Science behind happiness!

So what do you have to do to find happiness? TimesOnline

"Public surveys measure what makes us happy. Marriage does, pets do, but children don't seem to (despite what we think). Youth and old age are the happiest times. Money does not add much to happiness; in Britain, incomes have trebled since 1950, but happiness has not increased at all. The happiness of lottery winners returns to former levels within a year. People disabled in an accident are likely to become almost as happy again. For happiness levels are probably genetic: identical twins are usually equally bubbly or grumpy."
...
"Their holy grail is the classification of strengths and virtues. After a solemn consultation of great works such as the samurai code, the Bhagavad-Gita and the writings of Confucius, Aristotle and Aquinas, Seligman's happiness scouts discovered six core virtues recognised in all cultures: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. They have subdivided these into 24 strengths, including humour and honesty.
But critics are demanding answers to big questions. What is the point of defining levels of happiness and classifying the virtues? Aren't these concepts vague and impossible to pin down? Can you justify spending funds to research positive states when there are problems such as famine, flood and epidemic depression to be solved?"
...
"At the Royal Institution, Nettle explained how brain chemistry foils our pursuit of happiness in the modern world: "The things that you desire are not the things that you end up liking. The mechanisms of desire are insatiable. There are things that we really like and tire of less quickly — having good friends, the beauty of the natural world, spirituality. But our economic system plays into the psychology of wanting, and the psychology of liking gets drowned out.""
...
"Happiness is neither desire nor pleasure alone. It involves a third chemical pathway. Serotonin constantly shifts the balance between negative and positive emotions. It can reduce worry, fear, panic and sleeplessness and increase sociability, co-operation, and happy feelings. Drugs based on serotonin, such as ecstasy, produce a relaxed sense of wellbeing rather than the dopamine pattern of euphoria and craving.
In essence, what the biology lesson tells us is that negative emotions are fundamental to the human condition, and it's no wonder they are difficult to eradicate. At the same time, by a trick of nature, our brains are designed to crave but never really achieve lasting happiness."

thought

what if life followed a predictable path?

Controversial book!

Book on the Mahatma stirs up a storm in Orissa from sify.com

"Michha Mahatma, claims Bibudharanjan, exposes what he calls the “false Mahatmahood” of Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi. “Gandhi is true but Mahatma is false. He was a man with all human failings but he covered them up all in his autobiography My Experiments with Truth in such a way to project himself a Mahatma. After his death his followers continued to cover up the unpalatable side of Gandhi and even went to the extent of blacking out his son Harilal's write up published in the Hindustan Standard a few days after his murder,” he says.
“In my book I have attempted a total and unbiased evaluation of Gandhiji, basing everything on evidence and documents. If the truth explodes the myth of Gandhiji's Mahatmahood, so be it. Why are the followers of Gandhi, who made a name for himself as a seeker of truth be agitated?" says Bibudharanjan.
In Michha Mahatma Gandhi's experiments with his self-imposed celibacy come in for criticism. Gandhi has been portrayed as a bad husband and a terrible father. "
...
"However, Bibudharanjan is unfazed by all the dharna, police complaints and threats. "I am open to criticism. But let them go through the book and then criticise me! Not a single word is my figment of imagination. Everything is based on research. When the so-called Gandhi followers show such intolerance it explodes the myth of Gandhi as Mahatma because he too was intolerant to criticism!" "

quote

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
-- Chinese Proverb

What affect will these comments have?

'War on terror a struggle for soul of Islam' from IE

"He cited India as an example of how democracy can defeat the 'jihadi appeal' to Muslims.
"Democracy does seem to weaken the appeal of the terrorist extremists. As our Indian friends are quick to point out, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. Yet thus far Muslims from India have not been discovered participating in the global 'jihad' in either Afghanistan or Iraq," he said."

Why do such people still hold offices?!?!?!!!

Gujarat IAS officer sent back from Bihar after he said ‘can’t have Dalit, OBC staff’ from IE

""Don't you have a software that identifies officials by their caste?" an IAS officer appointed by the Election Commission of India as an observer for the Bihar polls reportedly wanted to know from the state officials. When he was told that there was no such software, he allegedly pitied the condition of Bihar. "We have an excellent software in Gujarat." "

:))

Humor: Apple, Sony Fight for Space in Our Head from msnbc

This is almost the full article

"The Apple CEO, who last week became the first to have the iPod Micro implanted into his brain, showed how music can be downloaded via a USB port discreetly located on the back of his neck. Jobs said that the Micro can store up to 2,800 songs and that the tracks can be shuffled by blinking one's eyes or nodding one's head, making it possible to listen to music in a classroom or at the office without anyone else knowing it. He demonstrated by rocking out to the song "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas, declaring the sound quality inside his head "awesome."
While Jobs said that as many as 100 million Americans could be hardwired for sound by 2008, Sony Corp. CEO Sir Howard Stringer served notice that his company was rolling out a new, super-tiny PlayStation Portable that could also be implanted directly into the brain. "There's a lot of room in the average American's head and we intend to fight for every square inch of it," Howard told reporters.
Elsewhere, thousands lined up to buy Powerball tickets when lottery officials announced that the grand prize would be a full tank of gas."

Stem cell research follow up

Stem Cell Side Shows from NYTimes

"'Scientists experimenting with mice have devised two new ways to derive embryonic stem cells without destroying viable embryos. The work is being hailed for its potential to sidestep some of the ethical controversies that have slowed stem cell research in this country. But each of the new techniques raises ethical issues of its own, and neither is apt to be ready for use in humans for many years."

Way to go Satyen Nair

http://web.mid-day.com/news/city/2005/october/121281.htm from Midday [via IndiaUncut]

"When Nair approached Pawar, the policeman abused him and shrugged him off. But he got help from some rickshaw drivers in the area. They caught the constable and took him and the girl to the police station.
Nair said that the constable tried to bribe him with the promise of Rs 15,000 to keep mum about the incident."

When I first saw the heading of this article I was going to just put it in the back of my mind like the many others that I read and try to ignore. But this I think needs mentioning... It takes normal people with a little courage to make the difference.

I ask myself what would I have done? What would you have done ask yourself?

Talk back

Indian outsourcers follow a megatrend from CNET Nilekani's(CEO Infosys) Interview.

Talkback: Indian outsourcers follow a megatrend from CNET

More intersting than the article is the talk back there are some very very strong (uncalled for) arguments there.

Blogging in School curriculum

Blogging 101--Web logs go to school from CNET

"He's more than glad to do it. Like other teachers bringing blogging into the classroom, he thinks the online journals will spark students' enthusiasm for computers, writing and opining.
"They're learning the technical skills, but they're also learning that they have a voice online," he said. "They may be from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but they're writing online, people are commenting on it, and they're learning that they have a voice.""

Isn't it intresting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bringing up kids the Asian way.

Item: Sisters Think Parents Did O.K. from NYTimes

"But their parents, who were hard-working middle-class immigrants from Korea, had other ideas. Eventually they set a rule: Read one book from the library this week, receive one candy bar the next. Looking back on it, the sisters are not complaining. Instead, in "Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers - and How You Can Too" (Berkley), to be published Nov. 1, they applaud their parents' coercions. "We read the book, and we got the candy," said Dr. Abboud, 32, who is a surgeon and clinical assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical school. "We didn't go without."
In "Top of the Class" the Kim sisters advise parents who want successful children to raise them just as the Kims did - in strict households in which parents spend hours every day educating their children, where access to pop culture is limited, and where children are taught that their failures reflect poorly on the family."

Multitasking in computer human interaction

Meet the Life Hackers from NYTimes

"When Mark crunched the data, a picture of 21st-century office work emerged that was, she says, "far worse than I could ever have imagined." Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task. To perform an office job today, it seems, your attention must skip like a stone across water all day long, touching down only periodically."

quote

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you. They are not perfect but are always perfect for you.
-- Author Unknown

Very Neat!!!!!!!

What art is hiding on your microchip? from CNET

""When I first saw him, he was upside-down, and I didn't recognize his face," the Florida-based cell biology researcher said.
Davidson suspected at first that the tiny design he saw was circular patterns added to the chip to thwart attempts by reverse-engineers to deduce its inner workings. But a second inspection showed it to be the characteristically hard-to-find character from the children's book series. "I realized, 'This is a doodle of some kind.' Then I started looking over the whole chip. I discovered Daffy Duck and other things on that chip," Davidson said."

Molecular Expression via CNET

"Ever wonder what's lurking within the dark corners, nooks and crannies of your computer? Is some gremlin responsible for all those crashes---you know, the ones that happen when you are trying to save that critical document you've been working on so diligently for the past three hours? We wondered too, so we took a look to see what we could find. And guess what? When we put the computer chips under the microscope we found some very interesting creatures hiding there.
Our search has led to a new collection of photomicrographs (photographs taken through a microscope) featuring many of the interesting silicon creatures and other doodling scribbled onto integrated circuits by engineers when they were designing computer chip masks. The tiny creatures are far too small to be seen with the naked eye, so we have provided high-magnification photomicrographs to share these mysterious wonders with our visitors. Engineers designing modern computer chips have a very rich sense of humor as you will discover when you visit our Silicon Creatures Gallery that we keep corralled in the Silicon Zoo. We hope you enjoy your adventure!"