Unshackling the California Budget crisis!

As California tackles its $24B budget shortfall, it appears as though an innovative (albeit controversial) part-solution has presented itself! Moving inmates from California's prisons to Michigan!

I'm not an expert on incarceration (although most of us in the Valley are tethered daily to our computers while the golden California sunshine oozes unused outdoors!), but it seems like moving inmates out of the overcrowded and more expensive California prison system to help transfer funds and preserve jobs in Michigan is a logical solution.

Apparently, the cost per inmate in California is significantly higher than other states - maybe we feed organic food to our inmates and buy them iPhones - so this makes fiscal sense. Assuming that inmates will continue to be visited by friends and family, this could also inject a little something into the travel industry!

The California system is also backlogged on executions. I assume this is expensive as well - as quoted:

Since Robert Alton Harris' execution in 1992 -- the first after a 25-year hiatus -- California's actual imposition of the death penalty has slowed even more. Just 13 people have been executed since then, which is less than one per year. These days, an inmate is more likely to die of natural causes than to be executed. But the number of people sent to death row has continued to climb, and San Quentin now houses 682 condemned men.

While this solution may sound insensitive (not my intent), this could help - ironically, the "land of the free" has the highest incarceration rate of any country out there, as quoted..

As of year-end 2007, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.3 million were incarcerated. More than 1 in 100 Americans were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People’s Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, while having four times the population of the United States...

Hey, what about GITMO?

Michael Jackson - alive in Bollywood!

Watching the coverage following MJ's sudden death last night on television, I had tears in my eyes.

His music was an integral part of growing up! My memory of him will be his Superbowl performance, where he stands frozen for close to a minute with fans screaming!! A twitch in time saves nine!

When watching some of the choreographed moves in the music video, our sons pointed out that those are like the steps used in Bollywood songs!

True! He was not just a musical genius; his moves (or attempts at copying his moves) are standard formula for many Bollywood's superstars, like Hrithik Roshan. (I was surprised myself at the obvious copy of Michael's superbowl moves in this Hrithik video, ironically watermarked "Evaluation Copy")

Bollywood does this quite a bit. Once, I was watching an old Texas western, and the villain was eerily familiar ... Amjad Khan in Sholay!! The interesting thing is ..sometimes the "copy" is better, e.g., Masoom vs. Man, Woman and Child. Michael's moves have inspired hundreds of Bollyformula films!

But MJ has set the bar! Not even Bollywood can top Michael's moves!!

Life 3.0 - The webpage lives on!

It was quite a shock to hear about the untimely and implausible passing of Dr. Rajeev Motwani. I cannot claim that he was my mentor, but I did meet him several times, had exchanged many emails with him, had coffee with him on University Avenue, was introduced to several people by him, and also presented once to his team at Stanford. He was always friendly, helpful and insightful. He'll be missed.

Over the past weeks since his passing, the Web has had an uncanny way of bringing him up! First, of course, all the Tweets and disbelief. Then the articles and blog posts. Then, when launching a search transliteration feature, I visited a Kannada website for testing, and his photograph featured on the front page! Searching in my personal email, emails from him surfaced. Saw a reference to Sergey Brin's blogpost at work today!

Visting his Facebook page, there were messages that were as recent as an hour old! Unfortunately, he was gone before he could sign up for his user-friendly URL.

The new Social Net doesn't even require anyone to validate posted messages on their pages - we can keep a conversation going right through his webpage!!

This is a new world, where your public legacy extends even beyond your contributions and accomplishments! Rajeev's Facebook profile, Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture", and Jim Gray's Wikipedia page ("born 1944, lost at sea January 28, 2007") are living entities!

What will your web page say about you when you aren't logging on anymore?