United Nations Organization (UNO) has honoured Gandhiji's ideals by declaring Gandhiji's birthday, October 2, as International Day of Non-Violence.
Let us rededicate ourselves to the path shown by the Mahatma.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Gandhiana-2: "India of My Dreams" by Mahatma Gandhi
I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, an India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people; an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability, or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights as men. We shall be at peace with all the rest of the world. This is the India of my dreams.
Monday, October 01, 2007
A Thought for Today-91: September 24, 2007
When we are unable to love and appreciate ourselves and our efforts, we run away from our mistakes and failures, rather than learning from them - Meredith L. Young-Sowers
A Thought for Today-90: September 23, 2007
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary - Reinhold Niebuhr
A Thought for Today-89: September 22, 2007
The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch – Jim Rohn
A Thought for Today-88: September 21, 2007
The key that unlocks energy is desire. It's also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited - Earl Nightingale
A Thought for Today-87: September 20, 2007
Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object — Laurence J. Peter
A Thought for Today-86: September 19, 2007
Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you
Keep straight the path of your feet,
and all your ways will be sure.
- Proverbs 4:25-26
and your gaze be straight before you
Keep straight the path of your feet,
and all your ways will be sure.
- Proverbs 4:25-26
A Thought for Today-85: September 18, 2007
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble - Mahatma Gandhi
A Thought for Today-84: September 17, 2007
Whether or not we realize it each of us has within us the ability to set some kind of example for people. Knowing this would you rather be the one known for being the one who encouraged others, or the one who inadvertently discouraged those around you? - Josh Hinds
A Thought for Today-83: September 16, 2007
Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money - W. J. Cameron
A Thought for Today-82: September 15, 2007
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle -Albert Einstein
A Thought for Today-81: September 14, 2007
Give more than you take. Do your best to leave every situation better than you found it. Seek beauty in all its forms. Chase dreams. Watch sunsets. Endeavor to use more than 10 percent of your brain. Don’t stifle your deep-from-the-gut, cleansing laughter. Take a moment to ponder the enormity of the universe, then admit to yourself that you can’t possibly be the center. Breathe deeply. Swim into the dark water. Let yourself cry when your body tells you to. Love more. Delight in silliness. Don’t be bitter. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive -Katy Rhodes
A Thought for Today-80: September 13, 2007
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action - Frank Tibolt
A Thought for Today-79: September 12, 2007
There is no such thing as a "self-made" person. We are all interdependent on one another and we all need each other's help from time to time - Chris Widener
Websites to Watch-5 : Website on Higher Studies – Edex, The New Indian Express
A new portal, www.uniguru.com, has been launched to help students aspiring to study abroad.
Launched by Hotcourses, a UK-based publisher of education guides, the portal promise to reveal the real issues about the universities, which were not covered in the prospectus.
Primarily a website for Indian students, it would have information about management, engineering and medical courses offered by institutions in the USA, the UK, Singapore and Australia.
The site, which contains reviews from students already pursuing courses at various universities around the world, had allowed existing students to post their reviews, including video diaries and photographs.
The review postings includes details about accommodation, the quality of a course, the weather, city life, getting a visa, working in the UK and the cost of living.
The website offers peer-to-peer advice on over 100,000 courses at 808 institutions in UK, US, Singapore and Australia. The company also plans to launch a similar site for domestic universities in India next year.
Excerpt from Education Express, Supplement to The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.28, 2007
Launched by Hotcourses, a UK-based publisher of education guides, the portal promise to reveal the real issues about the universities, which were not covered in the prospectus.
Primarily a website for Indian students, it would have information about management, engineering and medical courses offered by institutions in the USA, the UK, Singapore and Australia.
The site, which contains reviews from students already pursuing courses at various universities around the world, had allowed existing students to post their reviews, including video diaries and photographs.
The review postings includes details about accommodation, the quality of a course, the weather, city life, getting a visa, working in the UK and the cost of living.
The website offers peer-to-peer advice on over 100,000 courses at 808 institutions in UK, US, Singapore and Australia. The company also plans to launch a similar site for domestic universities in India next year.
Excerpt from Education Express, Supplement to The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.28, 2007
Self-Improvement- :: Meaning and Purpose of Life
What could be, in a nutshell, the meaning and purpose of life? What could be that philosophy which when lived can take man from manhood to supermanhood and to Godhood?
In simple terms, it may be said that by enhancing the ‘unifying’ and ‘universalising’ forces in his life, man can move from imperfection to perfection. The former is the ultimate goal of all disciplines, austerities, sadhanas or yoga, that is, centralizing and focusing the vital energies in us bringing them under control and thus strengthening and ennobling and integrating one’s personality. It is only then that the inner potentialities can be brought to manifest. The second is to channelise the energy thus accumulated for expansion, fulfillment and growth, directed towards serving everything in the universe.
Swami Vivekananda puts it as “involution followed by evolution”. In his own inimitable way he related it to human life as “internal contemplation followed by external service.” Again, this principle forms the backbone of the ideal of “renunciation and service”.
To a person in whom these two forces have been harmonized, the whole creation is nothing but a grand display of these forces of unification and universalisation. This is the very secret of Nature; this is the science of sciences. This cosmic force operates from the gigantic galaxies to the invisible atom – from ant to Brahma – as they put it in our scriptures. This cycle of matter to energy conversion goes on eternally.
What could be the role of man in this great universal drama? To understand that, he has only to look around again to Nature and her working.
There is the great sun illuminating the entire world and filling it up with its light energy. It must have taken millions of years of condensation and concentration to create the dense matter within it before it turn out to be an almost infinite source of energy burning itself off – sacrificing itself to serve the creation for centuries to come. Look at the trees around. What are they for? The pigments in the plant world only can capture effectively the immense amount of light energy falling on the earth and convert it into all these forms of energy, food, fuel, and so on, by which man can make his life beautiful.
So much man realize his place and role in this vast creation. As a potential source of divinity, he has to convert himself to be an instrument to capture the divine energy, condense, concentrate, focus and centralize unto himself as much as of these positive cosmic divine forces and through him route them back into the universe, to complete the cycle. In short, he must learn to make himself an instrument in the divine play.
How can man attract this supra-human forces unto himself? Just as one pure tiny crystal can attract to itself like molecules in a saturated solution, grow and expand, so can man expand his speck of divinity and make it operative as a divine force. Through renunciation of all the unwanted dissipating forces within him, through the power of his self-will, sadhana and surrender, he can in this very life manifest divinity.
Excerpt from the Chapter “Mother, upon thee I meditate” in the book “Snake and Ladder” (A Few Drops from the Nectar of Bhagavad Gita) by Dr.M.Lakshmi Kumari, President, Vivekananda Kendra.
In simple terms, it may be said that by enhancing the ‘unifying’ and ‘universalising’ forces in his life, man can move from imperfection to perfection. The former is the ultimate goal of all disciplines, austerities, sadhanas or yoga, that is, centralizing and focusing the vital energies in us bringing them under control and thus strengthening and ennobling and integrating one’s personality. It is only then that the inner potentialities can be brought to manifest. The second is to channelise the energy thus accumulated for expansion, fulfillment and growth, directed towards serving everything in the universe.
Swami Vivekananda puts it as “involution followed by evolution”. In his own inimitable way he related it to human life as “internal contemplation followed by external service.” Again, this principle forms the backbone of the ideal of “renunciation and service”.
To a person in whom these two forces have been harmonized, the whole creation is nothing but a grand display of these forces of unification and universalisation. This is the very secret of Nature; this is the science of sciences. This cosmic force operates from the gigantic galaxies to the invisible atom – from ant to Brahma – as they put it in our scriptures. This cycle of matter to energy conversion goes on eternally.
What could be the role of man in this great universal drama? To understand that, he has only to look around again to Nature and her working.
There is the great sun illuminating the entire world and filling it up with its light energy. It must have taken millions of years of condensation and concentration to create the dense matter within it before it turn out to be an almost infinite source of energy burning itself off – sacrificing itself to serve the creation for centuries to come. Look at the trees around. What are they for? The pigments in the plant world only can capture effectively the immense amount of light energy falling on the earth and convert it into all these forms of energy, food, fuel, and so on, by which man can make his life beautiful.
So much man realize his place and role in this vast creation. As a potential source of divinity, he has to convert himself to be an instrument to capture the divine energy, condense, concentrate, focus and centralize unto himself as much as of these positive cosmic divine forces and through him route them back into the universe, to complete the cycle. In short, he must learn to make himself an instrument in the divine play.
How can man attract this supra-human forces unto himself? Just as one pure tiny crystal can attract to itself like molecules in a saturated solution, grow and expand, so can man expand his speck of divinity and make it operative as a divine force. Through renunciation of all the unwanted dissipating forces within him, through the power of his self-will, sadhana and surrender, he can in this very life manifest divinity.
Excerpt from the Chapter “Mother, upon thee I meditate” in the book “Snake and Ladder” (A Few Drops from the Nectar of Bhagavad Gita) by Dr.M.Lakshmi Kumari, President, Vivekananda Kendra.
Grateful thanks t0 Dr M.Lakshmi Kumari and Vivekananda Kendra.
Facts and Figures-4: "Super Crunching"
What is Super Crunching?
It is statistical analysis that impacts real-world decisions. Super Crunching decisions usually bring together some combination of size, speed, and scale. The sizes of the data set are really big – both in the number of observations and in the number of variables. The speed of the analysis is increasing…. Increasingly, business and government datasets are being measured not in mega- or giga-bytes but in tera- and even peta-bytes of text… Google has about four petabytes of storage which it is constantly crunching.
Courtesy: “Super Crunchers: How anything can be predicted” by Ian Ayres & Books Page of The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.16, 2007.
It is statistical analysis that impacts real-world decisions. Super Crunching decisions usually bring together some combination of size, speed, and scale. The sizes of the data set are really big – both in the number of observations and in the number of variables. The speed of the analysis is increasing…. Increasingly, business and government datasets are being measured not in mega- or giga-bytes but in tera- and even peta-bytes of text… Google has about four petabytes of storage which it is constantly crunching.
Courtesy: “Super Crunchers: How anything can be predicted” by Ian Ayres & Books Page of The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.16, 2007.
Grateful thanks to Ian Ayres and The New Indian Express.
Facts and Figures-3: New Energy and Wind Energy in India
Globally, India is fifth in production of new energy and fourth in the production of wind power.
Tamil Nadu is the leading producer of wind energy in the country. More than 50% of wind energy produced in India is from Tamil Nadu.
Current installed capacity of renewable energy in India is around 10,600 MW.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt of India, has set an ambitious target of producing 14,000 MW in addition to the existing capacity.
Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, Sep.27, 2007.
Tamil Nadu is the leading producer of wind energy in the country. More than 50% of wind energy produced in India is from Tamil Nadu.
Current installed capacity of renewable energy in India is around 10,600 MW.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt of India, has set an ambitious target of producing 14,000 MW in addition to the existing capacity.
Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, Sep.27, 2007.
Grateful thanks to The Hindu.
Websites to Watch-4 : Top Ten Lists by Subha Venkateshan, Education Express
There is always a fundamental sense of comparison among people in all walks of life and we are always looking for the best. A recent trend has been to rank the top 10 of everything we can think of. The website http://listverse.com does this and has the ‘Top Ten’ of many categories including art, entertainment, humour, literature and even ‘bizarre’.
It lists the top 10 mad scientists, 10 unresolved mysteries and top 10 true stories, 10 strangest rock and roll lebels, the top 10 errors in Da Vinci code, the top 10 pre-3D video games, the top 10 horror movies and 10 movies that have the best twists, top 10 incredible recordings, top 10 populated nations etc.
Excerpt from "Top Ten Lists by Subha Venkateshan", Education Express, Supplement to The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.28, 2007,
It lists the top 10 mad scientists, 10 unresolved mysteries and top 10 true stories, 10 strangest rock and roll lebels, the top 10 errors in Da Vinci code, the top 10 pre-3D video games, the top 10 horror movies and 10 movies that have the best twists, top 10 incredible recordings, top 10 populated nations etc.
Excerpt from "Top Ten Lists by Subha Venkateshan", Education Express, Supplement to The New Indian Express, Madurai, Sep.28, 2007,
Grateful thanks to Ms Subha Venkatesan and The New Indian Express.
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