the audio track is decent and helped Race the movie hold onto the top spot at boxoffice for 2008.

The title track (Race Saanso Ki) was sung by Sunidhi Chauhan while Neeraj Sridhar added the silver touch with his hip-rock style interludes.

I like the idea that they digitally altered Neeraj’s voice to give it a more masculine feel and suit Saif’s personality better.

I Want You To Work It For Me Like This
Oh Yeah
Show Me What You Got
Show Me When I am Here
Come Here..
Go Head Now
Yeah

Race Saanson Ki
Race Chahat Ki
Race Dhadkan Ki
My Heart Is Racing On

Race Saanson Ki
Race Chahat Ki
Race Dhadkan Ki
My Heart Is Racing On - (2)

Nasha Tera… Nasha… Nashila Nashila Hai

Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein

Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein

When I M Touching Your Body
All My Touches Are Driving Me Crazy
Leave It Just On Baby No Need To Worry
…

Hasraton Ki Jalan
Hum Bade Din Sahe
Haal Jo Bhi Raha
Na Kisi Se Kahe

Teri Zulfon Tale
Ab To Jeena Mujhe
Mang Le Tu Agar
Jaan Bhi Doon Tujhe

Ada…Aadaaa…Aaadddaaa…Ada Ne Hi Loota Hai

Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein

Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein

Faslon Se Mile
Ab Yeh Mumkin Nahi
Zindagani Meri
Kuch Tere Bin Nahi

Teri Hi Khwaab Hai
Teri Hi Pyaas Hai
Arzoo Meri Kya
Tera Ehsaas Hai

Fida…Fidaaa…Fidaa…Fidaaa Tujhpe Dil Mera

Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein

Race Saanson Ki
Race Chahat Ki
Race Dhadkan Ki
My Heart Is Racing On

Nasha Tera…. Nasha Nashila Nashila Hai

(Allah Duhai Hai
Betabi Chaayi Hai
Muskil Judai Hai
Haan Tere Pyaar Mein )

Most people following the mainstream Indian media must have been filling up on the IPL Cheerleaders Controversy for the past few months. We had an interesting conversation about this IPL Cheerleaders controversy in our own group and I thought that I would post it here. Note that the names have been altered for anonymity sake. < ...click on title for more...>