Barack Obama's gmail account

I always wonder who the special people are that get their choice user ids on free email services like yahoo, hotmail and gmail. Here is an article in New Yorker which talks about the owner of barackobama@gmail.com.

Inept American media.

John McCain implied recently that Obama was a socialist. His argument for that was spurious, of course. This article in Columbia Journalism Review does a nice job of pointing that out, and simultaneously shows up the inept American media.

The larger point is this: about two minutes worth of close scrutiny would be enough to convince any reasonable observer that to suggest Obama is a socialist is to drain the term of any meaning. Everyone involved knows this, including McCain (which is why he settled for implying, rather than saying so outright.) But by the rules of today’s political press, the “news” is that McCain made an explosive-sounding attack. Whether that attack is substantively valid just isn’t relevant to reporters.

Despite losing, Indian team looks good.

India just lost the final of Asia Cup, its second loss in a final in less than a month (after the loss to Pakistan in Kitply Cup). Much will be said and written about the team and Dhoni's decision to field first in the final today.

Despite today's loss, I believe that the Indian team is doing well generally. Test team has been doing well for a while now as can be seen from our second position in ICC rankings. One-day team has struggled recently, but the team improved under Dhoni's captaincy, with the CB series win in Australia being the highlight. I am impressed by the way this young team is playing together. A couple of years ago, there was concern regarding how will India cope after the Big Three depart. I think that concern has been resolved satisfactorily. While Sachin remains a key ingredient, Dravid and Ganguly are not terribly missed.

Today we basically lost because of a single outstanding spell from Ajantha Mendis. It is true that some of the batsmen played bad shots and they needed to be more responsible. But this loss is not what this Indian team is about.

A short-lived first for India.

After their recent win against Bangladesh in Asia Cup, India achieved a record: for the first time since they started playing one-days, they had more wins than losses. The team record stood at 328 wins and 327 losses. After today's loss against Pakistan, we are back to 50% win percentage.

The best pick for VP....

.....turns out to be the same for both candidates! According to an algorithm used by a company called Affinnova, Colin Powel might be the best running mate for both Obama and McCain.

They have an interesting page of results obtained by their methods. There is also a demo poll.