Interesting thing I found....

[Atithee]

Another fascinating story about a junior tennis player who is ambidextrous.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/unorthodox-s ... 16101.html

[Atithee]

Hi Jay,

I think you are an expert in transportation systems although roads may not be your specialty. Is this as good as it is shown in video? Anand Mahindra retweeted this and it caught my attention.

Others’ comments welcome too.

[jayakris]

^^^ I don't know much about road and pavement technology, but this seems to not be a substantial innovation. It has been around, and I think is useful only for small patches. Also not sure if it would hold up against the kind of heavy rainfall India gets over short periods that causes inundation. The bigger problem is really that it is only recently that state roads departments have paid enough attention to road thickness, proper slopes for runoff and gutters. The issues at state levels in India are probably more in deficiencies of pavement management policies than technology - we went decades with patch-work after patch-work without proper plans and many roads simply need re-laying with proper design and spending. We are beginning to do that though. Give it another 5 to 10 years and we will see things becoming quite a bit better.

[prasen9]

As part of our town's board of supervisors, we had to allocate money for roads, that was a large part of our budget --- for a small town (18,000 people or so) like ours. The engineer took us to various roads to look at the existing damages. It seems the state of the art - or at least that was what I was told and in limited research of mine found out --- was to do microsurfacing for certain parts of the roads when there are just cracks. We had a five-year plan with some projections of which roads would wear and tear how and allocated money from the budget to do that. We cannot run deficit budgets by law. I was impressed by the process and that most likely saved us a lot wrt not having to relay and resurface the road and elongate the lives of the roads we have. I did press for some of the COVID stimulus money to go towards doing things that we would have done next year early by adapting the plan since that saves us more than the money sitting in a piddly 1.5% account. And there were umpteen discussions of how the roads should be graded, where we need to do remediation (and hence need to allocate money in the town's budget), if someone's house was being flooded by runoffs who is responsible (town or others to what extent), how stormwater infrastructure that is 50 years old will be replaced, etc. because Maryland had sued us for all our paving creates stormwater that is polluting the Chesapeake. There is an immense amount of work that goes on behind the scene that keeps our roads the way they are, even conceding that they could be better.

There is also a substantial amount of subsidy that goes in to the car culture. That is, the money we get from the transportation tax (on gasoline) is not enough to maintain the roads. That money comes from the township's budget, which comes from people's income taxes and property taxes. Yet, when you talk about subsidizing alternative means of transportation (e.g., trains, etc.) then the fundies come out ra ra saying no subsidies, etc. I am leftist by political lean but I hate subsidies without a clear payoff in the form of common good and the ignoring and papering over some subsidies while railing against others.

Anyway, I am glad that Indian authorities are adopting more systematic approaches to maintaining and upkeeping roads.

[Atithee]

Chris Farley was very good at his style of acting. Left us too soon. Any SNL fans here?

[Atithee]

I’d not seen this. Mike Myers is a genius too. Sadly, the show is no longer the same for the last many years. Enjoy this skit.

https://t.co/xOgMb3MjuV

[Kumar]

Chris Farley was very good at his style of acting. Left us too soon. Any SNL fans here?

What an exuberant entrance ! Tommy Boy is one of my favorite movie

[Kumar]

Hi Jay,

I think you are an expert in transportation systems although roads may not be your specialty. Is this as good as it is shown in video? Anand Mahindra retweeted this and it caught my attention.

Others’ comments welcome too.

I am not a big fan when they talk about adding polymers and fiberglass to roadways. I guess the polymer is okay, considering that there is probably way too much in our waterways, so how much worse can we make it. Not sure of the impact of fiberglass .

[usaindia]

Indian soft power.

[Atithee]

[jayakris]

India's first voter dies in Himachal Pradesh, to be cremated with State honours

Wow! I didn't know that we actually knew who voted first in our very first election in 1952. To know that he lived for 70 more years till now, to age 106 is even more amazing. He was the brand ambassador for the election commission? Why do they need a brand ambassador, when they don't have a competing brand?... But it is nice if the EC has been honoring the man. Om Shanti.

[rajitghosh]

Wonder whether he used to cast his vote or vote his caste

[prasen9]

India's first voter dies in Himachal Pradesh, to be cremated with State honours

Wow! I didn't know that we actually knew who voted first in our very first election in 1952. To know that he lived for 70 more years till now, to age 106 is even more amazing. He was the brand ambassador for the election commission? Why do they need a brand ambassador, when they don't have a competing brand?... But it is nice if the EC has been honoring the man. Om Shanti.

Huh, lol. I think brand ambassador means that you want people to know about the EC and its work.

[Atithee]

New prefixes

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/11379856 ... ent-prefix

[jayakris]

^^^ Wonder how soon will it be that somebody India claims that we have had a samskRtam word for this in the Vedas or somewhere already?