Ban on Bus Advertisements

The Madras (Chennai) High Court recently directed the Tamilnadu Transport department to remove all advertisements from the exteriors of all public and private transport buses in the state within a timeframe. This was in response to a PIL filed which contended that these advts distract vehicle users/drivers and affect the normal transmission of light.

Though the PIL and ruling is in the interest of general public, i have a different take on this. As per the recent study, men spend 1 year of their lifetime ogling at women. It is now evident that we men (ie vehicle users & drivers) tend to look more at beautiful women on the pavements and nearby than the advts on the bus :)

Apropos, will the court now direct all the beautiful women to stay away from road pavements, so that more accidents can be avoided! Another option is, they can be directed to wear burkha when they come out. Also, what about the advertisements which are displayed outside the shops. Vehicle users look at those advts too.

Advts on bus is a revenue generating activity for the cash-starved transport corporations. Rather than banning them outrightly, the court can restrict their over exploitation.

previous post >>> Eradicate Black Money & Corruption using IT

Eradicate Black Money & Corruption using IT

In March 2007, i posted a blog post in which i wrote: the spread of IT would one day result in death of currency notes/coins. There i also credicted that process resulting in eradication of Black Money. Recently a reader requested me to clarify the same. It works like an ERP model. I'll explain the base model here:

There should be a Central Registry (like server) managed by the Government, which is linked to payroll system of all the employers (govt, pvt, societies, etc) & vendor payment system of all businesses.

Suppose a person's salary is One Lakh per month, that value/amount is directly credited to that persons bank account. The same model (ie transfer of VALUE in electronic form) can be applied for all the transactions (buying/selling). Also all the bank accounts of a person should be linked to an Unique Identification Number (UIN) and no person can have more than one UIN. Thus, even if a person maintains more than one bank account, total assets of that person are consolidated through UIN account. Based on that, tax shall be automatically calculated for the total amount (using UIN) and debited to the respective government accounts.

The same process shall be replicated for vendor payments too. In case of change in payment structure, the payroll systems and vendor systems should relay those changes automatically to UIN through the central server. Likewise the system is linked for every input & output. If there is excess credit (abnormal increase) over and above the defined limit (ie eligible payment), then the system should generate a report on the same and automatically forward it to the investigation department, which shall in turn issue show cause notice.

This system should also have provision for accepting credits as gifts & loans. However limit for high value gifts should be defined and the system programmed to reject the same (especially those gifts from vendors to decision makers / businesses). This will limit corruption to greater extent. Likewise all transactions can happen over the electronic medium (even alms payment through mobile credits as mentioned in 2007 post), without the use of paper money.

Purchases can be validated through the combination of smart card / biometric devices. Thus, when all transactions happen over e-form, all the earnings/spending of a person is documented and controlled to near perfection. That would pave way for eradication of black money and limit corruption to greater extent.

This is just a base model. With better defining and controls at right places, this can be made a robust system.

previous post >>> Foolproof voting system using EVMs

Foolproof Voting System using EVMs

Indian parliamentary elections are just over and few parties & candidates have started complaining about the manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to favour certain parties/candidates. During elections, few EVMs developed problems and some voters found the red light (confirmation light) glowing near other candidates than the one they voted for. This resulted in some believing that EVMs are tampered with. Some believed that the EVM software could be programmed to favour a particular party.

I have the following suggestions to make the EVM voting process a foolproof & reliable one:

- Like ATM, the EVMs can give a confirmation slip with the printed symbol to which we voted. That slip should not have any other identification details of the voter. ie only the party symbol shall be printed in that slip. That slip should be dropped in the ballot box kept nearby. This process will give immediate confirmation to the voter that his vote has gone to the right candidate. Also in case of future disputes, the ballot box votes can be counted and final decision can be arrived at.

- If booth capturing or mass bogus voting is reported from a booth, then for that booth alone, don't add the votes polled by that party. ie if A party gets 121 votes, B party gets 253 votes and others get 75 votes and if A party indulges in unfair practices, deduct the 121 votes polled by A party from their final count. For the fear of losing these votes, no party would indulge in unfair practice.

- At the end of every round, the votes polled by all the candidates of that constituency should be displayed in an electronic board kept outside the counting center. This step will stop the corrupt officials from meddling with the numbers later. Also the general public and media will get instant trends.

- In the long run, biometric system should be used which will make bogus voting impossible and indelible ink obsolete.

previous post >>> Younger Men marrying Older Women

Younger Men marrying Older Women

The Guardian recently reported that, children born to 20-year-old men scored on average three points higher in IQ tests than children whose fathers were 50 years-old when they were born. The same study also found that children's IQ was marginally higher if they were born to older mothers.

So how is this 3 points and older mother advantage going to impact the marriage equation? May be, we can look forward to more younger men getting married to older women in future. LOL!

Previous post >>> Culture Degradation

Culture Degradation - Part II

I wrote in this blog post the following in 2005:

Culture/Heritage Degradation: As long as human has evolving brain, you cannot stop 'change' from happening. If not today, change is bound to happen tomorrow. If by restrictive activities we can enforce a 'perceived' good practice, then we would have stopped crime long back. I suppose world over Religion and Police are among the largest enforcing/recruiting agents. What is considered good today was bad yesterday. My blog on 'Definition' gives some input on the same. If we feel 'change' can be stopped, slowed-down or reversed, then we need to first find ways to change the brain dynamics to 'static' state from the 'dynamic/evolving' state. Without which you cannot stop human from evolving from stone-age to modern-age and beyond. At each age, human will say "what was believed/practiced earlier could have been done better".

When I saw the above picture where a group of hooligans (in the name of religion) terrorized people drinking at Bar, I remembered what I wrote earlier on Culture Degradation in 2005. These hooligans were against women drinking at bar and the dress they wear. Though I agree on the modesty part (which gives certain amount of protection), i would like to question these hooligans on their double standards in implementing the same. Most of the so-called goddesses are scantily dressed and the barbaric Aghori Sadus like the one below are known to smoke Cannabis (Marijuana/Ganja) in open.

Will these hooligans ever attempt to dress-up the scantily dressed goddesses and prevent the Sadus from smoking the narcotics in public?

Previous post >>> Research on Female Orgasm

Research on Female Orgasms

In recent times, people have come up with so many research studies. Some are controversial, some contradicts the earlier research on the same subject (like coffee is good/bad), some because of questionable funding, and some are baseless. In one such recent study, scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance !!

I don’t go fully with findings of this study. Though on the one hand money remains a main motivator and catalyst in many a successful venture, it cannot be the sole criteria in this case. Extra-marital relationships or Threesome encounters continue to exist because these women are NOT satisfied with their current partner (eventhough they are rich).

I found the following comments on this topic interesting. Read and Enjoy!

"Due to the Global Credit Crisis, I've been receiving 30% less orgasms from my partner..."

"Hey ! what's six inches long and sends women crazy? ...a hundred dollar note, naturally"

"ahhh thats why, none of my partners have ever climaxed, and here i was thinking it was me when all along it was my bank balance.....ive been making deposits in the totally wrong area"

"Maybe a man is more likely to become wealthy if his partner has more orgasms!"


previous post >>> Sex drives the Commercial World