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Questions and lots of them and not much time to contemplate while policy makers all over the world rush to find the right needle to make that stitch in time while no one really knows if it really would save nine more later on.

My brother dug up this really awesome video of an obama speech-turned-into-song and posted it on his blog.

A lot of familiar faces in the video. I like how they did not overdo the vocals or get carried away with the music.

Slate did a list of some 80 plus seniors that still continue to stay active and impact our daily lives!

Here is a direct link to their web page. Wait for a few minutes and the gadget will load on this page:

Age does matter, doesnt it ?

World Economic Statistics at a Glance

World GDP (PPP): $65 trillion
GDP Growth Rate: 5.2%
Growth Rate of Industrial Production: 5%
GDP By Sector: Services- 64% Industry- 32% Agriculture- 4%
GDP Per Capita (PPP): $9,774
Population: 6.65 billion
The Poor (Income below $2 per day): 3.25 billion (approximately 50%)
Millionaires: 9 million (approximately 0.15%)
Labor Force: 3.13 billion
Exports: $13.87 trillion
Imports: $13.81 trillion
Inflation Rate – Developed Countries: 1% - 4%
Inflation Rate – Developing Countries: 5% - 20%
Unemployment – Developed Countries: 4% - 12%
Unemployment & Underemployment - Developing Countries: 20% - 40%

Sources: CIA World Factbook, IMF, UNDP,ew

I think we would have to take a step back and look at the world economy to get a feel for what happened.

A mid-July08 IMF report said:
The world economy grew 5.2% in 2007 powered by growth in China (11%), India (9%) and Russia (8%). The global economy faces a real risk of 1970s style stagflation however, with resource constraints tighter than ever before. If I told you this stuff an year ago, it would be screams on a pleasant sunday. What a difference an year makes !

Theories were even circulating that thanks to the growth of the developing world, we might enjoy years of unfettered growth, as new markets would go through successive growth spurts and counter the effects of slowing growth elsewhere. It was suggested that Asia was ‘decoupling’ from the US and able to grow under its own steam thanks to its two ‘Awakening Giants’. In fact, the only impediment to this growth was thought to be the prices of Oil and food grains. At that point, the US president even got some flake from the Global Media for some unwarranted finger pointing.

Clearly, the global economy had not hit that high note. Since then, the stock markets of the BRIC nations have lost a collective 50% of their equity, the US dollar went up (for the wrong reasons), oil consumption went down - in a fashion reminescent of the 70s stagflation.

The Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) in US only seem to have triggered the eventual. The world still looks up to its leaders to follow suite and no matter how much we tend to deny it, we all live under the same roof and share the same water, air and natural resources.

So, two things must happen for us to continue to grow globally. One is obvious, the other - not so much :

1. An increased investment and enthusiasm in renewable energy sources to free the world of this major bottleneck.

2. An increased ‘decoupling’ of the US economy from the rest of the world to avert a latin american style collapse of the 80s. This does not mean abstinence from investing in hot pockets. However, it might make a huge difference if US used its current economic might in creating new global markets rather than in trying to make the most of every global investment opportunity at an early stage.

After all , the US is the world leader and its fiscal maturity can go a long way in creating a new order of global wealth which would in turn benefit our nation back.

The US authorities, in reaction to the chinese milk product issues, have issued a nationwide “import alert” for Chinese-made food products in the wake of the melamine contamination scandal.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had already issued an alert warning Americans not to consume Chinese products containing milk.

Thousands of Chinese have been poisoned this year. The latest alert goes beyond dairy products to such items as drinks, sweets, and baby and pet food. It also allows US inspectors to seize any Chinese products suspected of being contaminated. More here>>

Image by Daniel Tello via Flickr

India joined the elite list of those five nations that ever sent successful missions to the moon.

Here is a compilation of missions sent to moon until 1998.

In this light, I asked some of my friends what they thought about the program. More importantly, I asked them where they thought it should be headed. I gathered some more from the Internet.

There were some interesting observations. Here are some for you:

Needless to say, America was in its prime decade when it decided to launch the man on the moon. It was a huge boost to the economy, in terms of the federal expenditure, the inventions and discoveries made around that time to make the mission successful and more importantly, the morale boost it provided to millions of Americans. India will no doubt benefit from this new race to the moon, especially in this post cold war era.

But will it also help lift the status of science as a career?
Well, the various talking heads on TV made their points:
* NASA invites schoolchildren to participate in special programs and visit its centres. ISRO is zero in that department.
* Students are enthusiastic about science at school level but not in college, where science education is stuck in the Stone Age.
* Science is compartmentalised and treated as a ’subject’. Instead of being an important part of every aspect of life.

ISRO needs a good website. Even my blogspot page looks better.

- It’s a significant feat; coz India’s moonshot was successful in the very first attempt - something that the US and Russia could not achieve!

We have come a long way from astrology to astronomy !
“In the olden days, there used to be palace astrologers who would wait outside the room, anticipating a child’s birth so that they could cast their predictions. Mind you, the point of precision was so high, that the prediction was made the second the child’s head popped out.”

I now feel proud to post the photograph of successful team of indian lunar mission “Chandrayaan”. i feel proud that i graduated from a college which provided me an opportunity to interact with people like Dr.Kasturirangan who originally gave us a detailed introduction about Chandrayaan two years ago when the project was in its post-initial stages.

We will put a pipe from moon to earth to draw He3 , along with He3 some species will come down, and either james bond or tom cruise will blow them away and save the earth..

From people outside the Indian community ..

This is great news. A few more launches from the Indians and the Chinese and we might start remembering that there is a space race on.

As an aside, we send them enough experts from the Delta program to get them a successful launch, now we need to get them some camera crews and teach them how to film the launch.

This is just NASA outsourcing…. […]

This is more like ‘proving ability’ than joining the space race. That race ended in the 60s. Maybe if they plan on going to mars, yes, that would be joining the space race.

India is rethinking its plan to send a man to the moon by 2015, as the mission would cost a lot of money and yield very little in return, the national space agency said Thursday.

“Whatever a man can do in space, it can be done with instrumentation, also,” said G. Madhavan Nair, head of the Indian Space Research Organization. “This program is going to be very, very expensive. So, a national debate is required whether we have to embark on a manned mission or not.”

Last year, the ISRO said it would send a spacecraft to orbit the moon by 2005 and land an astronaut on the moon by 2015.

I was reading up about how biased media could be less insidious and agendaic than the traditional “unbiased” media, especially in the new light of Obama’s presidency.

I went online and searched for some old presidential races that seem to have been affected by the media. Two of them stood out :

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first campaign for the presidency occurred while the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s campaign was unique in that it was the first to extensively use radio to communicate its message. The message was simple: appeal to the voters who were mired in the poverty caused by the depression. If elected President, FDR would use the federal government to create jobs and regulate industries in an effort to eliminate high unemployment and to prevent a depression from happening again. These ideas were unprecedented in American history because no one had ever used the federal government to the extent the New York Governor was proposing to do. …

Compared to today’s reporting, the 1932 coverage was balanced and accurate. However, there were some inaccuracies in their reporting that mostly favored the challenger. The reporters failed to accurately address Governor Roosevelt’s physical condition. They did not write about his crippling polio disease, and seemed to exaggerate his physical strength, when in fact, he was barley able to walk unassisted. The New York Times was often guilty of exaggeration about the Roosevelt’s strength. In the July 8, 1932 New York Times article, the paper reported about Roosevelt’s nomination and one paragraph described what happened when then Governor Roosevelt went to the podium to accept his nomination: “as Mr. Roosevelt advanced to the rostrum, the great hall seemed to surge upward, an illusion which accompanied the sight of so many thousands rising simultaneously to their feet.” Add to this that it is alleged that a powerful newspaper publisher, William Hearst, had helped him gain the nomination, and it would appear that Roosevelt got cut a little slack.
FDR received some good coverage because he was very friendly with the reporters. It seems most of the reporters were taken by his charm. Franklin Roosevelt was the first President to have a fully furnished press train car installed on his campaign train. He also granted the press full access to his campaign. Read on

Also, there is one more classic case of Kennedy Vs. Nixon :

The key turning point of the campaign were the four Kennedy-Nixon debates; they were the first presidential debates held on television. Nixon insisted on campaigning until just a few hours before the first debate started; he had not completely recovered from his hospital stay and thus looked pale, sickly, underweight, and tired. He also refused makeup for the first debate, claiming it was not masculine enough, and as a result his beard stubble showed prominently on the era’s black-and-white TV screens. Nixon’s poor appearance on television in the first debate is reflected by the fact that his mother called him immediately following the debate to ask if he was sick. Kennedy, by contrast, rested before the first debate and appeared tanned, confident, and relaxed during the debate. An estimated 80 million viewers watched the first debate. Most people who watched the debate on TV believed Kennedy had won while radio listeners (a smaller audience) believed Nixon had won. After it had ended polls showed Kennedy moving from a slight deficit into a slight lead over Nixon. For the remaining three debates Nixon regained his lost weight, wore television makeup, and appeared more forceful than his initial appearance. However, up to 20 million fewer viewers watched the three remaining debates than the first debate. Read on

They say this election was the coming of age for the Internet. Ariana Huffington event went on the record saying that “Obama would not have won without the Internet”. Obama used it extensively, no doubt.

First of all, about biased media - I do feel that it is good to have some media that is biased. In fact, any biases would be better off declared. That just cuts the guessing game. However, after much thought, I feel that it is important to have a majority of the media stick to unbiased reporting - simply because, they transcend - from being a cannon to a platform. Most of the developed world is polarized any way, in terms of political affiliations. That leaves very few people (in the USA, they say, around 10%) who wait until the last moment to decide on the right candidate and their country’s future. It is these people whose votes matter the most towards the end. Reaching them would not be possible without an unbiased media - no centrist overtones intended.

Second, the Internet, (and all new media in general), I feel provides a good platform for defining the issues of the election. It cannot win elections however, not yet. What it does though, is that, it brings the next generation thought leadership together in terms of what they think the issues of this election are going to be. Is it New Deal ? or ‘Old’ deal ? Is it ‘Change’ ? or is it ’security’ ?

If you notice, the first time Radio was used by Roosevelt on a big scale, it did not still have the power to pull off numbers and big swings. But it did make him look like the thought leader and visionary that he wanted to be though. Similarily, when Kennedy decided to put on make up for his first TV debate, he embraced the times ahead and perception followed form more than function. In this election as well, I think the Internet was great in terms of setting the single important factor of this election - the ‘economy’. It did some more as a fund raising tool, but I feel that is a pleasant bonus. Once people empathize with the issues ahead (as defined by a campaign), donations from core camps take more than just an Internet web page. There is consistent calling, private dinners, follow ups, promises and what not.

So, if you tell me the Internet was partly responsible for the landslide margins, I might nod in agreement but win the election? come on !