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Spelling Bee Notes

Kavya Shivashankar won the 2009 Scripps Spelling Bee Championship, as has been widely reported. I watched the last few rounds of the contest. The Bee doesn’t sound like an exciting sport to watch, but once you get into it, it can be quite riveting.

The only word that I knew how to spell in those last few rounds was ‘menhir’. Amazingly, it tripped up Aishwarya Pastapur, who tied for second place. Why did I know how to spell menhir? Because of Asterix – that amazing comic book series that is unfortunately not widely available in the US.

Three years ago, I blogged about the unusual success that Indian kids were having in Spelling Bee. The post was titled Indian-Americans and the Spelling Bee Conundrum. Only 1.8% of the college educated US population is Indian-American. But as many as 20% of the top ten finalists from 2001 to 2005 were Indian-American. Obviously, this is way outside the bounds of random variation.

Well, that percentage this year was more than 50%. 6 out the 11 finalists (Scripps list) were Indian-American. There is an interesting interview on NPR of Balu Natarajan, the first Indian-American winner in 1985. He credits this success to the North-South Foundation a non-profit that promotes education in India. NSF organizes a Spelling Bee every year in the US which effectively is the breeding ground for the National Spelling Bee winners. Kavya won the junior NSF Bee in 2004. Incidentally, Balu Natarajan, in 1985 won on ‘milieu’, which would be a softball for today’s contestants.

It is ironic that Indians, whose mother tongues all spell words the way they are pronounced, should excel at Spelling Bee which exists because of the illogical, wayward spellings in the English language.

Google Voice – Different and Useful

google-voice I have been a user of the Grand Central service for a long time, but I didn’t switch over completely until Google relaunched the service as Google Voice. Google acquired Grand Central a couple of years back after which there was nothing but silence for a while. When they relaunched in March, the new service had a couple of nifty features, but what tipped it over for me was that the relaunch indicated that Google was firmly committed to the future of Google Voice. After all, you don’t want to go handing out a new phone number to people and then have to change it again if the service was discontinued.

Google Voice is a pretty unique service. It is like having your own personal PBX system for free. You get a phone number when you sign up for the service. Calls to this number can be routed to a different number (home, mobile, work etc.) or sent straight to voice mail based upon time of day, caller ID or rules that you set up.

The Water in a Bottle of Water

Bottle of Water, Chichen Itza Got back from some vacation in the Mayan Riviera (near Cancun, Mexico). Had a lovely time. The structure in the background of the bottle is the amazing step pyramid at Chichen Itza.

In Mexico I encountered a familiar problem with bottled water that I face in India all the time – when you try to open a new bottle, you invariably spill some water. [Update: My experience in India is with Bisleri bottles primarily. A reader points out in the comments that there are other brands that don’t have this problem.]

There are two reasons for why this happens. One, the plastic wall of the bottle is thin. To unscrew the top, you need to grip the bottle hard, which squishes the bottle. When the top unscrews, the bottle is still a squished and the water gushes over. The second reason is that water in the bottle is filled right up to the top which gives no leeway at all when the bottle is squished.

In India and other emerging countries, keeping the costs is not so much about making a higher margin. It is about keeping the prices down so that you can capture a larger market. The food grade plastic used in the bottles is probably the largest variable cost for the bottler. It is no wonder he tries to minimize the amount of plastic per bottle.

That explains the thin plastic walls. And my guess is that it also explains why the water is filled all the way up to the top. The volume of water must be what it says on the bottle – 500 ml. or 1l. By filling the water all the way to the top the bottler can make the bottle just a wee bit smaller and save on the plastic.

The irony is that on account of these cost cutting measures, assuming that everyone spills a little water when opening the bottle for the first time, the consumer net, net, gets less water per rupee and the nuisance of cleaning up the spillage. On the other hand, it spares the earth – the plastics are petroleum products and aren’t biodegradable. Things are never black and white.

Rants From Delhi Airport

I’m in a bad mood. I am at Delhi International Airport waiting for my flight back to the US. The flight leaves at the ungodly hour of 330 am and is already 15 mins late. I go through security and learn that the lounge is before, not after security. Since I have three hours to kill (I spared my brother who dropped me off from waking up in the middle of the night) I go through the process of cancelling my security check stamps. And of course, the mandatory entry in a register with the police. I then try making my way back to the lounge but going back through security is not easy. The process wasn’t designed to handle it. I was stopped twice within ten feet by men in khaki who wanted to know why I was going the wrong way. Finally I get to the lounge. Luckily, there’s wifi so I can rant.

Best Practices in Voter Bribery

Indian Rupee Note India’s general elections are around the corner. As you know, the most important factor that determines the outcome of our elections is money – how much and how it is spent – in the crucial electoral process of buying votes.

The amount of money spent is, of course, a key determinant of electoral victory. We will cover that in a later article on Corruption and Campaign Finance. In this article we will discuss the state of the art in actually getting the bribes into the hands of the voters.

More on IT Unpolicy

In my previous post IT and the Role of Government I objected to Atanu Dey’s arguments against having an IT policy for India. He proposed, what I called an “IT Unpolicy” – basically, do nothing.

IT and the Government

Atanu Dey has a series of posts that criticize the IT Vision Document released by the BJP in the runup to the Indian elections. In his latest post The Rational IT Policy, he proposes an IT policy that basically does nothing – an Unpolicy, if you will. It requires government to stay out of the way of individuals and the market which will make their own decisions about using IT or not.

To me this seems wrong-headed. I think it is important for any government that comes to power to nurture and encourage the use of IT in government, business, education and at home.

Bonuses at AIG – Who Wrote that Compensation Plan?

It’s like everyone was waiting for this. The collective anger of a nation is spewing out. The media, the government and the average citizens are outraged. AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) employees have been getting hate mail. Bloggers are talking about forcing them to forgo their bonuses by threatening to make their names public. At the root of it – $165 million in bonuses to employees at AIGFP which was chiefly responsible for bringing down AIG which was then bailed out by the federal government with a whopping $170 B.

The political heat around this is intense. The one thing I’d like to get my hands, but probably won’t, is the contract that requires AIG to pay these bonuses out.

Protectionism Ahead?

Last week Bank of America withdrew offers to MBA students on H1 B visas. As a recipient of TARP money from the federal government the bank had to comply with a clause that Congress had inserted into the TARP bill that prohibits TARP recipients from hiring foreign workers with work permits.

Elsewhere, Congress passed the Stimulus Bill after inserting a “Buy American” clause in it that compels the stimulus money to be spent on American steel.

Email Scam

I got this email recently. It is clearly the first step in a potential fraud. It caught my attention because it claimed to represent the interests of Byrraju Ramalinga Raju!

—–Original Message—–
From: Jessica Ferguson [mailto:balverson@earnhardtelectric.com]
Sent: Fri 3/13/2009 7:41 AM
Subject: Executive Placement

Dear Executive,

This is a Management Placement on behalf of Mr. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju.

Mr. Ramalinga Raju is looking for an experienced business person/company that can profitably invest monies in excess of Thirty Nine Million US Dollars. The sum will be paid from Zurich Bank International Limited, 43-51 Athol Street, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM99 1ET, British Isles.

Mr. Ramalinga Raju is willing to pay 10% for your role as the beneficiary partner to the funds. Also, a subsequent 10% “Management Commission” will be paid for your advised investment services.

If you prefer to be re-contacted for more express information, please send us your:

[1] Full Names:
[2] Contact address:
[3] Direct Telephone No:

Be advised to visit the following links to be better acquainted with Mr. Ramalinga Raju’s current profile and personality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramalinga_Raju
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7832834.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7815031.stm

We expect your correspondence and our response will be swift. I can be reached on (+447035931859) for details.

Signed:
Mr. Hock Lai Chan
Chan Law LLC
Bridge House Bridge Street
Isle of Man, IM9 1AX.
Direct Tel No: + (44) 703 593 1859
Fax No: + (44) 700 608 5723