Doing away with windshield wipers

I used to drive a station wagon and one of its best features, especially useful in winter, was the rear window windshield wipers. They were so useful that I wondered why they were standard equipment only on wagons and hatchbacks and came to the conclusion that this must be because those rear windows were pretty much flat, while the curved and the sloping rear windshields of other cars made it technologically difficult. I am not sure if that is the real reason since it seems like engineers could have overcome that. [Read more…]

What the NSA should fear most

The US government has gone to great lengths to portray Edward Snowden as some kind of loner, a loser, a narcissistic fame-seeker, a criminal, a drop out with a grievance who was trying to discredit a government that was tirelessly seeking only that which was good and noble. They have been aided in this effort by some elements in the media, such as last week’s CBS’s 60 Minutes story on the NSA that has been widely panned as giving a platform for NSA propaganda. Given its recent debacle on the Benghazi story, one wonders how long that show can portray itself as a credible news outlet. [Read more…]

On the issue of banning commenters

There once was an old man in a family who loved to tell the same hunting story over and over again. At family gatherings, the man would try to find some cue that would enable him to insert the story into the flow of talk. On one occasion, he became increasingly frustrated at the lack of an opening in the conversation so he finally took his walking stick and rapped the ground sharply. In the startled silence that followed, he said, “What was that? A gunshot? Talking of gunshots, that reminds of the time …” [Read more…]

India-US diplomatic row

Diplomatic relations between India and the US have been rocked by the treatment meted out to Devyani Khobragade, the Indian deputy consul-general in New York, who was accused of providing false information to obtain a work visa for a household employee.

I saw the original story a day or so ago and was not surprised. The dirty little secret is that there are people from developing countries who work in embassies or international organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who, used to having cheap live-in domestic help at home, bring them to the US by getting visas for them by saying that they pay them more than they actually do. Such employees often live lives of indentured servitude, since they live in a strange land where they know nobody and don’t speak the language and are thus unable to complain. [Read more…]

‘Plural marriages’ allowed but polygamy is still illegal

Remember when opponents of same-sex marriage warned that changing the idea that marriage can only be between one man and one woman would inevitably lead to polygamy, bestiality, marrying of children, and other horrors? It should not be too hard to recall since they are still making those same arguments.

Those people received what they thought was an “I told you so” moment when a US District Court judge in Utah outlawed as unconstitutional a state law that banned cohabitation. (You can read the ruling here.) [Read more…]

NSA phone data collection program ruled unconstitutional

Using surprisingly strong language, US District Court judge Richard J. Leon issued a preliminary injunction yesterday to stop the NSA from proceeding with its major telephone wiretapping and data collection program against two people. The complaint was brought by conservative activist lawyer Larry Klayman and Charles Strange, the father of a cryptologist for the NSA and a support member for Navy SEAL Team VI who was killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down in 2011. [Read more…]