World War III has began....

(this is title is applicable to other places too)
i couldn't help but put this up....

GOOGLE vs MICROSOFT battle has picked up pace

Google guns for Microsoft from CNET

google spreadsheet???!!!!!

now back to hibernation........

Hibernating

But I will be back...

Man Ke Darpan Main - Om the Fusion Band

Man ke darpan main dakhe hai kitne rang jivan ke
Man ke darpan main dakhe hai kitne rang jivan ke

saat sur milke jaise sangeet main dhale,
phool chunchun ke jaise gulshan koi khile.

Man ke darpan main dakhe hai kitne rang jivan ke

pal main badal hai, pal main kirne hai,
bhor hai, sanjh hai kabhi.
ek pal man nirash hai, aas hai kabhi.
pal main muskan, pal main hairaan,
pray hai, bair hai kabhi.
log apne hai ek pal, gair hai kabhi.
pal ye kab jane din bane, jane kaise din badle sal main
ungloin par gine agar yu to sal bhi guzra hai kai
pachi mudh ke jo dakhe ek bar aaj bhi yaad hai sabhi
yaadion ke saath khaboon ke silsile chale
beete har pal ke rang, har khab main mile.

Man ke darpan main dakhe hai kitne rang jivan ke
Man ke darpan main dakhe hai kitne rang jivan ke

din ladkhpan ke, manchale pan ke kitne masoom the sabhi
aab hai aphsos lot ke aayege nahi,
pal do pal ke hai sare ehsas, pal do pal ki hai zindagi.
rishte nate bhi khel hai pal do pal ke he.
bahti nadya ki dhar ke jaisi har kushi aani jani hai,
sase jab tak chal rahi dharkno main jab tak ravani hai.
ek roshan diye ki lo jaise zindagi ki khani hai
andhiyo main bhi zindagi ki ye lo jale
sas ki lo per umar ki gastan chale

Quotes

Every cloud has a silver linning, the challenge is to find it.
--Unknown Author

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
--From the movie Annie

am waiting for some action to be taken!!!

Arjun has no sympathy for OBCs: He is playing crass politics via www.samachar.com

Different Backward Class Commissions have given varying figures. The latest figures claim 52 percent of India’s population as being OBC. It was spread among 3743 different castes. Putting them all together in one OBC category is ridiculous. The powerful Yadavas have hogged most of the reservation benefits for OBCs.

Even among Dalits the powerful Chamars have done likewise. Dividing OBCs into Most Backward Castes (MBC) and Extreme Backward Castes (EBC) does not help. There are too many castes to ensure equitable reservation, on a caste basis, for all the castes.

What is the objection to well defined economic and social criteria to determine reservation? Only one objection comes to mind. Pro-reservationists might claim this would result in partial selection because of forward caste bias.

There is a simple solution to this. Let all selection boards have reservation. Ninety percent of board members could be Dalit, OBC and Minority. That would allow affirmative action without accentuating caste in society.

To establish a genuine level playing field would require compulsory standardized government-run neighborhood schools throughout the nation. Even if the entire budget outlay for education were spent on implementing this the results would justify the investment.

Other ideas to ensure effective affirmative action for circumventing caste could be considered, but it would be pointless. It is the politics of caste that motivates politicians to support caste-based reservation.

Fanaa

I would have seen the movie anyway ... But just to protest I want to go to Gujarat n see the movie. Sometime I wonder are we truly living in democracy????

I wish i could contribute... (guilt is sinking in)

Faculty members on leave; JNU,IIT students begin hunger strike from The Hindu

After rejecting the Government proposal, medicos today stepped up their anti-reservation stir with faculty members of three premier hospitals going on mass casual leave and the medical fraternity gearing up for a total shutdown on Wednesday.

The striking medicos got a boost, as students of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi began a relay hunger strike at their campuses to express solidarity with them.

Marriage n scientific careers....

Scientific Success: WhatÂ’s Love Got to Do With It? from http://sciencecareers.org

"The productivity of male scientists tends to drop right after marriage," says Kanazawa in an e-mail interview from his current office at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. "Scientists tend to 'desist' from scientific research upon marriage, just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage."

Kanazawa's perhaps controversial perspective is that of an evolutionary psychologist. "Men conduct scientific research (or do anything else) in order to attract women and get married (albeit unconsciously)," he says. "What’s the point of doing science (or anything else) if one is already married? Marriage (or, more accurately reproductive success, which men can usually attain only through marriage) is the goal; science or anything else men do is but a means. From my perspective, scientists are no different than anybody else; evolutionary psychology applies to all humans equally," he adds.

and there is much more that it says not just this aspect.

The Dilemma

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk rejection.
To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave.
He has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is free.

--Janet Rand

Quotes

Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
--Arthur Koestler


Optimism is the foundation of courage.
--Nicholas Murray Butler

Some how this article feels incomplete but it good read...

Seduced by an elusive idea of India from The Hindu

People may no longer ask you if you have computers in India, but they still wonder whether there is clean drinking water and believe that India, despite its booming economy, remains a "terrible place to be poor," as New Statesman noted in a special issue on India recently. The magazine's South Asia correspondent William Dalrymple voiced concern over the "unevenness" of the boom India is experiencing and pointed out that "much of India remains completely untouched" by it. The jury on India's future was still out, he suggested.

"India is changing with a speed that is astonishing, but ... much still remains uncertain and the country remains as fascinatingly unpredictable as ever," he wrote.

Translated in blunt language, it means that the idea of a "new" and "prosperous" India poised to become a "modern" super power is slightly exaggerated. Eventually, India will be defined not by the swanky new neighbourhoods in Gurgaon but by its crushing poverty that makes the country seem like "one land, two planets," as a headline in the magazine put it.

And what about India's much talked-about "soft power" in this "new era"? Its capacity to influence the world culturally? There is a worry that far from being able to influence others, the country itself is in danger of descending into a cultural black hole. "India goes Bollywood" was the topic of a debate, held as part of the Bonn Biennale, to explore the impact of India's economic boom and increasing "commercialisation of society" on its media.

Is there a danger that artistes and journalists in India are becoming too dependent on market forces? How big is the space for non-commercial art? And to what extent is entertainment replacing serious information and debate?

These were the questions posed to a mixed Indo-German panel, which included Dorothee Wenner, head of programme at Internationale Filmfestspiele. Opinion, as happens on such occasions, was divided with at least one participant — an art consultant from India — strongly opposing the view that space for serious debate back home was shrinking and being taken over by commercial forces. But because there was no consensus does not mean that the issues surrounding the relationship of culture, media, and the market disappear. These are real concerns and, in fact, the debate that took place in Bonn should be happening in India.

Ask any dispassionate observer of the post-liberalisation "modern" India and the answer you are likely to get to the above questions is: yes, artistes and journalists are becoming too dependent on market forces; there is little space for non-commercial art; and serious debate is almost non-existent. In fact, "India goes Bollywood" is a very apt description for what is going on in India on the cultural front — and in much of the media, especially in electronic media, which was supposed to herald a brave new world of information.

Those of us who live abroad and "get" their India through private satellite TV channels (alas, Doordarshan remains curiously invisible) get the sense that culturally nothing is happening in India outside of Bollywood. Watching Indian TV channels is like watching a long Bollywood sequence, only occasionally interrupted by news or current affairs. Even news is not Bollywood-free. Clearly there is a perception in Indian TV newsrooms that the only way to spice up news and make it interesting is to pepper it with filmi stardust — Shah Rukh Khan endorsing a new computer brand; Preity Zinta opening a new jewellery boutique; Amitabh Bachchan on a visit to Dubai; Bobby Deol showing off his new restaurant.

In a sense, what is happening in the media, especially in television, is symptomatic of a wider indifference to ideas in India, whether in the academia or in cultural institutions. And this does not augur well for a country aspiring to become a super power even if only as a "new sort of super power," as New Statesman called it.

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.