The era of insults !

Another from a forwarded mail.

These glorious insults are from an era when cleverness with words was
still valued, before a great portion of the English language got
boiled down to 4-letter words!

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, 'If you were
my husband I'd give you poison,' and he said, 'If you were my wife,
I'd drink it.'

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the
gallows or of some unspeakable disease.' 'That depends, Sir,' said
Disraeli, 'on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.'

'He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.' -
Winston Churchill

'A modest little person, with much to be modest about.' - Winston Churchill

'I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure.' - Clarence Darrow

'He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary.' - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
'Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big
words?' - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

'Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it.' - Moses Hadas

'I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it.' Mark Twain

'He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.' - Oscar Wilde

'I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a
friend.... If you have one.' - George Bernard Shaw to Winston
Churchill
'Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... If there is
one.' - Winston Churchill, in response.

'I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here.' -
Stephen Bishop

'I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing
trivial.' - Irvin S. Cobb

'He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.'
- Samuel Johnson

'He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.' - Paul Keating

'There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure.' Jack E. Leonard

'They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of
human knowledge.' - Thomas Brackett Reed

'In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.' -
Charles, Count Talleyrand

'He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.' - Forrest Tucker

'Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on
it?' - Mark Twain

'Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.' -
Oscar Wilde

The Indian Chromosome - A view from across the border

Reproduced from a forwarded mail.

The Indian Chromosome - A view from across the border

Sunday, December 09, 2007
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Twenty-five thousand years ago, haplogroup R2 characterized by genetic marker M124 arose in southern Central Asia. Then began a major wave of human migration whereby members migrated southward to present-day India and Pakistan (Genographic Project by the National Geographic Society; http://www.nationalgeographic.com/). Indians and Pakistanis have the same ancestry and share the same DNA sequence

Here's what is happening in India:

The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese.

In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 billion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance.

In November, comes Neeta's birthday. Neeta turned forty-four three weeks ago. Look what she got from her husband as her birthday present: A sixty-million dollar jet with a custom fitted master bedroom, bathroom with mood lighting, a sky bar, entertainment cabins, satellite television, wireless communication and a separate cabin with game consoles. Neeta is Mukesh Ambani's wife, and Mukesh is not India's richest but the second richest.

Mukesh is now building his new home, Residence Antillia (after a mythical, phantom island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean). At a cost of $1 billion this would be the most expensive home on the face of the planet. At 173 meters tall Mukesh's new family residence, for a family of six, will be the equivalent of a 60-storeyed building. The first six floors are reserved for parking. The seventh floor is for car servicing and maintenance. The eighth floor houses a mini-theatre. Then there's a health club, a gym and a swimming pool. Two floors are reserved for Ambani family's guests. Four floors above the guest floors are family floors all with a superb view of the Arabian Sea. On top of everything are three helipads. A staff of 600 is expected to care for the family and their family home.

In 2004, India became the 3rd most attractive foreign direct investment destination. Pakistan wasn't even in the top 25 countries. In 2004, the United Nations, the representative body of 192 sovereign member states, had requested the Election Commission of India to assist the UN in the holding of elections in Al Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah and Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan. Why the Election Commission of India and not the Election Commission of Pakistan? After all, Islamabad is closer to Kabul than is Delhi.

Imagine, 12 percent of all American scientists are of Indian origin; 38 percent of doctors in America are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians; 34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians; and 28 percent of IBM employees are Indians.

For the record: Sabeer Bhatia created and founded Hotmail. Sun Microsystems was founded by Vinod Khosla. The Intel Pentium processor, that runs 90 percent of all computers, was fathered by Vinod Dham. Rajiv Gupta co-invented Hewlett Packard's E-speak project. Four out of ten Silicon Valley start-ups are run by Indians. Bollywood produces 800 movies per year and six Indian ladies have won Miss Universe/Miss World titles over the past 10 years.

For the record: Azim Premji, the richest Muslim entrepreneur on the face of the planet, was born in Bombay and now lives in Bangalore. India now has more than three dozen billionaires; Pakistan has none (not a single dollar billionaire).

The other amazing aspect is the rapid pace at which India is creating wealth. In 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's father, left his two sons a fortune worth $2.8 billion. In 2007, their combined wealth stood at $94 billion. On 29 October 2007, as a result of the stock market rally and the appreciation of the Indian rupee, Mukesh became the richest person in the world, with net worth climbing to US$63.2 billion (Bill Gates, the richest American, stands at around $56 billion).

Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. We have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124). We have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Our culture, our traditions and our cuisine are all the same. We watch the same movies and sing the same songs.

What is it that Indians do and we don't: Indians elect their leaders.

BibTex Entries

(1) An FAQ regarding multiple author names; In a bib file you list all the authors' names together joined with word ``and'', e.g.,
author = "Jane Smith and E. B. Johnson and Strunk, Jr., William",
BibTeX then does the appropriate things to names and initials and punctuation, according to the chosen bibliographic style.

(2) When using BibTeX, the interaction between names and accenting is somewhat tricky. You should use `G{\"o}del' or `G{\"{o}}del', and not `{G{\"{o}}del}' or `{G\"{o}del}'. (Thanks to Dana Jacobsen for this tip.)

(3) STANDARD ENTRY TYPES:

@article

An article from a journal or magazine

@book

A book with an explicit publisher

@booklet

A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or sponsoring institution

@conference

The same as inproceedings

@inbook

A part of a book, which may be a chapter (or section or whatever) and/or a range of pages

@incollection

A part of a book having its own title

@inproceedings

An article in a conference proceedings

@manual

Technical documentation

@mastersthesis

A Master's thesis

@misc

Use this type when nothing else fits

@phdthesis

A PhD thesis

@proceedings

The proceedings of a conference

@techreport

A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series

@unpublished

A document having an author and title, but not formally published

@collection

Not a standard entry type. Use proceedings instead.

@patent

Not a standard entry type.

(4) STANDARD FIELDS

address

Usually the address of the publisher or other type of institution. For major publishing houses, van Leunen recommends omitting the information entirely. For small publishers, on the other hand, you can help the reader by giving the complete address.

annote

An annotation. It is not used by the standard bibliography styles, but may be used by others that produce an annotated bibliography.

author

The name(s) of the author(s), in the format described in the LaTeX book.

booktitle

Title of a book, part of which is being cited. See the LaTeX book for how to type titles. For book entries, use the title field instead.

chapter

A chapter (or section or whatever) number.

crossref

The database key of the entry being cross referenced. Any fields that are missing from the current record are inherited from the field being cross referenced.

edition

The edition of a book---for example, ``Second''. This should be an ordinal, and should have the first letter capitalized, as shown here; the standard styles convert to lower case when necessary.

editor

Name(s) of editor(s), typed as indicated in the LaTeX book. If there is also an author field, then the editor field gives the editor of the book or collection in which the reference appears.

howpublished

How something strange has been published. The first word should be capitalized.

institution

The sponsoring institution of a technical report.

journal

A journal name. Abbreviations are provided for many journals.

key

Used for alphabetizing, cross referencing, and creating a label when the ``author'' information is missing. This field should not be confused with the key that appears in the cite command and at the beginning of the database entry.

month

The month in which the work was published or, for an unpublished work, in which it was written. You should use the standard three-letter abbreviation, as described in Appendix B.1.3 of the LaTeX book.

note

Any additional information that can help the reader. The first word should be capitalized.

number

The number of a journal, magazine, technical report, or of a work in a series. An issue of a journal or magazine is usually identified by its volume and number; the organization that issues a technical report usually gives it a number; and sometimes books are given numbers in a named series.

organization

The organization that sponsors a conference or that publishes a manual.

pages

One or more page numbers or range of numbers, such as 42--111 or 7,41,73--97 or 43+ (the `+' in this last example indicates pages following that don't form a simple range). To make it easier to maintain Scribe-compatible databases, the standard styles convert a single dash (as in 7-33) to the double dash used in TeX to denote number ranges (as in 7--33).

publisher

The publisher's name.

school

The name of the school where a thesis was written.

series

The name of a series or set of books. When citing an entire book, the the title field gives its title and an optional series field gives the name of a series or multi-volume set in which the book is published.

title

The work's title, typed as explained in the LaTeX book.

type

The type of a technical report---for example, ``Research Note''.

volume

The volume of a journal or multi-volume book.

year

The year of publication or, for an unpublished work, the year it was written. Generally it should consist of four numerals, such as 1984, although the standard styles can handle any year whose last four nonpunctuation characters are numerals, such as `\hbox{(about 1984)}'.

---

Other (nonstandard) fields

---

affiliation

The authors affiliation.

abstract

An abstract of the work.

contents

A Table of Contents

copyright

Copyright information.

ISBN

The International Standard Book Number.

ISSN

The International Standard Serial Number. Used to identify a journal.

keywords

Key words used for searching or possibly for annotation.

language

The language the document is in.

location

A location associated with the entry, such as the city in which a conference took place.

LCCN

The Library of Congress Call Number.

mrnumber

The Mathematical Reviews number.

URL

The WWW Universal Resource Locator that points to the item being referenced. This often is used for technical reports to point to the ftp site where the postscript source of the report is located.