IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

Exporters say they incur $70/tonne additional costs; Customs officials playing safe to verify if shipments are white or parboiled rice

Two firms used non-existent shipping firms to show transactions, the others submitted fake transaction certificates

Tells Kandla traffic manager to allow another ship to set sail after getting release order from Gujarat HC

The Centre has declared an MSP of Rs ₹7,121 per quintal for the medium staple and Rs ₹7,521 per quintal for the longer variety for the 2024-25 cropping season, an increase of around 7 per cent over previous year

Despite annual hikes in the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for sugarcane, the MSP of sugar has remained unchanged since 2019

Time to follow ancient belief of sun and farm produce to help improve economics of agriculture

Sector witnessing good demand for commodity and speciality fertilizers

The transaction, structured as a slump sale, is expected to close by September 30, 2025. 

Beyond sharing her experience of working with the powerhouse combination of Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Shinde in the upcomingDear Zindagi, Ira Dubey talks about her undying love for theatre and more

Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1987

From WhatsApp support to chatbot help, many options are available for those residing abroad

A brief explainer on the amendments pertaining to investors recently brought in

No Laughing Matter By JIM MCTAGUE
Cartoonist and blogger Scott Adams is outspoken about economics, politics and more -- but tight-lipped about Dilbert, hero to cubicle jockeys.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE ECONOMY COULDN'T POSSIBLY get worse comes this disturbing news: Dilbert's mismanaged high-tech company is foundering, jeopardizing the lovable cartoon character's oppressive but steady job as an electrical engineer in a stuffy cubicle, where he's manufactured laughs about illogical and inhumane corporate managers for nearly 20 years.

Barron's won't divulge the climax of the current plot. During a recent interview, Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, asked that we merely hint at what lies ahead for the cylinder-headed nerd with the upturned, clip-on tie. But read the daily Dilberts carefully over the next few days or weeks; clues abound and they don't point to a happy conclusion.

That's fitting because, as Adams notes in Dilbert 2.0, his $85, 576-page 20th-anniversary collection of 4,000 of his more than 8,000 cartoon strips (plus a DVD): "Dilbert is most popular when the workplace is at its worse." In fact, the strip, a window on workplace absurdity, took off during the downsizing binge of the early 1990s. In one memorable sequence from that period, Dilbert competes with a monkey to keep his engineering job. Dilbert wins, but his victory jig is short-circuited by his pointy-haired boss' decision to place the monkey on the upper-management fast track. Sounds like a telling commentary on the corporate world of 21st century's first decade, too.

Adams' current strips and very funny blog (http://www.dilbert.com/blog/), which often feature the cartoonist's insightful economic and stock-market commentaries, provide more hints about Dilbert's fate. A Dec. 12 blog argues that the recession is anything but temporary: "I think we are on the verge of a change as profound as the Industrial Revolution. Society will have to retool its expectations to meet the reality that there just won't be enough money to provide necessary services if we insist on consuming in an inefficient way."

One clue about Dilbert's fate appeared on Dec. 13 in newspapers around the world (Dilbert is published in 70 countries and 25 languages) in what turned out to be one of the most popular episodes in the strip's history: A financial adviser recommends that Dilbert's pointy-haired boss invest all of the company's funds in sick livestock. Don't buy just one sick cow, the adviser urges; buy an entire herd, because by aggregating sick cows, the risk goes away. "It's called math," the adviser adds, in a send-up of the asset-backed securitizations that have helped topple the global economy.

The financial adviser, by the way, is a malicious canine. In his blogs, Adams is equally unkind to real advisers and money managers. In his view, formed long before the disrobing of Bernie Madoff, they're always conniving to steal investors' money. Perhaps this depiction is payback: Adams lost a bundle following advice during the tech bubble, which also convinced him that investing in individual stocks and "professionally managed" funds is a losers' game. His advisers put half of his portfolio into WorldCom, Enron and other sure things and lost 40% of his invested cash, he says. He managed the other half and lost 20% in the tech wreck.

"Most of the investments I made in individual stocks went bad because managements were lying. They are the source of the information for the markets." His conclusion: "It is even dumber to pay an expert to talk to the liar for you and charge you 1% of your portfolio." Some folks who bought funds of funds that invested with Madoff surely would agree.

Faecal sludge treatment plants proposed in a radius of 15 km on cluster basis in urban and rural local bodies

State government must urgently intervene in the issue, since hundreds of families are facing threat of displacement from the land they had purchased and had been staying in for decades, says Church spokesperson

Topics presented by young researchers included science of sonar, exploration of planets outside solar system, use of nanotechnology in cancer treatment, environment-friendly alternative for food security, and use of AI to save diabetics from eye diseases