Why?

If you observe, you’ll find a number of cops hanging around perfectly safe areas in the US. For instance, drive down Castro Street in Mountain View, California once, and you’ll find at least a couple of cops driving by. I agree there is a police station not far from there, but why do these folks have to hang out in such a safe places? Don’t we distribute our cops so areas with a higher crime rates have more cops deployed? I guess the constant joke about cops hanging out at donut shops definitely has some merit.

Sounds like Russia is headed for more blatant dictatorship. More terror => introduce more controls => Instill more fear => Consolidate power (patriot act, color coded threat levels, detention without hope for due process etc.). The World now has another dictator to deal with, perhaps its time to re-draw the axis of evil and think pre-emptive(!!), I suppose.

Most of the Indian newspaper websites (TOI, Sify, Chennaionline etc.) have started displaying those annoying, intrusive flash ads. The interesting thing is that all of them started displaying these pretty much at the same time almost like identical dance steps seen in hindi films. Ironically, there was picture of President of India, Abdul Kalam and a report about something he said about education and just when I started reading it, across flashed an ad for Golden Eagle beer!!

John Kerry appears to be dropping behind in the polls. Edwards is all but missing. I have never seen a mention of his name in the newspapers for several weeks now! The Bush-Cheney team is crusing along since their very well orchestrated convention. The recent international survey findings about the US presidential race were interesting, but not surprising.