The Fun Learning: Oct 4, 2010

Why men don't write advice columns?

Dear Walter:

I hope you can help me here.

The other day I set off for work leaving my husband in the house watching the TV as usual.

I hadn't gone more than a mile down the road when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt.

I walked back home to get my husband's help. When I got home I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in the bedroom with a neighbor lady .

I am 32, my husband is 34 and we have been married for twelve years. When I confronted him, he broke down and admitted that he'd been having an affair for the past six months. I told him to stop or I would leave him.

He was let go from his job six months ago and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless.

I love him very much, but ever since I gave him the ultimatum he has become increasingly distant.

I don't feel I can get through to him anymore. Can you please help?

Sincerely,
Mrs... Lisa

Dear Lisa:

A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine.

Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line.

If it is clear, check the jubilee clips holding the vacuum pipes onto the inlet manifold. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber.

I hope this helps.

Walter

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What does it take to be a super power?

It depends, of course, on what you consider to be the definition of a super power.

If the ability to build nuclear weapons is a criterion for "super-powership", then the US and Russia - with an estimated 10,000 nuclear weapons - are way ahead of the game. For all its forex reserves and Made in China products, China has less than 5% of the nuclear weapons of the US.

Country	Suspected Strategic Nuclear Weapons	Suspected Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons	Suspected Total Nuclear Weapons
China	20	390	410
France	384	80	464
India	0	60+?	60+?
Israel	0	200+?	200+?
Pakistan	15-25?	0	15-25?
Russia	~ 6,000	~ 4,000	~10,000
United Kingdom	185	0	185
United States	7,200	~ 3,300	~10,500

Source: www.CDI.org
But, yes, based on holdings of US Dollars in its vaults, China has USD 847 billion (as of July, 2010) while Japan holds USD 821 billion and UK comes a distant third with USD 374 billion. Having said that, we are not sure if these statistics tell us who the super-power really is. Is it these countries for owning so much US Dollars, or is it the USA for fooling these countries into owning what could be worthless pieces of paper? Time will tell.

If "super-powership" is ranked based on the number of people in an army (including reserves), then the list would suggest that North Korea with 9.5 million people in its army is the real super power, just a shade ahead of its neighbour South Korea (8.7 million).

Country	Size of army, para-military, and reserves
China	3.4 million
India	4.8 million
Brazil	2.1 million
South Korea	8.7 million
North Korea	9.5 million
Russia	21.4 million
USA	2.4 million

Source: wikipedia.org
The Business Standard quotes a US report as ranking India as the third most powerful country in the world after USA and China. If the European Union was to be counted as one bloc, it would take over the third spot and India would be ranked as the 4th most powerful country in the world.
We are not sure what that US report measures as the criteria for its list, but it feels nice to see India in some such list.

Some rich, many poor
India also makes it to the rich lists that tend to be published. After all, we are living in a material world and all that money made because of the legendary friendships between our business houses and politicians has to show up somewhere. Forbes, which is famous for its ranking of people for their wealth - irrespective of how they earned it - has India ranked 5th as home to 49 billionaires when measured in US Dollars, ahead of its once colonial master, the UK with 29 billionaires. And possibly 20 of those 29 must be immigrants from South Asia!

Rank	Country	Number of billionaires
1	United States	403
2	China	64
3	Russia	62
4	Germany	53
5	India	49
6	United Kingdom	29
7	Turkey	28
8	Hong Kong SAR, China	25
9	Canada	24
10	Japan	22

Source: www.Wikipedia.org, Forbes
And, the least publicised but probably intuitively known list of them all is the one that ranks countries based on their share of global poverty. India has a dominating lead in this list (41% of the world’s poor are in India) with China in a distant, but convincing, second place (22% of the world's poor are in China).

Rank	Countries	Amount
# 1	India	41.01 % of world's poor
# 2	China	22.12 % of world's poor
# 3	Nigeria	8.03 % of world's poor
# 4	Pakistan	3.86 % of world's poor
# 5	Bangladesh	3.49 % of world's poor
= 6	Brazil	1.82 % of world's poor
= 6	Ethiopia	1.82 % of world's poor
# 8	Indonesia	1.49 % of world's poor
# 9	Mexico	1.43 % of world's poor
# 10	Russia	0.99 % of world's poor