What's in the numbers?

There has been news recently about a probe into possible corruption by the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., a substantial Canadian engineering firm, in connection with a World Bank funded bridge project in Bangladesh.

While the probe is now ongoing and the Canadian firm supposedly cooperating with the authorities – the possibility for corruption in a “mega” infrastructure project in Bangladesh is very certain.

When I first read about the probe, I recalled that I had heard that the Chinese had inaugurated a 26 kilometre bridge over the bay in one of their cities for HALF of what Bangladesh was paying for its 6 kilometre bridge!

The very idea seemed preposterous and at the brink of the credible... I mean, a 26 kilometre bridge! This needed a little digging to verify facts.

Becoming the question

The Question?

"Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

Some people have the gift of being able answer a question by not really answering it but trying to. This lovely South Carolina Miss teen USA 2007 finalist is clearly the answer to the question itself!

Almost zen-like she became the answer...

30 Days have passed...

God (and Jobs) is in the details

God is in the details and the devil should pay heed. While Steve Jobs is NOT God, he has been as meticulous about the details and was a god to many who have been converted by his incredible vision.

I count myself as one of those converts. Which is why I chose to reproduce a blog post from the Cult of Mac site that had a short anecdote to the kind of man Apple had at its helm.

Click here to read the original post, or keep reading to see it here:

4 years in passing...

Losing a friend is never easy, especially at an age when most in our group of close knit buddies believed in our own immortality; a time when we believed that death comes knocking on people twice our age.

A close death is a sobering event that shakes to the very core and reminds that even when we are immortal, we are all only immortal for a limited time.

Our dear friend passed away four years ago today. To commemorate his memory I would like remember a poem about him I had written about on missing our happy ending [Click to read Whatever happened?] and an excerpt from my on-going memoirs and how his passing has affected me – his passage has left an empty space in all those who loved him and a hole inside those who truly cared and knew him well.

100 years ago

On the heels of my last post about amazing things happening in the last 100 to 150 years, I came across a list of how things were in the United States in 1910.

It can probably be safely said that the US in the early 20th century was where things were happening and that the country's economic and technological status could be a fairly good barometer of the state of things across the rest of the world (after all, while there were countries at par or maybe a step or two ahead in the game, most were not).