It's not just the zero that we have to be proud of, according to Texas A&M University anthropologist Vaughn Bryant, Indian's might as well have invented kissing.

For all those who thought kissing was un-Indian and a foreign influence on desi sensibilities, here’s a reality check to make you pucker up and take notice. Research reveals the first recorded kiss in human history can actually be traced back to Indian origins. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Indians were alert and kissing way back in 1500 BC. Forget the simple zero, it seems the sizzling smooch is actually Hindustan’s greatest contribution to the world.

IndiaTimes reports.

A study that appears in the journal Science claims that the melting of Greenland's ice has doubled in the last 10 years:

"In 1996 Greenland was losing about 100 cu km of ice per year," says Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead author of the study, which he presented at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis, Mo. "This year it will lose more than twice as much."

By comparison, he says, in 1996 Greenland dumped 90 times as much water into the sea as Los Angeles consumed; last year it was up to 225 times. "In the next 10 years," says Rignot, "it wouldn't surprise me if the rate doubled again."

Washingtonpost is running an amazing piece on the mechanics and economics of operating botnets:

Hackers are hijacking thousands of PCs to spy on users, shake down online businesses, steal identities and send millions of pieces of spam. If you think your computer is safe, think again

Also included is an interview of a botnet operator, known as 0x80 (X-eighty) :

In the six hours between crashing into bed and rolling out of it, the 21-year-old hacker has broken into nearly 2,000 personal computers around the globe. He slept while software he wrote scoured the Internet for vulnerable computers and infected them with viruses that turned them into slaves.

Rediff reports about the first case of avian bird flu hitting Indian poultry.

In the first instance of the deadly avian flu virus in India, the Maharashtra government on Saturday said chicken have died of the disease in the Nandurbar and Dhule districts, which have a large number of poultry farms, even as the state authorities have rushed immediate medical help to the affected areas.

Read more on the same here.

The big-daddy of infrastructures initiatives seems to be languishing due to Government apathy. This is despite the repeated commitments made by the Prime Minister to improve infrastructure.

Deadline long buried, only 12 per cent of the Golden Quadrilateral is left but it’s crawling. As for the East-West, North-South corridor, the lights are switched off, everyone’s gone home

IndianExpress reports.

PINR is running a report detailing the fine print between Indo-China relations.

Beijing prefers a unipolar Asia-Pacific (with China as the sole superpower without any peers) and a multipolar world (with the U.S., E.U., Russia and China as four major power poles). In contrast with both Washington and Beijing, New Delhi champions multipolarity at both regional and global levels.

Rediff reports that the government is thinking on the lines of a sixth pay commission.

Congress sources say the rising political pressure from the Communists -- key partners in the United Progressive Alliance coalition -- has prompted Prime Minister Singh to announce the new pay commission.

However, former minister Arun Shourie, also quoted in the article has this to say: The Fifth Pay Commission (set up in 1994) recommendations resulted in a Rs 530 billion payout by the government. The next (sixth) pay commission would effectively wind up Indian sovereignty

IndianExpress is running a report suggesting that the India growth story seems to have reached a bump.

Corporate revenues are looking less rosy, some key imports are slackening and companies are holding off on expansion plans. This all follows a four-year stretch of blistering activity, during which India notched up growth rates of more than 7 per cent.

Also, there is a growing suspicion that the infrastructure problems that plague India -- from electricity outages to port problems to a clogged transport system -- are creating a ceiling for economic growth, which India has now bumped up against.

While we are slogging it out in India for much needed airport modernization, China seems to be going full steam ahead to complete 108 new airports between 2004 and 2009.

And it’s not only the airports; the scale of infrastructure development in China makes India's progress on the same look like a bad joke.

Don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself

Gaurav gives his humourous take on the currently in vogue pseudo-secular writing.

This post is intended for budding intellectuals, eager to make their mark in the world as tenured idiots academician or pompous courageous journalists, I hope this will be a helpful introduction for uninitiated to the treacherous and incestuous world of quislings intellectuals.