Those opaque windows combined with the concrete “fins” on the side of the building act as a heat barrier and reduce cooling costs dramatically. I just don’t know if the savings are worth the mockery for living in a chunk of Swiss cheese, even if it’s a pretty chunk of Swiss cheese. [WAN]

Toppling 7000 dominoes to commemorate the launch of Windows 7 definitely riled up the employees at Microsoft’s Hyderabad centre in India, but they probably didn’t think it through in terms of the jokes it might generate. [Ars Technica]

The fish he treats are ornamental—fancy ones for aquariums—so I guess there are a lot of people with exotic fish around Chandannagore. But man, how surreal is that photo of the goldfish receiving an injection? Normally when a goldfish gets sick the prescription is one dose of going down the toilet. Be sure to click through to Life to see the rest of the series of images. Amazing stuff. [Life via Notcot]

Locals use hollowed-out trunks of the betel tree to prop up the roots of the Ficus elastica (basically a rubber tree), pointing them across whatever body of water they want to cross, until the roots reach the other side and dig in. After a while (a long while — think 10-15 years), the bridge becomes strong and sturdy enough for people to comfortably walk across. Some of these bridges are hundreds of years old since they just get stronger over time being alive and all. Pretty amazing stuff. [Living Root Bridges via Reddit]

Likewise, I have no idea if this Bollywood mashup of The Matrix and Terminator 2 is part of the same film or something very different. Either way, once seen, you can never unsee it.

Total awesomeness, or tragic destruction of creativity? Discuss.

[Thanks Kevin!]

Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world’s hottest chili powders into hand grenades.

The chili, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chili.

So it can disperse crowds, but the real question is—can I cook dinner with it? Like a fire and forget nuclear spice bomb or something? [BBC via Geekologie Image via Flickr]

In a bit of an about-face, India has placed a huge order for 250,000 OLPC XO laptops for their schools. This is a huge victory for the OLPC project.

India had previously done a test pilot of the OLPC and decided they could make a better, or at least cheaper, laptop themselves, but after their $US10 laptop turned out to produce a product that was not a laptop and could not be made for $US10, they appear to have come back to the fold. The quarter-million OLPC XOs will go out to about 1,500 schools, though we’re not sure if they’ll be getting the newer versions with the upgraded processor, memory, and storage. Congrats to OLPC; they’ve had a rough go of it but we’re always in favour of weirdly adorable computers for the less fortunate. [Ars Technica]

Kind of puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it? While the US smartphone market is our main stock and trade here at Giz, no one should forget about companies like Nokia that supply a huge percentage of the rest of the world’s phones. Even though they took a bit of a bath last quarter, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some have hoped, and for that Nokia has nearly 16 million new phone users in India to thank. [Reuters]

Swiss watchmaker Borgeaud has teamed up with Indian fortune tellers to create a watch that allegedly predicts the future. When things are about to go sour, a bedpan-shaped section on the watch will turn brown.

According to the Borgeaud site, the watch automatically displays a daily 90-minute period called the Raju Kaal, which is believed to be a terrible time to make important decisions or start new projects.

Called “The Pachang,” after one of the world’s oldest almanacs, the watch will only revert back to its normal colour after the Raju Kaal is over and “dark astral forces” have left the area.

Borgeaud is only producing 650 of the watches, with prices set above $US2000 each. I predict they’ll become a great way to weed out rich idiots. [Ananova]