Quotes

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.
--Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
--Leo Tolstoy

Mary Magdalene -- interesting read

An Inconvenient Woman from MSNBC

She witnessed the resurrection, then vanished, leaving popes and painters and now 'The Da Vinci Code' to tell her story. In search of the real Mary Magdalene.

It is worth a read if you r interested in religious history and if u r a Christian and get offended by the 'The Da Vinci Code' then skip the first page.... But it is not about the that book it is in general about Mary Magdalene's character and the mystery around it due to the fact that she was a women.

One step ahead... but will it work?

Reservation — an alternative proposal from The Hindu

The proposal involves computing scores for `academic merit' and for `social disadvantage' and then combining the two for admission to higher educational institutions. Since the academic evaluation is less controversial, we concentrate here on the evaluation of comparative social disadvantage. We suggest that the social disadvantage score should be divided into its group and individual components. For the group component, we consider disadvantages based on caste and community, gender, and region. These scores must not be decided arbitrarily or merely on the basis of impressions. We suggest that these disadvantages should be calibrated on the basis of available statistics on representation in higher education of different castes/communities and regions, each of these being considered separately for males and females. The required data could come from the National Sample Survey or other available sources. It would be best, of course, if a special national survey were commissioned for this purpose.

Besides group disadvantages, this scheme also takes individual disadvantages into consideration. While a large number of factors determine individual disadvantages (family history, generational depth of literacy, sibling education, economic resources, etc.), we believe there are two robust indicators of individual disadvantage that can be operationally used in the system of admission to public institutions: parental occupation and the type of school where a person passed the high school examination. These two variables allow us to capture the effect of most of the individual disadvantages, including the family's educational history and economic circumstances.

Two more casulaties to the quota....

Two quit Knowledge Commission from The Hindu

Two members of the National Knowledge Commission, set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, resigned on Monday in protest against the Centre's reservation policy.

While putting in their papers, sociologist Andre Beteille and political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta placed on record their support for affirmative action as opposed to numerical quotas.

The two were among the six in the eight-member Knowledge Commission who felt that the status quo ought to be maintained and the existing policy of reservation should not be extended to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) till alternatives were explored. The Commission formally discussed the reservation policy at a recent meeting in Bangalore and apprised the Prime Minister individually about their respective positions.

Dr. Beteille (Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Delhi University) and Dr. Mehta (Chief Executive at the Centre for Policy Research) submitted their resignation letters to the Prime Minister stating that in the light of recent announcements by the Government in the realm of higher education, their continuation would serve no useful purpose.

Dr. Beteille told reporters later that he favoured affirmative action. "Though slow to bear fruit, affirmative action makes universities truly inclusive while quotas merely queer the pitch." He questioned the process by which the Government was imposing quotas on institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology without consulting their directors.

Quote

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
--Vernon Howard

There is no Mandal II III or IV - Arjun Singh (so he says)

This entire weekend I have been flipping through news channels listening about the students' revolt against Mandal II... What started as a minor movement has slowly caught on and is due to become a nation wide revolt. And to some extent I would give full credit to the police for making this is nationwide event. Had they not done what they did to students in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore then probably this wouldn't be so hard fought by the students. There atrocities gave this Rang De Basanti generation another reason to come out on the streets and well why not. And so I say that let us thank the commissioner of police Bombay for his outrageous comments and then throw him out of his office.

Now let's look at the center of issue the reservation itself. Opinions flow from both ends in high passion on this issue. The people who favor this new (or the previous) reservation say that "It will give the traditionally underprivileged communities an opportunism to come at par with the rest of the society. Also that the underprivileged communities make a huge portion of the society and without there advancement we cannot make a progressive society."

My question to the government is what has it done in 55 yrs that these people have not been educated well enough that they cannot compete with the rest? Where has the money gone that was spent on education since independence? Why are these students not able to compete in the world today? Is because that they can't afford the expansive tuitions that is almost necessary for entrance exams? Or is it because that there basic foundation from the schools (government or private) is not strong enough? Is it because that these families do not give importance to education itself? Are backward classes the only once that suffer form these problems? Are there no others that will have the same problem? Why is the govt. signaling out the SC/ST? Is it because that they form the major vote banks? There are many question to be answered before we can actually there can be any appropriate solution.

None of the above is a fault is the fault of the student who will appear in the entrance exams... And then why does He/She have to pay for it? And most importantly reservation is a shortcut -- and some wise guy said that "there are no shortcuts to any place worth going" The uplifting of individual or a society is not done by giving them charity it is done by making them strong enough to be able to stand at par and with pride. Now lets look at the consequences of Mandal II(yes it is mandal II Mr Arjun Sing weather you accept it or not) Every deserving student that will loose out a seat to a non-deserving student will create a divide in the society that is already fighting many other such differences. Let us assume that we do not look at the intangible results but only at the tangible. Are we not pulling down the entire standard of education of some very good institutes? Are we not making the one strong selling point that India has (its educated youth) a lot weaker? Are we not passing out less competent workforce? Are we not increasing the already biased opinion about these communities? Are we not ruling by divide and conquer?

Now don't get me wrong I am not against uplifting of these sections of society it is jut that reservation is not the right way of doing it. If there ever has to reservation for anyone it has to be for economically backward. To bring them to the main stream we need to make them able and this is not done at university level it is done at lower levels, in schools. Open schools and make the education given there count. Follow through that programs that are implemented in villages to see that they reach there desired end. But no the government does not want to work all they want to do is find any number of way that will make others work and get them votes. Actually I can categorically say that Arjun Singh surely does not have the interest of the nation in his heart as he has a heart of politician.

Now let's look at the current situation… form the comments that have been delivered by our so called leaders of the society has been none other that Mr. Singh. This is a shameful act in itself. None of the politicians have cone out and made any comments including our revered PM. Shouldn't this be of some concern that the educated youth has taken to the streets, or is it because of the fact that the educated youth is still a small number vote that the politician do not concern themselves. Actually that is what is true. So for one thing we (this generation) should be aware of is that the more the number of people educated the better our voices will be heard. And second we need more educated people running this country, people who can think further than the next election. Mr Singh called the student movement 'propaganda' I call his move 'propaganda' because it truly benefits none.

One thing that does concern me is the suffering of the patients in the due course of the protest. We can put the blame on the govt. but the truth remains… they are suffering. So for protest let the medical students call upon some less fatal profession to conduct the strike. Let the MBA's, software professionals, industrialists', journalists' do that for them. Let the people not suffer in this fight for right with the government. Hopes are very limited, but the cause is worth a fight. But in the due process let us not forget that there are truly underprivileged people in our society and this fight is not against them it is against a wrong solution to a worthy problem.

Links:
Arjun rejects relook at quota issue from The Hindu
Quota protests: Private doctors join stir from NDTV
Students:Arjun inciting us from The Asian Age
Arjun rejects re-think on quota from Rediff.com (this has other article to read too)

We might more than 70 IITs if this is the case...

Knowledge panel to study quota issue holistically from HT

"At present, just seven to eight per cent of our population under the age of 25 get to go to college. We need to increase it manifold to make India a knowledge society. Why cannot we have 70 IITs instead of just seven. The alumni of IITs can build 10 IITs. It is possible," he said.

The future is coming !!

This is your brain on a microchip from CNET

He laid out several specific projects and figures. For example, computational power is advancing. The human brain produces between 10^13 (10 to the 13th power) and 10^16 operations per second, emitting 100 watts of energy while at rest. The human brain is incredibly efficient, too: The brain takes about 20 percent of the body's oxygen to perform at that rate.

Today's supercomputer, such as IBM's Blue Gene, processes about 10^14 operations per second, but with six orders of magnitude more wattage.

Also, money is flowing into artificially intelligent systems. Car and truck companies, for example, are investing heavily in collision-warning systems and vehicles that can drive themselves. (Hawkins even acknowledged that several major car companies have contacted him and are showing interest in his intelligent platform.) And a study from the Department of Transportation said that robotic vehicles with safety warnings will likely save more lives than airbags and seatbelts together, Albus said.

The military is building future combat systems and investing in technology such as fighter drone planes. Albus said that by 2015, cognitive reasoning capabilities in computer-driven systems will enable tactical behaviors on the battlefield.

After I read this one all I coud was smile :)

Staying dumb may be the best option from Cricinfo

Around a month back, at the pre-match press conference before the sixth one-dayer against England at Jamshedpur, Sehwag was asked about Ganguly. His response was guarded, more an effort to pass the question rather than create a stir: "... there's no question of looking back ... We have already forgotten that chapter." No warning then, no yellow card, no nothing.

Quote

Life is simple, its just not easy.
-- Author Unknown

Mango Mania in US will catch up soon if they keep writting like this :)

Mango Mania in India from NYTimes

Now this article probably catches the full essance of the mango season in India from a outside point of view. Though for me it seems that there is nothing unusual when the mango season srrives... Other than ofcourse that it is "The Mango Season" :)

It sure did make me numb...

So do you expect the girl to keep count? via IndiaUncut


I couldn't agree more with the comments made by Amit on this story. Do read.

Fixing bug is a priority :)

Linux kernel 'getting buggier,' leader says from CNET

"I believe the 2.6 kernel is slowly getting buggier. It seems we're adding bugs at a higher rate
than we're fixing them," Morton said in a talk at the LinuxTag conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, on Friday.

Morton said he hasn't yet proved this statistically, but has noticed that he is getting more e-mails with bug reports. If he is able to confirm the increasing defect rate, he may temporarily halt the kernel development process to spend time resolving issues.

"A little action item I've given myself is to confirm that this increasing defect rate is really happening," he said. "If it is, we need to do something about it."

"Kernel developers will need to reapportion their time and spend more time fixing bugs," he added. "We may possibly have a bug fix-only kernel cycle, which is purely for fixing up long-standing bugs."

One problem is that few developers are motivated to work on defects, Morton said. This is particularly a problem for bugs that affect old computers or peripherals, as kernel developers working for corporations don't tend to care about out-of-date hardware, he said.

Nowadays, many kernel developers are employed by IT companies, such as hardware manufacturers. That can cause problems, as they may be motivated by self-interest, Morton suggested.

Joke

President Bush was in New Orleans. He said that, "We all pray for no hurricanes this year." This is all part of the Faith Based Disaster Management plan.
--Jay Leno

Women in "democratic" Iraq

The plight of women in Iraq from The Hindu

This is a documentary shot by an Iraqi women about the situtaion of women in iraq. A few days heard abt this documentary on one of the many news channels... here is kind of a summary to it.

The film is particularly good at capturing the texture of family life lived in such insecurity, and one effective section concentrates on the tale of a young girl, just eight years old, who was picked up by American troops after an attack on the car in which she and her father and other Iraqis were travelling. The troops first took her to a military hospital, but then her family says she was held for three months. Her family was not informed of her whereabouts and she was interrogated by being asked to identify Iraqi corpses in photographs. Her grandfather eventually tracked her down in Baghdad, and as we see her weeping in his lap we sense her family's frustration at having no accountable authority to whom it could take its anger.
...

To show the negative effects of these developments on women, Zeina travels to Basra. It will not come as news to those who have followed developments in southern Iraq that women are being forced to wear the hijab and prevented from living their lives freely. But it brings these developments home when we see young women and their families talking about being sent bullets and death threats because they played sport or did not wear a headscarf. As Zeina emphasises, this kind of experience is new to most women in Iraq, who enjoyed economic and social freedom before the occupation. "A while ago, I was looking at photographs of my aunt in college in the 60s, wearing pants and sleeveless tops, playing sports in the college yard; and then I looked at the photographs of the women in college today, and they are covered in black from head to toe, their faces also covered."

Occupation forces blamed

Zeina says the responsibility for these developments is solely that of the occupation — it has given sectarianism the opportunity to flourish. She simply laughs when I ask her whether she feels grateful for the democracy that America has given Iraq. "Democracy? What democracy? We do not have democracy. This democracy that Bush talks about — it is a completely empty structure, based on sectarian and ethnic interests. How can you have democracy when you are afraid that your life will be threatened, or your husband will be killed if you express yourself freely? It is a bad joke."

Not all women in Iraq are against the occupation — women are as divided as the men, and people in the West have heard Iraqi women speak in support of the U.S. war. But it is hard to resist the force of Zeina's passion as she describes the chaos that the war has brought to Iraq. She longs to go on documenting the situation of women, despite the very narrow limits within which she has to work.