Nice read

….

When I was 8 years old, my father explained to me the secret to American prosperity. Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me.

While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction. Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by careers in engineering and medicine. Third-generation kids  … more

Some nice funny photos:

Goethals

I was recently at Goa at a casino and discovered that the dealers in Casino wear pocketless pants so that they are not able to store chips into the pants.

This story at IUC just fascinated me, Nepal govt has ordered custom officials at Airport to wear pocketless pants…. First of all, it should be mandatory in India as well, for sure, custom officials earn 100x than casino dealers in their pants with “pockets”. In fact, not only at airports, but it ought to be done also at police stations, RTOs, Sales tax offices and every other government office.

but no use as IUC points out:

Archana Sinha writes in:

Nepal has ordered its customs officials to wear pocketless pants, with a view to discouraging bribes. You know what’s gonna happen now, don’t you? The sales of underwear with inbuilt pockets will go up! Where there is law, there is jugaad.

From Goethals:

10 people die every day on the train tracks in Bombay – that is over 3,600 people every year are killed by an uncaring government entity. That is terrorism of the bureaucracy.

There is one farmer committing suicide every 30 minutes in India; over 50 every day.
There have been 150,000 suicides by farmers in India between 1997 and 2005. One out of every five farmers is from the state of Maharashtra. That is terrorism by the government.

8 people have died every day in Kashmir for the past 18 years.
That is 6,570 days of terror in Kashmir.
Bombay had its 60 hours of terror; Kashmir has had 157,680 hours of terror – and still counting.

Not to downplay the terror attacks in Mumbai in anyway, this articles highlights the rampant political & government corruption in India and the reasons why such terror incidents keep happening again & again.

Jawahar Lal Nehru:

Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire, said … perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been trying to fashion some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind’s growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability.

Technorati Tags: quotes, nehru

If you are looking at iPhone Application development, you should check out Jiggy. It is an extremely easy way to create iPhone Apps. I was able to create a basic app in about 5 minutes.

Moreover, it is completely open-source and you can get source code of many sophisticated iPhone apps free from the Jiggy Development Group on Google Groups to get you up and ready to create feature rich iPhone apps within matter of days.

Here is an Intro video to Jiggy on Youtube.

I found Ergo and it has some nice UI to perform search from across various sources such as Flickr, Youtube, Your Computer etc. And it also supports Sharepoint so you can search view your SharePoint documents from your desktop. Head over to http://yourergo.com for a free download. See screen-shots for more details:

Facebook web applications are extremely popular but the Facebook desktop app often don’t get enough attention they deserve. Here are some of the apps that I have been using. Facebook app for BlackBerry is very useful in particular. Facebook widget for Netvibes and Facebook for flock are also worth checking.

Hooked on Facebook®? BlackBerry® smartphones can help! Now you can take Facebook with you on your BlackBerry smartphone! The best part is: you stay connected to Facebook the whole time. Download this free application and take communicating with your friends to a whole new level.

The Netvibes Widget allows users to view their Facebook profile and friends from their personalized Netvibes homepage.