Signs of recession in India show in the Job applications to State Bank jobs

Last updated on: March 12, 2013 at 8:56 am By Desh Kapoor

India is in a downturn. And the recessionary times are clear. State Bank of India recently received 1.7 million applications for just 1,500 entry-level clerk jobs! The main attraction? Good perks, obviously.. but “Job for life” status. In fact for the Probationary Officers job, the perks at State Bank seem very lucrative, given the market. For positions in Mumbai, the bank offered a starting package of 69,000 rupees (1,270 dollars) a month for the “probationary officers” including a housing allowance... Read more

Rehman Malik is angry with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi now

Last updated on: March 12, 2013 at 8:43 am By Desh Kapoor

This guy is hand-in-glove with the extremists in Pakistan. He is the main sympathizer in the establishment of the Jehadi elements in ISI/Army as well as non-state actors. And his utterances in India were symptomatic of that. When he came here, he didn’t come here to create a dialog, but to break whatever dialog was going on. And now, as the violence in Pakistan escalates against the Shias and the Christians, Rehman Malik is again there to obfuscate the issues.... Read more

Global Email Patterns show Civilizational associations and conflicts

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 11:12 pm By Desh Kapoor

A paper titled “The Mesh of Civilizations and International Email Flows,” written by researchers at Stanford, Cornell, Yahoo! and Qatar’s Computational Research Institute; has come out with rather interesting insights into who in the world is emailing whom? What brings senders and recipients of the email exchanges together? Apparently, the following factors: GDP, trade, language, non-Commonwealth colonial relations, and a couple of academic-sounding cultural metrics, like power-distance, individualism, masculinity and uncertainty Having a border, or a number of international flights... Read more

Unprecedented Global Warming: Took 4000 years for 1.25 degrees rise in temp; and just ONE generation in Industrial era

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 10:23 pm By Desh Kapoor

A new study lays to rest the nonsense that the right-wingers in US keep harping on. Global Warming IS real. Temperatures haven’t spiked like this in the last 11,000 years! Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny marine organisms to reconstruct global temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until an unprecedented reversal in the 20th century. Scientists say it is... Read more

Startup Tips from Dave Zilberman, partner @ Comcast Ventures

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 10:01 pm By Desh Kapoor

A very interesting discussion with David Zilberman, a venture capital guy – partner at Comcast Ventures. He discusses the tips for startups David Zilberman is a partner at Comcast Ventures, the venture arm of Comcast, the media giant and parent company of NBC Universal. He joined Comcast Ventures in 2006, and is responsible for identifying, executing and managing new investments while supporting existing portfolio companies. His investment focus is on enterprise IT and digital media. Among his recent investments is... Read more

Tokyo residents living in Coffin like cramped living units for $568 a month!

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 9:32 pm By Desh Kapoor

Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world. Osaka is the second most. Japan is certainly not a country for the faint-hearted! Here is a list of the most expensive cities in the world. 10. Geneva 9. Caracas 8. Paris 7. Zurich 6. Singapore 5. Melbourne 4. Oslo 3. Sydney 2. Osaka 1. Tokyo The situation in the city is so crazy it seems that some people are living in what are kinda like “Coffin Units”. The are called (“geki-sema... Read more

Pakistani and American kids exchange mails including on touchy subjects like Terrorism and Biases

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 6:56 pm By Desh Kapoor

An interesting diplomatic experiment via kids is underway. Through Marshall Direct Fund’s Global Kid Connect program, Aspen Country Day School in Colorado and Lahore Grammar School in Pakistan are exchanging penpal mails. Apart from the subjects related to music and celebs, these kids are actually touching upon diplomatic and religious subjects as well from their limited understanding and the need to empathize. So they are talking about how they would like to view each other and how the overall gamut... Read more

Indian Rock Bands: Journey over the years – from 1980s to today

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 5:54 pm By Desh Kapoor

India, a country of varied music traditions, also found its youth experimenting with Rock music. And in the 1980s some pioneering bands like Indus Creek, Euphoria and Skinny Alley came up. They started with experiment using Rock and Folk. Over the last decade, the Indian bands have grown in their production quality and also gone past the fusion experimentation to do more Rock mainstream work. Here is a cool infographic that shows the entire journey. Click on the image for... Read more

Simple Bedside test to distinguish between a Stroke and innocuous dizziness

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 11:39 am By Desh Kapoor

To distinguish between a stroke and harmless dizziness is very important and difficult in general. It feels very similar but a stroke can be catastrophic! It is important to know what is a stroke and what is not… and even in the best of hospitals, this can be difficult in the first instance. The diagnosis of stroke in patients with severe dizziness, vomiting, difficulty walking and intolerance to head motion is difficult, Newman-Toker says. He estimates there are 4 million... Read more

Over 150 Christian Houses burnt in Lahore over a blasphemy charge on Christian by his friend

Last updated on: March 11, 2013 at 10:31 am By Desh Kapoor

The purging in Pakistan is in full swing. After exterminating the Hindus – and forcing them to move to India – and blowing up Shias in so many bomb blasts, now the Pakistani extremists have turned their attention to the Christians. A person from Joseph Colony in Lahore was arrested initially on the charges of Blasphemy Law. But that wasn’t enough. A large mob set a colony of 150 houses ablaze. Interestingly, the administration and the people in the colony... Read more