It seems to me that the "dot" wouldn't move faster than light in any ref frame. When you rotate the laser pointer by an infinitesimal angle (neglecting noninertial effects) then the "dot" on the moon doesn't move by the corresponding distance until the information "I have moved the pointer by d(theta) now move accordingly Mr. dot" reaches the dot on the moon, after which it moves by the corresponding distance. However, by that time, I have rotated my pointer to another position. Effectively, it seems to me that the "dot" would lag behind the imaginary point on the moon that is projected from the orientation of the pointer on a straight line and thus the dot would move at a speed less than c. In addition, the laser beam would not be an actual straight line anymore but a curved shape so that successive points along the beam would lag behind their predecessors as the pointer moves.
I remember my relativity prof giving this problem in class some years back and this is the explanation that we came up with...
Maybe you're trying to say the same thing that I am in a different way, not sure.
I live a lot closer to Bhutan than most people here on/. , and I call typical bullshit leftist (it is the guardian after all) scaremongering on this article.
The violence, corruption and crime that's rising in Bhutan is quite natural. Any society that is completely free of crime, poverty and corruption is too totalitarian and oppressive for me to live in.
Bhutan has been a country with an extremely poor record of ethnic/religious tolerance and freedom. The "Druk" aristocracy in Bhutan were a bunch of bigoted assholes that would have given the Ku-Klux-Klan and Taliban a run for their money. Hindus in Bhutan who (mainly descended from Nepalese immigrants) were pretty much treated like untermenschen by the Druks. The Tek Nath Rizal government passed "sumptuary laws" against the Hindu minority (special "dress codes" based on ethnic/religious denomination, think anti-Semitic yellow badge of Nazi Germany for a comparison).Some 103,000 Hindus were ethnically cleansed by the Buddhist Fundamentalists in Bhutan and sent back to India and Nepal (and you thought Americans had draconian immigration laws). Bhutan is widely known as one of the most racist and xenophobic countries in South Asia.Dunno abt you, but this is not a country that I would want to live in, even if it meant no crime/corruption/whatever.
All this oppression stems from their inbred isolationist culture, which creates suspicion of all "foreign elements". It may seem like an "idyllic paradise" to the clueless observer, but so would Apartheid South Africa to a Boer.
The introduction of television,internet etc. will teach them about the world outside in some form, expose them to novel ideas and the complexities of other cultures. This will, in the long run, help create a more egalitarian society, though arguably a more violent one (join the club). The rise in crime etc. is merely people learning about new things and new possibilities from TV and expressing themselves accordingly. No surprise that with the modernization of Bhutan came the government introducing reforms that would help alleviate the problem.
I don't think energy is the issue here so much as entropy. Not much extra work is being done while sweeping the laser, though there may be some energy lost on recoil. The main deal in this case is that we have to take into account the entropy of the photon generated during a doppler-recoil, which manifests itself in the entropy of the CCD-camera where the photon impinges in the setup. That balances the second law out.
Mark Raizen of the University of Texas at Austin has already shown a way to achieve Maxwell's Demon using sheet lasers in Cold Atom Systems. You use the Doppler cooling effect to do velocity selection of atoms and selectively slow them down as the sheet laser sweeps across the box.
Indeed, that's because they are both Socialists and a Hindu majority. Their personal religion does not generally affect their politics.
Incidentally, Kerala and their neighbors in Tamil Nadu have some of the most breathtaking Hindu temples in India, some dating back to Medeival Chola-Dynasty construction in 9th century.
and get reported by a leftist rag like "the Guardian" (as referenced by wikipedia), bastion of bashing all things that are Indian, and especially Hindu. They hate all things remotely related to Hinduism or Hindu culture so pardon me if I have a little trouble taking such outlandish claims seriously.
The characterization is still one-sided, since all Indians don't amputate beggars, only a segment of the population. Your statement was categorical, not qualified, and, I suspect, more motivated by resentment at the success of the Indian American community (highest median personal income and family income, as well as highest percentage of advanced degrees among minorities of Asian extraction: http://www.asian-nation.org/demographics.shtml) than any genuine concern for the plight of the beggars in India. By the way, the situation of poverty, which breeds such things, has been steadily improving in India since the 70s: ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/BPL_ Data_GOI_.png based on http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_cso_rept_pubn.htm), something that you won't see touted by the Times of India op/ed morons, leftist pundits, and bloggers who don't know any better, or lack broad perspective.
Nobody denies obvious facts. The problem was the one in which you stated them. You were characterizing an entire nation by saying "This is a country that..", instead of saying "In this country,... happens". That's like saying "America is a country that breeds backward hicks who vote for George Bush". It's a misleading generalization.
India is hardly the only country in the world where such things happen: Thailand, The Philippines, Countries in South America, Southern Africa all have this problem. In fact, contrary to what some people will tell you, the statistics are more favorable towards India in this regard than other developing countries.
India is a country that constantly defies western classifications.But, of course, whenever an article on India is put up on slashdot, every closet racist troll has to express himself by generating a stereotype. We are not a naturally hesperophobic people (unlike some other countries near us where people are pining to blow you up), but this does not help dispel the stereotype of the television propaganda-blinded "dumb westerner" (yes, stereotypes feed off of each other) with a bug up his ass about a country that, for all it's flaws, has made significant progress over the years.
1. Corruption is hardly the argument to justify quotas. You are using straw man arguments to deflect from the issue at hand. The issue at hand is merit vs. quota. Quotas are not given on the basis of merit and that is morally and academically wrong no matter what the motivation of the opposer is (btw I am also critical of affirmative action in the USA on the same grounds even though I am intellectually sympathetic to the discrimination faced by the African Americans and Hispanics).
2. I was a "college student" and I was neither idealistic nor liberal. I was always a conservative Hindu from a low-caste (but urban middle class) background and I was not alone. I opposed reservation on the grounds that non-meritorious students would get in and professors would be forced to lower standards to accomodate them, which is precisely what is happening in my alma mater with this 50% quota crap.
3. The IAS (Indian Administrative Service) is corrupt because it is bottom heavy and hindered by quota entries with no real merit. Corruption is the effect, not the cause. Don't conflate cause and effect.
I agree with the claim that "Economic freedom does not thrive when the government gets in the way". I am a conservative as Americans would say, not a liberal "moonbat". I advocate for small decentralized government, which the present leftist UPA government in India is not doing.
Note that the so-called "Right-Wing" NDA coalition government of the last election term did precisely that, tried not to get in the way. They enacted the "Prasaar Bharati" bill which freed media from government regulation, they favored small businesses, encouraged investment, tried to reverse the isolationist policies and the horrid 5-year plans of the Congress party Government of before etc. They lost because of their disastrous election campaign and the votebank hatemongering of the liberal leftists. Their only major flaws were that they focussed too much on the small businesses which looke bad to the rurals in the short run (which the left wing propagandists exploited to the hilt), and they scared some minorities with their rhetoric (though bear in mind that President Kalam, a Muslim minority, as well as several Muslim constituencies in the state of Uttar Pradesh were and still are pro-NDA), another thing which the left-wing exaggerated and propagandized assiduously.
Er, conversion to what? Islam? Muslims in India have a well-oiled Caste system already. Read about the Ashraf/Ajlaf divide The Qomiyat of Swat, Pakistan and Bengal and the jajmin/Kamin separation.
Among Muslims, the Ashraf are regarded as those descended from Arab stock and are mandated by Fatwas to be "superior" to those converted from Hinduism, called "Ajlaf". even among the Ajlaf we have the "Arzal" who are treated as untouchable. To quote a scholarly paper Arzals are those:
"with whom no other Muhammadan would associate, and who are forbidden to enter the mosque or to use the public burial ground"
Read this famous book by Ambedkar (I already spoke about him in a thread earlier), a Buddhist by the way, who exposes the entire Muslim Caste System in South Asia:
Aggarwal, Patrap. Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India. Social Stratification Among Muslims in India by Zarina Bhatty
and "Political theory in the Delhi Sultanate by Mohamed Habib" when the Muslim Castes of Ashraf/Ajlaf/Arzal was established by religious sancation through the Fatwa-i-Jahandari.
Convert to Christianity? Dalit Christians are the among the most persecuted people in India right now. Read about Bama Faustina, a Dalit Christian, who has exposed the atrocities committed on Dalit Christians by the Christian clergy
Christian churches in India are largely controlled by upper caste Christian Priests and nuns. Low-caste Dalit Christians are discriminated against by the upper-caste Christians. The extent and practice of untouchability within the Indian Christian community have been researched. Chapels for Dalit Christians are often segregated from Christians of a higher caste. Other churches admit Dalit Christians, but keep separate pews for them. Dalit Christians are buried in separate cemeteries. In addition, Dalit boys are not allowed to be altar boys or lectors.In addition, there are various instances of economic discrimination where Dalit Christians are not allowed to own arable land by upper caste Christian clergy. In many Christian communities in India, bonded labor is still practiced. As a consequence of the discrimination, Dalit Christians tend to be very poor and undernourished. Dalit Christians are denied education by the Upper Caste Priests and nuns. Very few Dalit Christians are involved in administrative services, except for the few who reconverted back to Hinduism.
The only realistic religion to convert to would be Buddhism, which is no biggie because Buddhism originated in India only. However, the movement is being taken over by violent extremists and anti-Hindu bigots who have even gone so far as to side with Islamist terrorists in Kashmir who ethnically cleansed millions of Hindu
Not only that, but the chief forger of the Indian Constitution, Bhimrao "Babasaheb" Ambedkar, himself a Dalit "untouchable", was extremely critical of religion and discrimination, specifically of the practice of discriminating against the Dalit "untouchables" in Hindu society and the rampant discrimination of the Arzal "untouchables" in Muslim society in South Asia.
His position on castes was likened to that of the American founding fathers on the separation of religion and state. In addition, Amebedkar frequently cited the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey as precedent for abolishing untouchability.
He absolutely loathed the Varnas among Hindus and the Ashraf/Ajlaf divide + the Quomiyat/Beradari system among Muslims. His criticism was so aggressive that he became rather unpopular among orthodox Hindu Brahmins and orthodox Muslim Mullahs, particularly among the Muslim League people in Pakistan, which was formed during Ambedkar's time (all this despite that fact that Ambedkar supported the segregation of Pakistan).
Plus, the president and commander-in-chief of India's armed forces from 1997-2002 was K.R. Narayanan, a Dalit "untouchable". The current president of India, Abdul Kalam, is an "Ajlaf" (low caste) Muslim. Also, Abdus Salaam, a famous physicist known for his work on the Glashow Weinberg Salaam electroweak theory that earned him a Nobel Prize, was a low-caste "Mojahir" Muslim by birth.
Reservation in India (a more drastic version of affirmative action) is a horrible idea as it completely removes all concept of position by merit. The argument that "my granddaddy was forced to carry night soil from one end of my village to another so please give me a seat in IIT despite the fact that I don't know how to integrate x*e^(x) and have never heard of complex variables" only goes so far. It goes far enough to warrant, say a 20% quota, but 50%??? That's pushing it.
Btw I say this as a low caste guy myself so am not partisan at all. Putting reservation in primary/secondary schools is ok as it gives the SC/ST/OBC's the boost they need to get into the education system. But it needs to end there. Admission to colleges and higher education should be largely on merit with a small quota for political correctedness. Same for IAS and other job appointments. I personally know several SC's who were my co-students in IIT who got in by virtue of merit and did well by virtue of merit. They did not need any quota to get in as they did well on their own abilities.
The 50% quota thing is just a votebank move by politicians based on the fraudulent data inspired by the fraudulent Mandal Commission of the 70s. It is merely a ploy to get votes from the SC/ST blocs who have been polarized by sectarian "activists", themselves the most communal bastards of the lot.
It is a highly controversial topic. There is bias in all directions. Certainly, the western media (oddly, the liberals most of all) love to portray India exclusively as a country of beggars and untouchables. It certainly makes them feel secure in their hatred of Indians.
However, there is no doubt that the human development index of India has risen remarkably over the last few decades (certainly a lot more than other countries in the subcontinent, where the poverty situation is worse).
There is an ongoing controversy over poverty statistics and figures made during the nineties, with some economists, banks, sociologists siding with the figures that indicate reduced poverty and others siding with the "India is a country of beggars and untouchables" polemic.
The Indian debate has run parallel to, and is itself a large part of, the wider debate about globalization and poverty. The economic reforms of the early 1990s were followed by rates of economic growth that were high by Indian historical standards. The effects on poverty remain controversial, and the official numbers published by the Government of India,showing a reduction of poverty from 36 percent of the population in 1993 - 94 to 26 percent of the population in 1999 - 00, have been challenged both for allegedly showing too little and too much poverty reduction
Issues over "data and dogma" in a paper published by a Princeton Univ prof and a world bank guy:
There has been a consensus on the fact that liberalization has led to a reduction of income poverty. The picture, however, is not so clear if one considers other factors (such as health, education, crime and access to infrastructure). Some have criticozed the stats as too one-dimensional.However, they only criticize, and do not offer any ways to objectively gauge all the criteria for poverty in India, suggesting that they are simply whining.
With the rapid economic growth that India is experiencing, it is likely that a significant fraction of the rural population will continue to migrate toward cities, making the issue of urban poverty more significant in the long run
Although there is no full consensus on what happened to Indian poverty in the 1990s, it is claimed that the official estimates of poverty reduction are too optimistic, particularly for rural India. This alleged overoptimism was amplified by statistical uncertainty that created space for commentators to argue that poverty had been virtually eliminated in India in the wake of the economic reforms.
On the other side, well-known economits Pravin Visaria have defended the validity of many of the statistics that demonstrated the reduction in overall poverty in India, as well as the declration made by India's Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha that poverty in India has reduced significantly.
He asserts that the state surveys were well designed and supervised and felt that just because they did not appear to fit preconceived notions about poverty in India,they should not be dismissed outright
2. Can play just about any video format (Mythvideo menu+xine+codecs) from anywhere
3. Can play video and audio remotely (NFS/SAMBA)
4. I can watch my tv from any room with a networked computer (on account of mythtv's client-server architecture).
5. Can get RSS feeds
6. Can check my email (thru plugin)
7. Can download torrents directly into my dvr (through plugin)
8. Cool weather monitor thingie
9. With my Hauppauge PVR350+150 (both of which work beautifully using the linux ovtv drivers) and their hardware based MPEG-2 decoding/encoding, I can build my DVR using a throwaway P-III and still get flawless performance. Plus, with 2 framegrabbers I get picture-in picture, watch one show while recording another, and all that cool stuff that commercial DVR's advertise about on tv.
10. Can rip dvd's and encode/burn recodrings to dvd through the interface itself
11. No silly proprietary video formats or vendor lock-ins.
12. I can expand storage whenever I want however I want (add hard drives locally or use remote file server)
13. I have read about people with more versatile configs, like a cheap machine as frontend to the tv but the backend running on a more powerful workhorse networked smoothly with the frontend etc.
14. Mythweb. Nuff said. Can config and even stream my tv/recordings over the internet.
15. Mythtv interface is completely customizable and themable and you can tweak it (xml files mostly, fairly straightforward and doesn;t require much geekiness) and make it as friendly as you want. Actually, the OSD is pretty good and well-designed. Once you get everything to work it run smooth as silk. I haven't had to fiddle with my box in months.
The one thing that mythtv can't do at present (at least, as of version 0.18.2) is connect to somewhere and use programs to extrapolate my viewing habits (which i believe TiVo does do), but that will change as developers are working on possible solutions (mythrecommend, cheap services like TiVo that are mythtv compatible etc)
That, and the fact that it took me a week to get everything to work right (this was last october, Knoppmyth was still R5A16, may have improved since then:main problem was that my hauppauge pvr350 remote would't work unless I compiled latest lirc from scratch for infrared, then had to config keybindings manually:Cecil the Knoppmyth devel guy may have fixed those issues by now), even with KnoppMyth it wasn't easy
If you're willing to hash out the $$$, you can buy prebilt mythtv boxen:
The bottom line is that, while technical articles (on most disciplines and fields) on wikipedia are very good (better than anywhere else on the internet even), articles that are about history, religion, politics,movies, personalities, or recent events are hopelessly (though not always systemically) biased and full of unrepresentative crap. This is because wikipedia runs on de-facto consensus (though it's not supposed to) and only the most (and biggest) noisemakers get their edits on the article, and detractors cause endless revert-wars, edit-wars, vandalisms, admin intervention, article protection/semi-protection, insults in user talk pages (some nasty ones too), blocks, mediation cabals, RfC's, RfA's, secret edit-cabals, tag-warring, NPOV, TotallyDisputed etc. etc. and all sorts of things that are part of the dark and invisible underbelly of wikipedia that you DON'T see.
An encyclopedia is not (IMHO) supposed to contain articles that are highly controversial and subject to different interpretations. It should be about objective and verifiable facts. 90% of the articles on wikipedia that are non-technical contain maybe 10% of verifiable facts, and 90% noise.
The sad truth is that the high visibility of wikipedia (Google Searches usually point to wikipedia articles on the search subject first or second or third, if an article on the subject exists) means that people READ all this nonsense and, unaware of the many problems of wikipedia, assume it to be the truth based on a facade of legitimacy that wikipedia presents (at least, as far as the cats I listd above are concerned). These edits that are put there by cabals of editors, many of whom hold extremist views or represent organisations that have such extremist views are thus propagated into the masses of readers as facts, without the right balance to them, which is very damaging.
That's what I think anyways, feel free to flame me down or whatever. Any replies and/or responses would be interesting to me as it would give me an idea as to how many people on slashdot regard wikipedia articles as canonically true and always NPOV.
Manoj Nellattu Shyamalan is not from Kerala, he is from Pondicherry by birth, though his father was a Malayalee. For the benefit of everybody else, Pondicherry is a union territory along the Coromandel coast (along the Bay of Bengal) of Southern India. Kerala is along the Malabar coast (along the Arabian Sea to the west)...
The Syrian Nasrani community that migrated to Kerala in the 2nd century AD (to whom you are referring) were more Judeo-Christian than "Christian" in the modern sense (they have Jewish traditions like Menorahs, Shabbats etc.). They've had trouble with the Portuguese in the past because of this (when Portuguese conquistadores invaded South India, the anti-Semitic monarchy of Portugal ordered their extermination, they were saved by the Hindu King of Cochin and, subsequently, by the Dutch). Arundhuti Roy is Judeo-Christian by matrilineage (I personally can't stand the lying anti-American anti-Hindu bitch, but she is highly educated and articulate).
While Kerala is an economically well-developed state (a lot better than the other communist state of West Bengal, from where I hail, certainly), Gujarat and Maharastra have better industries and a higher per-capita income. Kerala does have the highest literacy rate in India, though Tamil Nadu and Punjab are not far behind. There is talk about exploiting the well-educated pool in Kerala by pushing the IT industry there, which might boost Kerala's economy further, exceeding that of M'rashtra & Gujarat. Remains to be seen though.
..in various posts, let me summarize how the article's implication of poor ipod support is total bullshit and ipod works with linux just fine (in fact, better than with windows).
libipod ( http://libipod.sourceforge.net/ ) is the library that interacts with the database on the ipod that stores your music.
Ipods are detected just fine by the USB mass storage driver with no probems in any modern linux distro.
Itunes can be run thru wine (though I've never tried it), and Sharpmusique ( http://nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/ ) can connect with itunes, buy music, download and strip off the DRM so that the files can be played anywhere.
CD-ripping and transfer to ipod can be done seamlessly in amarok (if you have lame etc installed). It's easier than in windoze thru third party rippers and itunes where there are all sorts of restrictions and issues.
Both "pc-compatible" (fat filesystem) as well as "mac-compatible" (HFS filesystem) will work equally well on any linux box coz linux has drivers for both filesystems.
Last but not least, there is ipodlinux ( http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page ), where you can install linux firmware in your ipod itself. Advantage is that you can play videos in your nano, music management is thru filesystem rather than database so just treat it as a mass storage device in any OS, and a host of other linux stuff will work on it, and you can play any music format that can be played on linux, not just mp3's (ogm,wma etc). You can even play quake on it if you want.
My nano ran just fine with my Mandrake box with no probs. Anecdotally, I had more problems with it on windoze (usb connection to it acted wierdly, though the usb bus was fine; I didn't care enough to analyze what was up).
After all, what is lambda (decay constant)? How do you get it? They're trying to link a macroscopic phenomenon (radiation from dacay) to a microscopic phenomenon (nuclear radioactivity). If you want to find out what lambda actually is as a bulk property it has to depend on some collective degrees of freedom, and that's where temperature might come in, through the statistical mechanics associated with taking averages using density matrices of physical quantities and such.
I believe that's where Debye models and the like come into play...
Seriously though slums in urban India suck balls, specially Joynagar in Calcutta and Dharavi in Mumbai, which is the largest slum in Asia. There are development projects for Dharavi, but they've been marred in controversy. I won't deny the facts.India has got a long way to go before it comes out of the developing status. Economically, we're still very much third world I'm afraid. Politically and militarily, we're better than most other third world countries (just to put matters in perspective).
Generally, YES, it is. However, one must qualify that, unlike some other countries, there is widespread criticism and condemnation of this problem in INDIA itself (Google on the internet for women's advocacy groups of Indian women, government sponsored emancipation programmes etc.) that have made noteworthy progress in this regard. Bear in mind that it is in the best interest of all political parties to get the women educated and up-and-running so that they can vote for the buggers.
The situation with women in India has improved markedly since 1947 (independence) when most people did not even entertain the idea of giving women the ability to read, let alone join the military (except Subhash Bose himself), or have jobs or careers of any kind.
This was once true all over the subcontinent in all classes and all communities. Today, the situation with women has improved markedly in urban areas and such. The rural areas (the majority in India) are still quite behind. A country of over a billion people with a 5000 year old civilization that has been raped and enslaved by European colonialism will not be so pliable and amenable to change, or to modern ideas and values coming (for the most part) from the erstwhile colonialists themselves. But, there is sufficient motivation and determination in India to make it happen as soon as feasable.
I reiterate my claim that to compare India with a country like the USA is loaded and unjustified. Most countries in the world stack up poorly in front of the US in such matters, even otherwise developed countries.
The fact is that most people who tout these comparisons are doing so not out of genuine interest or concern for our problems, but in a concerted attack of defamation because they regard our race as inferior to theirs.
Criticizing our problems as a measure to put our many achievements in the correct perspective is one thing, and laudable. Fact mining incomparable statistics as a veiled ethnic attack on India and Indians is another thing altogether.
Comparison with the USA is valid only if India is declared as comparable to the USA, and anybody who does that should be strapped into a straighjacket and put in a room with rubber walls for the remainder of his natural life...
A more realistic comparison would be between India and countries in a similar predicament, like Guatemala, Pakistan, Bangladesh, some of the newly formed east European countries etc.
Crap. I'm a total fool. I should have RTFP'ed your post before shooting my stupid-ass mouth off like that. My apologies. I just get a bit sensitive at times and haven't slept in a while...
Well no sane person is trying to compare India to the US. That would be ridiculous. Compared to the US, even Ireland (a relatively developed country otherwise) is a bona fide dump. That's a loaded comparison. Compared to other third world countries, we are generally much more progressive.
It's just that you don't HEAR much about the goings on in most third world countries due to repressive governments, suppressed and non-free news media, jingoistic propaganda etc.
We have the immense burden of being one of few third world democracies, where all information (even the dirty laundry) is exposed for all the world to see. The media hates the government, the people curse the government and relect new people. All the corruption makes it to the headline news by the end of business etc.
That is why you see the poverty in India splashed all over the news, and yet the greater poverty of a semi-theocratic dictatorial pseudo-democracy like Pakistan is ignored...
Out Gini index is comparable to many European nations:
I'm assuming you didn't go to one of your famous American public schools and can actually find India on a map. You will see that it has the same shade as most European countries:
List of some countries (with India in it) ranked by Gini index (bear in mind that lower gini index is better)
There are many other criteria one needs to judge the full economic state of a country. However, our H.D.I stinks ass. Though I suspect that someone like you would continue to hate us even if we eliminated all poverty from our country, put computers in every household and built freeways from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Oh well...
Slashdot Mirror
You sure about this?
It seems to me that the "dot" wouldn't move faster than light in any ref frame. When you rotate the laser pointer by an infinitesimal angle (neglecting noninertial effects) then the "dot" on the moon doesn't move by the corresponding distance until the information "I have moved the pointer by d(theta) now move accordingly Mr. dot" reaches the dot on the moon, after which it moves by the corresponding distance. However, by that time, I have rotated my pointer to another position. Effectively, it seems to me that the "dot" would lag behind the imaginary point on the moon that is projected from the orientation of the pointer on a straight line and thus the dot would move at a speed less than c. In addition, the laser beam would not be an actual straight line anymore but a curved shape so that successive points along the beam would lag behind their predecessors as the pointer moves.
I remember my relativity prof giving this problem in class some years back and this is the explanation that we came up with...
Maybe you're trying to say the same thing that I am in a different way, not sure.
I live a lot closer to Bhutan than most people here on /. , and I call typical bullshit leftist (it is the guardian after all) scaremongering on this article.
0 06-10-19-voa1.cfm?CFID=96985519&CFTOKEN=24717708o c.htm?tbl=PUBL&id=4444d3c93ew ww.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.27/Bhutan. doc
The violence, corruption and crime that's rising in Bhutan is quite natural. Any society that is completely free of crime, poverty and corruption is too totalitarian and oppressive for me to live in.
Bhutan has been a country with an extremely poor record of ethnic/religious tolerance and freedom. The "Druk" aristocracy in Bhutan were a bunch of bigoted assholes that would have given the Ku-Klux-Klan and Taliban a run for their money. Hindus in Bhutan who (mainly descended from Nepalese immigrants) were pretty much treated like untermenschen by the Druks. The Tek Nath Rizal government passed "sumptuary laws" against the Hindu minority (special "dress codes" based on ethnic/religious denomination, think anti-Semitic yellow badge of Nazi Germany for a comparison).Some 103,000 Hindus were ethnically cleansed by the Buddhist Fundamentalists in Bhutan and sent back to India and Nepal (and you thought Americans had draconian immigration laws). Bhutan is widely known as one of the most racist and xenophobic countries in South Asia.Dunno abt you, but this is not a country that I would want to live in, even if it meant no crime/corruption/whatever.
All this oppression stems from their inbred isolationist culture, which creates suspicion of all "foreign elements". It may seem like an "idyllic paradise" to the clueless observer, but so would Apartheid South Africa to a Boer.
The introduction of television,internet etc. will teach them about the world outside in some form, expose them to novel ideas and the complexities of other cultures. This will, in the long run, help create a more egalitarian society, though arguably a more violent one (join the club). The rise in crime etc. is merely people learning about new things and new possibilities from TV and expressing themselves accordingly. No surprise that with the modernization of Bhutan came the government introducing reforms that would help alleviate the problem.
References:
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/2006-10/2
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opend
http://web.archive.org/web/20030408101642/http://
I don't think energy is the issue here so much as entropy. Not much extra work is being done while sweeping the laser, though there may be some energy lost on recoil. The main deal in this case is that we have to take into account the entropy of the photon generated during a doppler-recoil, which manifests itself in the entropy of the CCD-camera where the photon impinges in the setup. That balances the second law out.
Mark Raizen of the University of Texas at Austin has already shown a way to achieve Maxwell's Demon using sheet lasers in Cold Atom Systems. You use the Doppler cooling effect to do velocity selection of atoms and selectively slow them down as the sheet laser sweeps across the box.
/ 20060216_MarkRaizen.txt
http://graduateadvisor.physics.tamu.edu/talk/2006
Ironically, their National Anthem begins with "Arise, Ye who refuse to be slaves!..."
Third largest. Indonesia is largest, Pakistan is second largest, followed by India.
Indeed, that's because they are both Socialists and a Hindu majority. Their personal religion does not generally affect their politics.
Incidentally, Kerala and their neighbors in Tamil Nadu have some of the most breathtaking Hindu temples in India, some dating back to Medeival Chola-Dynasty construction in 9th century.
This is typically preposterous nonsense that one would expect from the increasingly Indophobic academia
l PromotesUnderstanding
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2005/11/17/pane
http://www.indiacause.com/columns/OL_040912.htm
and get reported by a leftist rag like "the Guardian" (as referenced by wikipedia), bastion of bashing all things that are Indian, and especially Hindu. They hate all things remotely related to Hinduism or Hindu culture so pardon me if I have a little trouble taking such outlandish claims seriously.
The characterization is still one-sided, since all Indians don't amputate beggars, only a segment of the population. Your statement was categorical, not qualified, and, I suspect, more motivated by resentment at the success of the Indian American community (highest median personal income and family income, as well as highest percentage of advanced degrees among minorities of Asian extraction: http://www.asian-nation.org/demographics.shtml) than any genuine concern for the plight of the beggars in India. By the way, the situation of poverty, which breeds such things, has been steadily improving in India since the 70s: ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/BPL_ Data_GOI_.png based on http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_cso_rept_pubn.htm), something that you won't see touted by the Times of India op/ed morons, leftist pundits, and bloggers who don't know any better, or lack broad perspective.
Nobody denies obvious facts. The problem was the one in which you stated them. You were characterizing an entire nation by saying "This is a country that..", instead of saying "In this country,... happens". That's like saying "America is a country that breeds backward hicks who vote for George Bush". It's a misleading generalization.
India is hardly the only country in the world where such things happen: Thailand, The Philippines, Countries in South America, Southern Africa all have this problem. In fact, contrary to what some people will tell you, the statistics are more favorable towards India in this regard than other developing countries.
India is a country that constantly defies western classifications.But, of course, whenever an article on India is put up on slashdot, every closet racist troll has to express himself by generating a stereotype. We are not a naturally hesperophobic people (unlike some other countries near us where people are pining to blow you up), but this does not help dispel the stereotype of the television propaganda-blinded
"dumb westerner" (yes, stereotypes feed off of each other) with a bug up his ass about a country that, for all it's flaws, has made significant progress over the years.
You are oversimplifying on several counts:
1. Corruption is hardly the argument to justify quotas. You are using straw man arguments to deflect from the issue at hand. The issue at hand is merit vs. quota. Quotas are not given on the basis of merit and that is morally and academically wrong no matter what the motivation of the opposer is (btw I am also critical of affirmative action in the USA on the same grounds even though I am intellectually sympathetic to the discrimination faced by the African Americans and Hispanics).
2. I was a "college student" and I was neither idealistic nor liberal. I was always a conservative Hindu from a low-caste (but urban middle class) background and I was not alone. I opposed reservation on the grounds that non-meritorious students would get in and professors would be forced to lower standards to accomodate them, which is precisely what is happening in my alma mater with this 50% quota crap.
3. The IAS (Indian Administrative Service) is corrupt because it is bottom heavy and hindered by quota entries with no real merit. Corruption is the effect, not the cause. Don't conflate cause and effect.
I agree with the claim that "Economic freedom does not thrive when the government gets in the way". I am a conservative as Americans would say, not a liberal "moonbat". I advocate for small decentralized government, which the present leftist UPA government in India is not doing.
Note that the so-called "Right-Wing" NDA coalition government of the last election term did precisely that, tried not to get in the way. They enacted the "Prasaar Bharati" bill which freed media from government regulation, they favored small businesses, encouraged investment, tried to reverse the isolationist policies and the horrid 5-year plans of the Congress party Government of before etc. They lost because of their disastrous election campaign and the votebank hatemongering of the liberal leftists. Their only major flaws were that they focussed too much on the small businesses which looke bad to the rurals in the short run (which the left wing propagandists exploited to the hilt), and they scared some minorities with their rhetoric (though bear in mind that President Kalam, a Muslim minority, as well as several Muslim constituencies in the state of Uttar Pradesh were and still are pro-NDA), another thing which the left-wing exaggerated and propagandized assiduously.
Er, conversion to what? Islam? Muslims in India have a well-oiled Caste system already. Read about the Ashraf/Ajlaf divide The Qomiyat of Swat, Pakistan and Bengal and the jajmin/Kamin separation.
Among Muslims, the Ashraf are regarded as those descended from Arab stock and are mandated by Fatwas to be "superior" to those converted from Hinduism, called "Ajlaf". even among the Ajlaf we have the "Arzal" who are treated as untouchable. To quote a scholarly paper Arzals are those:
"with whom no other Muhammadan would associate, and who are forbidden to enter the mosque or to use the public burial ground"
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12109.html
http://stateless.freehosting.net/Caste%20in%20Indi an%20Muslim%20Society.htm
Read this famous book by Ambedkar (I already spoke about him in a thread earlier), a Buddhist by the way, who exposes the entire Muslim Caste System in South Asia:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00amb edkar/ambedkar_partition/410.html
Also, read:
Aggarwal, Patrap. Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India.
Social Stratification Among Muslims in India by Zarina Bhatty
and "Political theory in the Delhi Sultanate by Mohamed Habib" when the Muslim Castes of Ashraf/Ajlaf/Arzal was established by religious sancation through the Fatwa-i-Jahandari.
Convert to Christianity? Dalit Christians are the among the most persecuted people in India right now. Read about Bama Faustina, a Dalit Christian, who has exposed the atrocities committed on Dalit Christians by the Christian clergy
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/09/16/stories/13160 17m.htm
http://www.womenswriting.com/writerdetails.asp?wri terid=116
In the book "Sangati":
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/L iteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/India/~~/dmlldz11 c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTY3MDg4Mg==
Christian churches in India are largely controlled by upper caste Christian Priests and nuns. Low-caste Dalit Christians are discriminated against by the upper-caste Christians. The extent and practice of untouchability within the Indian Christian community have been researched. Chapels for Dalit Christians are often segregated from Christians of a higher caste. Other churches admit Dalit Christians, but keep separate pews for them. Dalit Christians are buried in separate cemeteries. In addition, Dalit boys are not allowed to be altar boys or lectors.In addition, there are various instances of economic discrimination where Dalit Christians are not allowed to own arable land by upper caste Christian clergy. In many Christian communities in India, bonded labor is still practiced. As a consequence of the discrimination, Dalit Christians tend to be very poor and undernourished. Dalit Christians are denied education by the Upper Caste Priests and nuns. Very few Dalit Christians are involved in administrative services, except for the few who reconverted back to Hinduism.
http://indianhope.free.fr/site_eng/article_5.php3
The only realistic religion to convert to would be Buddhism, which is no biggie because Buddhism originated in India only. However, the movement is being taken over by violent extremists and anti-Hindu bigots who have even gone so far as to side with Islamist terrorists in Kashmir who ethnically cleansed millions of Hindu
Not only that, but the chief forger of the Indian Constitution, Bhimrao "Babasaheb" Ambedkar, himself a Dalit "untouchable", was extremely critical of religion and discrimination, specifically of the practice of discriminating against the Dalit "untouchables" in Hindu society and the rampant discrimination of the Arzal "untouchables" in Muslim society in South Asia.
His position on castes was likened to that of the American founding fathers on the separation of religion and state. In addition, Amebedkar frequently cited the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey as precedent for abolishing untouchability.
He absolutely loathed the Varnas among Hindus and the Ashraf/Ajlaf divide + the Quomiyat/Beradari system among Muslims. His criticism was so aggressive that he became rather unpopular among orthodox Hindu Brahmins and orthodox Muslim Mullahs, particularly among the Muslim League people in Pakistan, which was formed during Ambedkar's time (all this despite that fact that Ambedkar supported the segregation of Pakistan).
Plus, the president and commander-in-chief of India's armed forces from 1997-2002 was K.R. Narayanan, a Dalit "untouchable". The current president of India, Abdul Kalam, is an "Ajlaf" (low caste) Muslim.
Also, Abdus Salaam, a famous physicist known for his work on the Glashow Weinberg Salaam electroweak theory that earned him a Nobel Prize, was a low-caste "Mojahir" Muslim by birth.
Reservation in India (a more drastic version of affirmative action) is a horrible idea as it completely removes all concept of position by merit. The argument that "my granddaddy was forced to carry night soil from one end of my village to another so please give me a seat in IIT despite the fact that I don't know how to integrate x*e^(x) and have never heard of complex variables" only goes so far. It goes far enough to warrant, say a 20% quota, but 50%??? That's pushing it.
Btw I say this as a low caste guy myself so am not partisan at all. Putting reservation in primary/secondary schools is ok as it gives the SC/ST/OBC's the boost they need to get into the education system. But it needs to end there. Admission to colleges and higher education should be largely on merit with a small quota for political correctedness. Same for IAS and other job appointments. I personally know several SC's who were my co-students in IIT who got in by virtue of merit and did well by virtue of merit. They did not need any quota to get in as they did well on their own abilities.
The 50% quota thing is just a votebank move by politicians based on the fraudulent data inspired by the fraudulent Mandal Commission of the 70s. It is merely a ploy to get votes from the SC/ST blocs who have been polarized by sectarian "activists", themselves the most communal bastards of the lot.
About poverty in India:
/SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSAREGTOPPOVRED/0,,contentMDK:2057 4067~menuPK:493447~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~t heSitePK:493441,00.html
It is a highly controversial topic. There is bias in all directions. Certainly, the western media (oddly, the liberals most of all) love to portray India exclusively as a country of beggars and untouchables. It certainly makes them feel secure in their hatred of Indians.
However, there is no doubt that the human development index of India has risen remarkably over the last few decades (certainly a lot more than other countries in the subcontinent, where the poverty situation is worse).
There is an ongoing controversy over poverty statistics and figures made during the nineties, with some economists, banks, sociologists siding with the figures that indicate reduced poverty and others siding with
the "India is a country of beggars and untouchables" polemic.
The world bank's assessment is below:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES
The Indian debate has run parallel to, and is itself a large part of, the wider debate about globalization and poverty. The economic reforms of the early 1990s were followed by rates of economic growth that were high by Indian historical standards. The effects on poverty remain controversial, and the official numbers published by the Government of India,showing a reduction of poverty from 36 percent of the population in 1993 - 94 to 26 percent of the population in 1999 - 00, have been challenged both for allegedly showing too little and too much poverty reduction
Issues over "data and dogma" in a paper published by a Princeton Univ prof and a world bank guy:
http://poverty2.forumone.com/files/15168_deaton_ko zel_2004.pdf
There has been a consensus on the fact that liberalization has led to a reduction of income poverty. The picture, however, is not so clear if one considers other factors (such as health, education, crime and access to infrastructure). Some have criticozed the stats as too one-dimensional.However, they only criticize, and do not offer any ways to objectively gauge all the criteria for poverty in India, suggesting that they are simply whining.
With the rapid economic growth that India is experiencing, it is likely that a significant fraction of the rural population will continue to migrate toward cities, making the issue of urban poverty more significant in the long run
http://www.csh-delhi.com/events/downloads/Backgrou ndNote67102006.pdf
Although there is no full consensus on what happened to Indian poverty in the 1990s, it is claimed that the official estimates of poverty reduction are too optimistic, particularly for rural India. This alleged overoptimism was amplified by statistical uncertainty that created space for commentators to argue that poverty had been virtually eliminated in India in the wake of the economic reforms.
On the other side, well-known economits Pravin Visaria have defended the validity of many of the statistics that demonstrated the reduction in overall poverty in India, as well as the declration made by India's Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha that poverty in India has reduced significantly.
He asserts that the state surveys were well designed and supervised and felt that just because they did not appear to fit preconceived notions about poverty in India,they should not be dismissed outright
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20010319/jairam. shtml
Also, Nicholas Stern, vi
Mythtv can do all of those things. My Mythtv box:
_ id=1
1. Can view photos (Mythphoto)
2. Can play just about any video format (Mythvideo menu+xine+codecs) from anywhere
3. Can play video and audio remotely (NFS/SAMBA)
4. I can watch my tv from any room with a networked computer (on account of mythtv's client-server architecture).
5. Can get RSS feeds
6. Can check my email (thru plugin)
7. Can download torrents directly into my dvr (through plugin)
8. Cool weather monitor thingie
9. With my Hauppauge PVR350+150 (both of which work beautifully using the linux ovtv drivers) and their hardware based MPEG-2 decoding/encoding, I can build my DVR using a throwaway P-III and still get flawless performance. Plus, with 2 framegrabbers I get picture-in picture, watch one show while recording another, and all that cool stuff that commercial DVR's advertise about on tv.
10. Can rip dvd's and encode/burn recodrings to dvd through the interface itself
11. No silly proprietary video formats or vendor lock-ins.
12. I can expand storage whenever I want however I want (add hard drives locally or use remote file server)
13. I have read about people with more versatile configs, like a cheap machine as frontend to the tv but the backend running on a more powerful workhorse networked smoothly with the frontend etc.
14. Mythweb. Nuff said. Can config and even stream my tv/recordings over the internet.
15. Mythtv interface is completely customizable and themable and you can tweak it (xml files mostly, fairly straightforward and doesn;t require much geekiness) and make it as friendly as you want. Actually, the OSD is pretty good and well-designed. Once you get everything to work it run smooth as silk. I haven't had to fiddle with my box in months.
The one thing that mythtv can't do at present (at least, as of version 0.18.2) is connect to somewhere and use programs to extrapolate my viewing habits (which i believe TiVo does do), but that will change as developers are working on possible solutions (mythrecommend, cheap services like TiVo that are mythtv compatible etc)
That, and the fact that it took me a week to get everything to work right (this was last october, Knoppmyth was still R5A16, may have improved since then:main problem was that my hauppauge pvr350 remote would't work unless I compiled latest lirc from scratch for infrared, then had to config keybindings manually:Cecil the Knoppmyth devel guy may have fixed those issues by now), even with KnoppMyth it wasn't easy
If you're willing to hash out the $$$, you can buy prebilt mythtv boxen:
http://mythic.tv/
To see some really cool mythtv boxen (high-def mythtv boxen etc.) check this out:
http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/album_cat.php?cat
The bottom line is that, while technical articles (on most disciplines and fields) on wikipedia are very good (better than anywhere else on the internet even), articles that are about history, religion, politics,movies, personalities, or recent events are hopelessly (though not always systemically) biased and full of unrepresentative crap. This is because wikipedia runs on de-facto consensus (though it's not supposed to) and only the most (and biggest) noisemakers get their edits on the article, and detractors cause endless revert-wars, edit-wars, vandalisms, admin intervention, article protection/semi-protection, insults in user talk pages (some nasty ones too), blocks, mediation cabals, RfC's, RfA's, secret edit-cabals, tag-warring, NPOV, TotallyDisputed etc. etc. and all sorts of things that are part of the dark and invisible underbelly of wikipedia that you DON'T see.
An encyclopedia is not (IMHO) supposed to contain articles that are highly controversial and subject to different interpretations. It should be about objective and verifiable facts. 90% of the articles on wikipedia that are non-technical contain maybe 10% of verifiable facts, and 90% noise.
The sad truth is that the high visibility of wikipedia (Google Searches usually point to wikipedia articles on the search subject first or second or third, if an article on the subject exists) means that people READ all this nonsense and, unaware of the many problems of wikipedia, assume it to be the truth based on a facade of legitimacy that wikipedia presents (at least, as far as the cats I listd above are concerned). These edits that are put there by cabals of editors, many of whom hold extremist views or represent organisations that have such extremist views are thus propagated into the masses of readers as facts, without the right balance to them, which is very damaging.
That's what I think anyways, feel free to flame me down or whatever. Any replies and/or responses would be interesting to me as it would give me an idea as to how many people on slashdot regard wikipedia articles as canonically true and always NPOV.
~~~~
A few corrections and additions...
Manoj Nellattu Shyamalan is not from Kerala, he is from Pondicherry by birth, though his father was a Malayalee. For the benefit of everybody else, Pondicherry is a union territory along the Coromandel coast (along the Bay of Bengal) of Southern India. Kerala is along the Malabar coast (along the Arabian Sea to the west)...
The Syrian Nasrani community that migrated to Kerala in the 2nd century AD (to whom you are referring) were more Judeo-Christian than "Christian" in the modern sense (they have Jewish traditions like Menorahs, Shabbats etc.). They've had trouble with the Portuguese in the past because of this (when Portuguese conquistadores invaded South India, the anti-Semitic monarchy of Portugal ordered their extermination, they were saved by the Hindu King of Cochin and, subsequently, by the Dutch). Arundhuti Roy is Judeo-Christian by matrilineage (I personally can't stand the lying anti-American anti-Hindu bitch, but she is highly educated and articulate).
While Kerala is an economically well-developed state (a lot better than the other communist state of West Bengal, from where I hail, certainly), Gujarat and Maharastra have better industries and a higher per-capita income. Kerala does have the highest literacy rate in India, though Tamil Nadu and Punjab are not far behind. There is talk about exploiting the well-educated pool in Kerala by pushing the IT industry there, which might boost Kerala's economy further, exceeding that of M'rashtra & Gujarat. Remains to be seen though.
..in various posts, let me summarize how the article's implication of poor ipod support is total bullshit and ipod works with linux just fine (in fact, better than with windows).
libipod ( http://libipod.sourceforge.net/ ) is the library that interacts with the database on the ipod that stores your music.
Several music players on linux like amarok ( http://amarok.kde.org/ ), rhythmbox ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/ ), gtkpod ( http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html ),( http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/juk.html ) etc have plugins/embeddings that can interact with the library seamlessly
Ipods are detected just fine by the USB mass storage driver with no probems in any modern linux distro.
Itunes can be run thru wine (though I've never tried it), and Sharpmusique
( http://nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/ ) can connect with itunes, buy music, download and strip off the DRM so that the files can be played anywhere.
CD-ripping and transfer to ipod can be done seamlessly in amarok (if you have lame etc installed). It's easier than in windoze thru third party rippers and itunes where there are all sorts of restrictions and issues.
Both "pc-compatible" (fat filesystem) as well as "mac-compatible" (HFS filesystem) will work equally well on any linux box coz linux has drivers for both filesystems.
Last but not least, there is ipodlinux ( http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page ), where you can install linux firmware in your ipod itself. Advantage is that you can play videos in your nano, music management is thru filesystem rather than database so just treat it as a mass storage device in any OS, and a host of other linux stuff will work on it, and you can play any music format that can be played on linux, not just mp3's (ogm,wma etc). You can even play quake on it if you want.
My nano ran just fine with my Mandrake box with no probs. Anecdotally, I had more problems with it on windoze (usb connection to it acted wierdly, though the usb bus was fine; I didn't care enough to analyze what was up).
Well,
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s
The equations that you cited (while being correct) are what physicists call "phenomenological":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(scien
After all, what is lambda (decay constant)? How do you get it? They're trying to link a macroscopic phenomenon (radiation from dacay) to a microscopic phenomenon (nuclear radioactivity). If you want to find out what lambda actually is as a bulk property it has to depend on some collective degrees of freedom, and that's where temperature might come in, through the statistical mechanics associated with taking averages using density matrices of physical quantities and such.
I believe that's where Debye models and the like come into play...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_matrix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_Mechanic
Er, not here (Detroit)?:
a r.jpg
a lth2/index.php?img=30 )
http://l3xy.com/wordpress/wp-content/Dtownghettoc
Wink - wink nudge - nudge.
Seriously though slums in urban India suck balls, specially Joynagar in Calcutta and Dharavi in Mumbai, which is the largest slum in Asia. There are development projects for Dharavi, but they've been marred in controversy. I won't deny the facts.India has got a long way to go before it comes out of the developing status. Economically, we're still very much third world I'm afraid. Politically and militarily, we're better than most other third world countries (just to put matters in perspective).
Still, let's count our blessings, it could be worse
( http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/mediacenter/he
"Is Indian society regressive towards women?"
Generally, YES, it is. However, one must qualify that, unlike some other countries, there is widespread criticism and condemnation of this problem in INDIA itself (Google on the internet for women's advocacy groups of Indian women, government sponsored emancipation programmes etc.) that have made noteworthy progress in this regard. Bear in mind that it is in the best interest of all political parties to get the women educated and up-and-running so that they can vote for the buggers.
The situation with women in India has improved markedly since 1947 (independence) when most people did not even entertain the idea of giving women the ability to read, let alone join the military (except Subhash Bose himself), or have jobs or careers of any kind.
This was once true all over the subcontinent in all classes and all communities. Today, the situation with women has improved markedly in urban areas and such. The rural areas (the majority in India) are still quite behind. A country of over a billion people with a 5000 year old civilization that has been raped and enslaved by European colonialism will not be so pliable and amenable to change, or to modern ideas and values coming (for the most part) from the erstwhile colonialists themselves. But, there is sufficient motivation and determination in India to make it happen as soon as feasable.
I reiterate my claim that to compare India with a country like the USA is loaded and unjustified. Most countries in the world stack up poorly in front of the US in such matters, even otherwise developed countries.
The fact is that most people who tout these comparisons are doing so not out of genuine interest or concern for our problems, but in a concerted attack of defamation because they regard our race as inferior to theirs.
Criticizing our problems as a measure to put our many achievements in the correct perspective is one thing, and laudable. Fact mining incomparable statistics as a veiled ethnic attack on India and Indians is another thing altogether.
Comparison with the USA is valid only if India is declared as comparable to the USA, and anybody who does that should be strapped into a straighjacket and put in a room with rubber walls for the remainder of his natural life...
A more realistic comparison would be between India and countries in a similar predicament, like Guatemala, Pakistan, Bangladesh, some of the newly formed east European countries etc.
Like I said, some people would continue to tout baseless India/USA comparisons even if we eliminate poverty altogether and turn all our women into hairy-armed feminists, Kiran Bedis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiran_Bedi ) and Laxmibais ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_Laxmibai )
Crap. I'm a total fool. I should have RTFP'ed your post before shooting my stupid-ass mouth off like that. My apologies. I just get a bit sensitive at times and haven't slept in a while...
Well no sane person is trying to compare India to the US. That would be ridiculous. Compared to the US, even Ireland (a relatively developed country otherwise) is a bona fide dump. That's a loaded comparison. Compared to other third world countries, we are generally much more progressive.
d /World_Map_Gini_coefficient.png
It's just that you don't HEAR much about the goings on in most third world countries due to repressive governments, suppressed and non-free news media, jingoistic propaganda etc.
We have the immense burden of being one of few third world democracies, where all information (even the dirty laundry) is exposed for all the world to see. The media hates the government, the people curse the government and relect new people. All the corruption makes it to the headline news by the end of business etc.
That is why you see the poverty in India splashed all over the news, and yet the greater poverty of a semi-theocratic dictatorial pseudo-democracy like Pakistan is ignored...
Out Gini index is comparable to many European nations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b
I'm assuming you didn't go to one of your famous American public schools and can actually find India on a map. You will see that it has the same shade as most European countries:
List of some countries (with India in it) ranked by Gini index (bear in mind that lower gini index is better)
29 Bulgaria 31.9
30 Kazakhstan 32.3
31 Spain 32.5
32 India 32.5
33 Tajikistan 32.6
34 France 32.7
35 Pakistan 33
There are many other criteria one needs to judge the full economic state of a country. However, our H.D.I stinks ass. Though I suspect that someone like you would continue to hate us even if we eliminated all poverty from our country, put computers in every household and built freeways from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Oh well...