Dec 21, 2005

Here you go... Pennsylvania decision on ID

Case Seen as Setback to Intelligent Design [via neeraj]
and another one
Judge Rejects Teaching Intelligent Design from NYTimes

Dec 19, 2005

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Explore real history of the nation: Kalam from The Hindu

Sometimes I wonder why the other leaders of our country do not think like this. Then there is another thought we don't have leaders we only have politicians.

There was a common thread to his utterances at these programmes: The real
strength of the nation lay in the values its people had nurtured down the history and these should form the basis for the country's march towards the future, exploiting the exciting possibilities that new developments in science and technology presented.

Inaugurating the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Kerala History Association in Kochi, he said that dogmas, rituals, systems and norms of the historical past, imposed by the last millennium of invasion and conquest, continued to condition the minds of the people of India even after 58 years of independence. "Now time has come, in the 21st century, [when] we need a new breed of historians who can make the past meet the present and create the future," he said.

...

The document dealt at length on how the State's farm sector could "graduate from grain production to food processing and marketing," bringing its full benefits to the toiling farmers. He said Information Technology could be used for maintaining an updated and enriched database of region specific agriculture information and also timely dissemination of information on seed selection, arrival of monsoon and demand for specialised crops. At Parumala in Pathanamthitta district, he inaugurated an International Paediatric Cardiac Services and Rural Telemedicine Connectivity at the St. Gregorios Cardio Vascular Centre there.

anonymuncule

kyo hota hai zindagi main kabhi aisa ke
her muskan - ek dhokha,
her asha - sirf sapna,
her kushi - ek saya,
her manzil - nayi raha,
her asoo - bikhre vishwas.

ya phir zindagi hai --
yu he bavajah muskarana,
bikhri ashao per naye sapne sajana,
saye ke piche chipi kirne talashna,
nayi raho per kisi nayi manzil ke oor chahle jana,
her vishwas ki boodh sajoker karna jivan sakar.
--शोभना

Dec 18, 2005

Published paper a Hoax??? Stem Cell Research

A Cloning Scandal Rocks a Pillar of Science Publishing from NYTImes

Summary of the events that followed the publishing of the paper in stem cell reearch.

Dec 17, 2005

thought

So many people cross our paths... not everyone leaves a mark! We give right to people to enter our lives, our emotional relm. But it is not us who deciede when they leave, how they leave. Sometimes only there departure lets us know that they were a part of our lives. Strange as this maybe sometimes you have to hold on to some people to prevent them from leaving and sometimes you have to push people out. Neither of the transitions being right.

Dec 16, 2005

Google Music????!!!

Google whistles a new tune [from CNET]

Google Music will allow a person to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar special, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

Dawkins Interview -- Reason enough to read it

The Problem with God: Interview with Richard Dawkins [via AL Daily]

The most successful captain of the Indian cricket team deserved a better end

Ganguly deserved better treatment from The Hindu
(Comments from ex-cricketers )

Dec 14, 2005

quote

When it is near the end you think about the starting.
-- Mr and Mrs Smith

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dec 13, 2005

Cavlin's love for Christmas

Dec 11, 2005

Finally done!!!

Done with my graduation today... Not that feels much different. Bachelors was more satisfying feeling!

Dec 9, 2005

anonymuncule

Kinta sare hain jasbaat, kitne he armaan, machalte hai jo dil se hoto tak aane ko.
Per na jane kyo kabhi main unko shabd nahi de pati aur kabhi awaaz.
--शोभना

Dec 7, 2005

Highway all the way...

All Roads Lead to Cities, Transforming India from NYTimes

Hmmm what I am wondering after reading the articles in NYTimes is that there is nothing in India except the highways? It seems to project that everything else was in a complete state of mess adn the highwys are changing this... not sure how much of this is true and how much is just hype sourrounding the highways. But why so much hype about this?

India found its niche in the cutting and polishing of low-cost diamonds for the global middle class, and today more than 7 of 10 diamonds in the world are polished in Surat. It has created close to 500,000 jobs here alone.
That is nearly half as many jobs as India's entire information technology industry.
Bangalore, the symbol of India's knowledge economy, may be a global buzzword, but the fate of India's rural poor depends more on industrial cities like Surat.
Together, the cities' dominance means that India will never return to a farming-based economy. The urban portion of the gross domestic product is roughly double the urban population, a fact not lost on Mr. Santoki or his boss, Savji Dholakia.

Women of Al Qaeda from MSNBC Newsweek

Jihad used to have a gender: male. The men who dominated the movement exploited traditional attitudes about sex and the sexes to build their ranks. They still do that, but with a difference: even Al Qaeda is using female killers now, and goading the men.

THis is not the summary nor the most interstin part of the article. But I simply could not decide which part to pick to took the introduction and quoted it. Never have I understood it nor do I think I will ever understand it how can people kill and on top of that the reasons sound well unreasonable.

Trucks Highways India and AIDS

On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger from NYTimes


Some 80 percent of truckers' wives who came in for voluntary testing and counseling tested positive, she said, usually because by the time they came in their husbands were on their deathbeds, and denial could no longer be sustained.

G. Karuna, 24, was another woman who fell prey to the peregrinations of her husband, a long-distance driver from a family of truckers. When they both sought treatment for tuberculosis or opportunistic infections at hospitals, they hid his occupation, since many private hospitals now turn truckers away.

After her husband died, his family blamed her, a cruel vengeance some in-laws inflict on the widows. They have made treatment and prevention that much harder.

She was forced to sleep on the path outside; the family refused to share even a loaf of bread that she had touched. Soon their whole village had ostracized her.

Ms. Karuna cried as she told her story, but that story also conveyed an uncommon
strength. She had left her husband's family and her village to start a new life on her own. She became an activist with the Social Educational and Economic evelopment Society, an advocacy group in Guntur, trying to save other truckers'
wives.

She showed women pictures of her handsome husband before he sickened, and after.

She told the wives to know what their husbands were doing outside the home, to negotiate the use of condoms with them, to get treated for sexually transmitted diseases. Her husband's relatives still teased her: "Why are you working so hard? You also will die."