Looks Familiar

Surprising !! how 142 year old theory can explain everything happening around !!

Commencement Address by Larry Page~~

Just watched Commencement address delivered by Larry Page at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor . He talks vividly about his family's loong association with university.He mentions about his naivety when back at Stanford ,he thought about downloading entire web in two week's time . He recollected about his recent trip to India where he was shocked to find polio and his efforts towards polio eradication . Quite a watch !!

The Girl Effect

Came across a very enlightening video descibing the effect prolonged poverty has human lives , especially in small villages , and how a single person can work break this !! . The concept is christened the Girl Effect, and the idea behind it is to illustrate how life of a single  girl effects the lives of many others (her children, husband, brother, sister, mother, etc..). As an educated mother, citizen, entrepreneur and employee, she can make a difference.

For Example :

"When girls and women earn income, they reinvest 90% into their families , as copared to only 30-40 % for a man"

"An extra year of primary school boosts a girl's future wages by around 10-20 %"

"An extra year of secondary school boosts a girl's future wages by around 15-20 %"

More Information about The Girl Effect

Video has been prepared by NoVo Foundation and supported by Nike Foundation .

Do watch the video , will take only 2:25 minutes !!

'The Behenji ' for PM ??

Seriously , I am no kidding here !!

Over the weekend , I actually heard on some NDTV Election Debate ( more drama !!) , Prannoy Roy ask " why do we hate Mayawati ?" and this made me really ponder over the whole issue related with genesis of ' The Behenji ' .

The little research that I could do on her showed that Mayawati had one major corruption allegation against her in the Taj Corridor case and another even graver but inderect allegation of murder and extortion by BSP for what is called her 'birthday fund'. Does that make an object of such hate in an absolute sense? Definitely yes. !!

However, when we look around at our political class, she is not the only one who has such allegations against her, then why single her out for such vitriolic hate. We seem to forget Lalu Prasad Yadav's Fodder Scam and invite him to IIMA and hold seminars for Wharton geeks , we forget Narendra Modi's state sponsored communal violence because he is an able administrator. Ironically captains of Indian Industries had time and again raised toasts to Narendra Bhai effort to industralize the state ,even think of eulogizing Jyoti Basu whose only contribution to Bengal is considered to be a film fraterntity at Nandan and his son Chandan.

The real answer to that lies in exactly what Mayawati has managed to achieve. She has come from what is arguably the toughest background in India- Dalit woman and risen to become the Chief Minister of the largest state in India. If anything, that makes her the pin up girl of Indian politics far more than Priyanka Gandhi's pretty face.

She has upset all our long held beliefs of social laddering and what we consider to be the rightful place of certain kinds of people. She is definitely not the most honest leader alive (she paid over 26 crores in taxes and has an ongoing case on assets disproportionate to known sources of income) but this mindless almost personal hatred towards her doesn't speak too well about us either.
Think about it and our closely held prejudices.

This post is surely incomplete ..... i am still compiling my thoughts that why urban Indians , especially youth , have intense loathe for Behenji :{

Adios !!

Secular Yapping !!

A lot has been made of secularism this election season, with certain parties with questionable secular intentions using the 'secular' concept as a major 'USP' (Unique Selling Point) of their party over certain other supposedly religion oriented parties. [Irony is some of these organisation owe their origin to 'Secularism' ]

Here is my attempt (might be feeble !!) to dissect this issue and see the merits (or the lack of those) in the arguments pro and against secularism as an issue these elections.

Rail Minister of India Laluji where he explains how the 'Secular' Lalu would have crushed the 'anti-secular' Varun under a roller. This piece of bovine excreta made me ponder over why so much importance is given to the secular tom-toming by Cong, SP, BSP and others.

Why Secularism a huge issue?

I guess it was a huge issue in the 1950s when the word 'secular' was drafted into the Indian Constitution. The word categorically differentiated India from Pakistan which was decisively Islamic. At that juncture the move was hailed as one of extreme greatness by the Father of the Nation - the Mahatma.

Another juncture when Secularism might have been a huge issue was probably in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid riots. It was then that parties opposing BSP upheld the secular flag against the Hindutva plank of the BJP. But even this was 17 , I repeat 17 years ago. In 2009, where there are little or no communal disharmonies left in society, I personally believe secularism isn't an issue at all.

If secularism isn't an issue, what are the issues?

According to me the following are the 6 key issues that have to be addressed by the parties in that order:

Basic amenities to all - food, water, shelter
Security - internal and external
Basic Literacy
Population control
Tackling unemployment
General development - Poverty eradication

Clearly each of the following issues in 2009 context rank far above such sidey issues like secularism and reservation in higher education instis. And yet, what do we see in India, ppl voting for such issues. not sad, its downright disgusting to live with such stark realities.Right, we understand secularism, but what do you mean by pseudo-secularism?In one sentence - pseudo secularism is implicit non-secular behavior under the mask of pledged secularism. The so called secular parties of India are the masters of such pseudo secular behavior and they have displayed it time and again. The biggest example of such a character is classifying the electorate into Vote Banks!

But why this issue all of a sudden?Yes, thats a pertinent question. Why this issue, and why now?

The reason is quite straight forward. For years now, the secular parties have been using their secular status as some sort of a Brahmastra - the weapon which absolves them of all their shortcomings. The best example is that of the Left in WB. For 25 yrs, they have done little or no development in the whole of WB and yet they go to the electorate and demand votes just coz they are standing on the secular plankI believe its time for the Indian voter to Jago Re from his slumber , look around and give votes in a shrewd manner rather than just becoming a part of a votebank...

Adios !!

hARSE power !!

Due to enlighting discussion (Courtsey AB) , I was exposed to this little veryyyy interesting trivia -- How horse arse has limited our space exploration expidition !! yes you have read it correctly !! Horse's Arse .

First, a simple truth. Most of you know the popular saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This is probably the key to this apparently impossible link.

1. The railroad For starters, did you know that the US standard railroad gauge (the distance between the inner sides of the two parallel rails that make up a railway track) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches (1435 mm)? This distance is also known as the standard or international gauge. And what does this have to do with anything, you'll ask. Stick with me and you'll find out.

The standard gauge of 4 ft 85in (1435 mm) was chosen for the first main-line railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), by the British engineer George Stephenson, because it was the de facto standard for the colliery railways where Stephenson had worked. Whatever the origin of the gauge, it seemed to be a satisfactory choice: not too narrow and not too wide.

2. The tramways Railway trains were just an extension of a previous invention, the tramway. It's railway on which trams (streetcars, trolleys) run. It is typically built
at street level sharing roads with traffic but may include private right-of-way especially in newer light rail system. Many old tram systems lack platforms, which enables virtually complete integration with other forms of transport and pedestrians making simultaneous use of the streets.So, since the people who were building tramways were the same to build the train tracks, it was a logical choice for them to use the same tramway gauge for trains.

3. The wagons If you didn't spot the connection yet, I'll tell you that the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used the exact same wheel spacing. And the explanation for their choice of gauge is also scientific. If they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. A rut is a depression or groove worn into a road or path by the travel of wheels or skis or by erosion from flowing water.

4. The roads Did you know that the word "street," whose origin is the Latin "strata", means a paved pathway? If you didn't, let me tell you that the Roman Empire built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since, so the ruts formed on the roads are basically in the same position as they were in the time of Imperial Rome.

5. The horse Who started forming ruts in the Roman roads? You guessed it, the Roman war chariots. This is where the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" saying comes into play: everyone else had to match the existing ruts to their wagons and carriages for fear of destroying their wheels. Since the chariots were made for imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing, because Romans were the first to introduce systematization (standardizing) in, well, almost every domain, especially engineering.

The Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses, since two were more effective than one or four, for steering and combat agility.

So, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4'-8.5" is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Rome war chariot. All hail bureaucracy!!

And now, for the grand finale!

6. The spaceships The US Space Shuttles rely on auxiliary boosters to provide them with the energy it takes to beat Earth's gravity. You've surely seen that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs provide 83% of liftoff thrust for the Space Shuttle. They are the largest and most powerful solid rockets ever flown, and the most powerful rocket motor of any type (solid or liquid) ever flown.

Of course, NASA isn't going to let just anyone build their most important part of the space shuttle, so the contract for making SRBs was given to an American engineering company, Thikol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed SRBs wanted to make them a bit wider to carry a bigger fuel payload, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

And the railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, so they had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. And there you have it. The world's most technologically advanced means of transportation, the Space Shuttle, has involuntarily been produced to match the "technical" specifications of a horse's South end.

Obama vs Bush