Sky Burial – (dont open links if sensitive…)

I didn't know this at all, first I heard about it. I knew about the Parsi Towers of Silence, but this came as a surprise. In effect, you lay the body out in the open, let the vultures feed on the dead body based upon Buddhist rituals. The argument behind disposing of bodies in this fashion is pretty interesting and completely makes sense. But for sensitive souls for whom death is a very civilised affair, this can be shocking.

 

Here’s a site with some very graphic images,  viewer discretion is very strongly advised. 

 

How the government steals your money

Its your government, its your public sector, its your wallet. Here’s what it takes from the cost of a visit to a salon.

 

Almost 50% of the damn bill goes to the various tax authorities. Here’s some horrifying numbers from the other staple: Petrol:

Here’s another way to show this:

If you like your pie charts, here’s another view:

 

Here’s another graphic from BP.

Same kind of tax robbery with spirits and ciggies. That is not including the impact of corporate, individual and other indirect taxes. Another way of looking at it is to see the first day of the year in which a country has earned enough to fund its annual tax burden and then the citizen is free to do what they want with their money. Its the tax freedom day. For the United Kingdom, the damn government sucks our blood till 14th May! And this is going to go up even more.

Parasites! To top it all, the tax code becomes even longer and larger. I quote:

The UK now has the longest tax code in the world according to LexisNexis, the publishers of Tolley's tax guide. The handbook of tax legislation now runs to 11,520 pages, a 10pc increase on last year and more then double the number of pages from 12 years ago.

Buggers cant just stop tinkering around with our lives.

Students of unionised teachers do worse

This blew me away. I quote:

This paper examines the relationship between teacher unionization, student achievement and teachers’ pay using a cross-section of data from private schools in India. We use differences in student mark across subjects to identify within-pupil variation in achievement and find that union membership of the teacher is associated with reduced pupil achievement. We find no evidence this could be due to the unobservables not controlled for by this procedure. A school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows that union membership raises pay and in this case too we find that remaining unobservables are unlikely to explain this outcome. We discuss the policy implications of the findings and show that the effectiveness of teacher credentials in improving teacher performance is linked to unionization.

Yes, this is in India, and that too in private schools, which are spasmodically governed. Now the results are fairly worrying for all people who are interested in improving education. Forget about government funded schooling, that’s neither the appropriate mechanism nor the argument here. The sample is important to note, mainly
English Medium private secondary schools in India which are generally the more privileged fee-charging
secondary schools. Many factors jump out.

• The negative impact of unionised teachers is less in states where the state government is also left oriented.
• If there is more competition in the form of more schools nearby, the negative impact is much larger.
• Higher teacher educational qualifications seem to only make a difference in the non unionised schools.
• Higher teacher salary and lower school classes make a bigger difference in non unionised schools rather than unionised schools.

What is the impact on the student? I quote the bloody amazing result:

we find that the achievement level of a student in a subject that is taught by a unionized teacher is about a quarter of a standard deviation lower than his/her achievement in a subject that is taught by a non-unionized teacher

What was shocking is that the authors point to a (unsubstantiated) conclusion, that only poor teachers join unions. Kindda makes sense, no?

Some refugees are more equal than others

So we have the United Nations, supposedly the saviour of all the refugees all over the world, being upset with the Sri Lankans about the Tamil Refugee Camp. It says that it cannot indefinitely fund the refugee camp. On the other hand, the UNRWA camps have been running merrily for 60 years now. Whether the fault lies with the donor countries or with that giant bureaucracy called as United Nations is an argument for another time, but no doubt that some refugees are more worthy of help compared to others, no? Mind you, some people like keeping the Palestinians as refugees, but that’s another argument.

Also see this data table, quite an interesting way of looking at how refugee populations have shifted and moved around.

nice equality there, old chap.

Can a School Library Be Replaced by E-Readers? Apparently, it Can

I wrote this to couple of my friends some time time back talking about how kindles are improving the carbon footprint:

Random thoughts. I am now using calibre which is an e-book library management system. The number of books, papers and articles in an electronic format became unmanageable few months back. And after pairing it with iPhone, stanza book reader system which I also further linked to various booksellers and has the ability to hook into Gutenberg as well as websites and email, it's getting pretty close to 'good' status. Most weekdays, I don't even pick up a paper copy of a book but my Reading frequency and book completion rates have actually shot up. Would say 16-20%. 

But this is another rather regrettable but understandable step. I quote:

Instead of the 20,000 books the school currently has, the students of Cushing Academy will have 18 e-readers at their disposal. The learning centre – the replacement for what was once the school’s library – will also have three large TVs, a coffee shop, and laptop-friendly booths.

The cost of this makeover will be nearly $500,000, but the folks at Cushing think it’ll be worth it. “Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books,’’ says James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing.

He also has an interesting view on books in general. “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books (…) This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

Sad that the world of libraries are now slowly vanishing away. I further posted this link yesterday on FB. Will we lose pictures like this?

Sad, sad sad….

Bomber had half kilo of explosives inside his body

This is a very dangerous evolution in terrorism. Reminded me of the scene in Papillion where the chaps kept money inside their rectum, but in this case, the chap had 1/2 a kilo of plastic explosive inserted in his rectum which was triggered by a mobile phone which was embedded inside the explosive and triggered the detonator. I quote:

Suicide bomber Abdullah Asiri had inserted around half a kilogram of explosives into his own body to carry out his failed assassination attempt of Prince Muhammad Bin Naif, Assistant Minister of Interior for Security Affairs, last week.
As more details emerged of the events surrounding the attack that took place at the Prince’s home in Obhur, sources told Okaz newspaper Friday that Asiri’s mobile telephone was equipped with two SIM cards, one of which was used to speak to call members of the terrorist organization in Yemen, and the other to detonate the device located inside Asiri’s rectum via a call from the group.
It was also revealed that the explosive material was placed in small hardened packs of a non-metal substance, resulting in a scenario far less devastating than it might otherwise have been. Investigators are currently trying to identify the type of explosives used in the act.
According to the sources, Asiri told palace officials while waiting for Prince Muhammad to arrive that he would have to “have a lie down” due to fatigue if the Prince was late, something which analysts say could have been due to the presence of the explosives in his body.
Asiri had reportedly not eaten nor consumed any liquid for 40 hours, fearing that they might disturb the effect of the explosives. Asiri reportedly waited less than an hour until the arrival of Prince Muhammad and the Prince sat next to him in an uncustomary position in a corner of the room to hear him better, only an arm-rest separating them.
Investigators are reportedly working on the theory that the telephone call made by Prince Muhammad to Asiri’s fellow terrorists to assure them that Asiri had arrived safely at the Prince’s house was a signal for them to detonate the device hidden in Asiri’s body.
Officer Thamer
It is believed that “Thamer”, a name mentioned in the telephone call between Asiri and Prince Muhammad is the officer assigned to accompany Asiri from Najran to Jeddah after the suicide bomber had illegally crossed the border from Yemen into the Kingdom on his own initiative. – Okaz/SG

What a job: Grave Digger/Gardener with certificate in Excavation, Shoring and Pesticide Application.

Quite an interesting job. I quote:

Candidates must have experience in grave digging and hold a certificate in Excavation and Shoring and a certificate in Pesticide Application.

Seems like a whole load of qualifications required just to bury people, have a certificate in excavation and shoring means certificate in making a hole. And certificate in pesticide application? erm, swinging a watering can? Only in the public sector

these people are mad.

Bank Bosses: The law of unintended consequences

As Bloomberg reports,

Ten percent of candidates for senior management positions at Britain’s biggest financial companies withdrew their applications rather than learn whether they could pass an interview with the nation’s markets regulator.

Reynolds Porter said that some candidates drop out rather than challenge what may be an eventual FSA determination on whether someone is “fit and proper.” Appeals are public and the disclosure might damage a company’s reputation or the ability of the candidate to find another job.

“In the current environment no financial-services company would want to take the risk of being publicly accused of putting forward a supposedly sub-standard candidate,” said Jonathan Davies, a regulatory partner at Reynolds Porter. “There is a concern about just how much arm twisting the FSA is entering into to force companies into dropping their preferred job candidates.”

Now this is a pretty penny. I have further issues with this. If the FSA is actually interviewing candidates, then I am concerned about whether this is an examination driven bar? And why only for British Banks? And quite interestingly, the FSA is hiring a banker to interview other potential bankers for senior leadership positions. Look at the ranks of the FSA and you will find most if not all are also bankers. And what is the test?

The interviews test skills, behaviour, knowledge and expertise, including ethics.

I am really not sure about making all this public is a good idea. You can definitely injure a firm badly, not mentioning the personal injury to the candidate. We all know interviews are not good mechanisms for hiring people. And if I and rest of the world didn't see the damn crisis coming, how on earth will an interview tell you that I am good in managing crisis? weird or what?

Religion: the mug’s game

Religion very frequently makes chumps out of people. And there is nothing like people using religion to make financial chumps out of people. We saw that with Madoff, whose Jewish background was definitely connected to his fraud victims. See this recent example: I quote:

Henry Jones delivered the good news in a conference call with Tri Energy Inc.’s investors: The gold deal the company had been working on for years was about to pay off.

Jones, 55, a record producer in Marina del Rey, California, and his two partners had raised more than $50 million from 735 investors, which they said they were using to broker the sale to Arab buyers of 20,000 tons of gold owned by a group of Israelis. They promised to triple investors’ money -- if only Tri Energy could overcome some last-minute glitches.

All the company needed to close the deal, Jones said on the Dec. 20, 2004, conference call, taped by one of the participants, was a “safe-passage letter” that would cost $450,000. A few days later, on another call, he said Tri Energy had to come up with $100,000 to open a “commission account.” Then, on Jan. 15, 2005, a new request: The bank handling the deal wanted $125,000 to conduct an audit.

Like those caught up in other get-rich scams -- from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which initially snared wealthy Jews, to an alleged $4.4 million fraud aimed at deaf people -- Tri Energy’s investors had something in common. Many were Mormons and born-again Christians who shared dreams and prayers on nightly conference calls. They vowed to use the profits for charitable works and kept raising funds, at times taking out second mortgages, draining retirement accounts and recruiting relatives.

While the delays and pleas for more money never stopped, the charade did.

Unbelievable, how people get caught up on this kind of fraud. Be warned, if something is too good to be true, it most probably IS too good to be true.

Tax the stupid

Actually, it makes total sense. If you are stupid enough to do something extremely stupid despite repeated warnings, then you are allowed to be stupid, the government WILL rescue you and will charge you for being stupid.

Governments charge taxes for all sorts of things such as earning money, buying property, flying in airplanes and getting gas. Now the French have come up with a new idea: a tax on being stupid.

This could be a huge windfall if applied generally. The French Foreign Ministry is proposing a very narrow law requiring citizens foolish enough to wander into international danger zones, regardless of public warnings, to pay at least part of the cost of their own rescue.

It’s an excellent concept. Teenagers who miss the last train home are told by their parents to pay the cab fare out of their own pocket money. So why shouldn’t thrill-seeking travellers pick up the tab for such obvious recklessness as sailing into the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden?

That kind of stupidity is what propelled the French into action. On three occasions since April 2008, French naval forces have had to save their citizens while sailing off the coast of Somalia. In a rescue operation earlier this year, one French hostage died as commandoes stormed his commandeered yacht. Three pirates were killed.

Diverting navy frigates and mounting raids like these cost a lot of money, at a time when France is trying to keep its deficit under control. No wonder Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner aims to spread the burden and share the responsibility.

resources are limited and specially military resources are even more rare and unique. To ask them to go rescue you out of being stupid…, i can see the sense in asking for rescue but why would rest of the taxpayers pay for your stupidity? A similar kind of thinking underlies the concept of asking alcoholic people to go on no alcohol diets before giving them valuable and rare organs. Similarly you hear about situation where medical care is refused to people who are obese. Interesting pragmatism, eh? Trust the French to come up with something like this. While saying that, I am thinking about Army teams which go about climbing Mount Everest. Now, they are public servants, should the Army fund these kinds of activities? Its not as simple as that, but if the individual does want to go do something risky and stupid which might entail the spend of public monies….