A Thought for Today-185: December 26, 2007

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves - Thornton Wilder

A Thought for Today-184: December 25, 2007

Life has a meaning, our birth has a meaning: that meaning is to realize in ourselves, in each one of us, something of God, to express in our daily life something that is associated with God, knowledge, kindness, benevolence, purity and happiness. - M.P.Pandit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

A Thought for Today-183: December 24, 2007

Unstable emotions not only disturb our own state of mind, they also disturb the minds of others - His Holiness The Dalai Lama

A Thought for Today-182: December 23, 2007

The more we are able to develop an altruistic attitude, the happier we will feel and the better the atmosphere we will create around us. - His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

63,540 Quotations from PoemHunter.com!

PoemHunter.com gives 63,540 Quotations from 4826 famous persons, author-wise and subject-wise! My grateful thanks to PoemHunter.com!

For link to the Quotations page of PoemHunter.com:

http://www.poemhunter.com/quotations/

Q&A-2: How are we to live in a world full of violence, greed, envy and brutality? Will we not be destroyed?

“By eliminating these negative elements from our personal life, we can create a solid, living fortress, around ourselves. Impurities shy away from Purity. Even if an individual is destroyed by a combination of evil forces, in the very act of dying he releases energies that will eventually overcome the power of evil for the benefit of mankind.

- M.P.Pandit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

Courtesy: “M.P.Pandit: A Peep into his past” by P.Raja
Published by DIPTI Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry-605002

Q&A-1: How can we get rid of the present world-wide violence?

“By creating centres of peace, pockets of peace, wherever we can. First we start with ourselves and then associate with others who are on the same wave-length. This is a sure way of combating the forces of violence on the subtle levels.”

- M.P.Pandit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

Courtesy: “M.P.Pandit: A Peep into his past” by P.Raja
Published by DIPTI Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry-605002

Self-improvement-43: 'Right Beginnings' - James Allen

Ø Life is full of beginnings. They are presented every day and every hour to every person. Most beginnings are small, and appear trivial and insignificant, but in reality they are the most important things in life.

Ø When a man begins the day by rising early, he will find that the silent early hour is conducive to clearness of mind and calmness of thought. It will enable him to meet any and every difficulty with wisdom and calm strength.

Ø Begin today aright, and, aided by the accumulated experiences of all your past days, live it better than any of your previous days. The character of the whole day depends upon the way it is begun.

Ø Another beginning which is of great importance is the beginning of any particular and responsible undertaking. The right beginning and first essential is a definite method plan on which to build.

Ø Your whole life is a series of effects having their cause in thought – in your own thought. All conduct is made and moulded by thought, all deeds, good or bad, are thoughts made visible.

Ø The man who patiently studies how to put into his mind the seeds of wholesome and charitable thoughts, will obtain the best results in life. The greatest blessedness comes to him, who infuses into his mind the purest and noblest thoughts.

Courtesy: James Allen’s “Byways of Blessedness”
With grateful thanks to: Professor S.Raghunathan, Former Director, Computer Centre, Alagappa University, Karaikudi-630003, Tamilnadu, India

A Thought for Today-181: December 22, 2007

Life is not meant to be somehow lived. It is to be geared to one central purpose if one is to achieve anything at all. - M.P.Pandit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

A Thought for Today-180: December 21, 2007

Evolution is always experimental. All progress is gained through mistakes and their rectification. No good comes fully fashioned, out of God's hand, but has to be carved out through repeated experiments and repeated failures by ourselves. This is the law of individual growth. - Gandhiji

A Thought for Today-179: December 20, 2007

To be conscious is the first step towards overcoming - Sri Aurobindo

A Thought for Today=178: December 19, 2007

Happiness means that our life is rhythmic and harmonious - Swami Paramananda

A Thought for Today-177: December 18, 2007

Happiness lives clothed in the garb of work - Swami Rama Tirtha

Eyecatchers-48: Super chip moves IT optically - ELECTRICAL SIGNALS CAN BE TURNED INTO LIGHT BEAM

Like a highway sign that says 'No Entry,' semiconductor designers may soon face the end of the road on the electric pathways used to move signals inside a computer chip. As they slide into the multi core era - where one slab of silicon might well house 2, 4 and soon 8, separate processing cores - they are grappling with a pressing problem: 'How to build the copper rails that carry the signals between the cores thin enough to squeeze more and more transistors on a computer chip. Even Intel co-founder Dr.Gordon Moore, whose "Law" predicted the doubling of chip complexity every two years, does not give current technology more than a decade, before it faces a physical roadblock.

Which is why last week's announcement by IBM, of a breakthrough in swapping copper rails for an optical waveguide is causing some excitement in the semiconductor industry.

A waveguide is the optical equivalent of a pair of railway lines - it forces an optical beam to stay within the guide. IBM engineers reported in the journal Optical Express that they had succeeded in converting the electrical signals of today's microchips into beams of light. Since these can be much, much, finer than the thinnest copper rail, they believe this will allow chip makers to put, not just dozens, but hundreds, of separate cores on a single processor, all simultaneously attacking the task at hand. Even the waveguide carrying all these beams would be 200 times thinner than a strand of human hair.

In other words, the first hurdle to creating a supercomputer in a box, maybe even on a single chip, seems to have been crossed. But please don't rush to order one any time soon.

The researchers say practical systems that deploy optical waveguides within silicon chips, are at least a decade away - Special Correspondent, Bangalore, The Hindu

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, December 17, 2007.

Grateful thanks to The Hindu.

A Thought for Today-176: December 17, 2007

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, but to love wisdom and live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust - Henry David Thoreau

A Thought for Today-175: December 16, 2007

That which is inherent in man is his virtue - Gandhiji

A Thought for Today-174: December 15, 2007

The only way to have a life is to commit to it like crazy - Angelina Jolie

A Thought for Today-173: December 14, 2007

Life is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom - Greek adage

Eyecatchers-47 : 'Sun no longer biggest body in the Solar System' - Michael Hopkin, Nature News Service

The Sun is no longer the largest object in the Solar System: That honour has fallen temporarily to a previously innocuous comet. The comet called 17P Holmes, shot to prominence in late October when its brightness suddenly increased roughly a million-fold.

Since then, both its size and its profile have grown - earlier this month astronomers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy declared that its diameter had outstripped that of our Sun.

Many ancient cultures interpreted comets as portents of doom. Should we be worried? Are not comets supposed to be small? It seems ridiculous that the titanic Sun could be dwarfed by a comet.

Although huge in diameter, 17P Holmes 's gravitational field is negligible in comparison. "Its just a few snowflakes per cubic meter," Roche says - a far cry from the superdense, raging nuclear inferno of the Sun.. So how is this comet holding together? It is not really.

The ice is falling away from the comet's core, and as the coma gets bigger it also gets more dispersed. Eventually it will get so big and spread out that it won't even be discernible as belonging to the comet anymore. Is 17P Holmes dominating the sky?

Not exactly dominating, although it is visible as a fuzzy 'star' in the northeastern skies, and should continue to be large and bright for weeks, if not months.

Holmes Comet has been seen to burst in brightness before. In November 1892 and January 1893 it displayed a 'double burst' - although the Hawaii astronomers describe the current ongoing burst as "unprecedented."

It is very difficult to say what triggered this outburst, Roche admits. "Comets are tumbling through space, flexing and rolling," he says. "They are undergoing lots of stresses and strains, and they are very porous - they are more like Swiss cheese than a solid ice cube, so bits can easily crack and flake off." It is also possible that an interaction with the Sun's 'weather' - a stream of radiation flowing from the Sun - could have triggered the comet to bloom in brightness.

And it is showing signs of developing a tail, as many comets do when when their comas begin to be buffetted backward by the Sun's rays. How long will it last? Also difficult to say. The Hawaii team estimates that it is still expanding at a staggering 0.5 kilometres every second. But Roche points out that, the more it grows, the more its mass dwindles as its ice drifts off into space or gets left behind. "It is shedding mass all the time," he says. "It may just fade away and become a normal, unspectacular comet again." Some porous, rocky bodies in the Solar System are thought to be the rocky corpses of comets that have lost all their mass. Others, such as Shoemaker-Levy 9, are ripped apart when they stray too close to other huge bodies such as Jupiter. And some comets just die a mundane death, Roche says: "Every now and then, they just fall apart, almost as if they are dying of old age."

Excerpts from: "Sun no longer the biggest body in the Solar System" by Michael Hopkin
Courtesy: The Hindu, Science & Technology page, December 13, 2007

Eyecatchers-46 : 'Net Kiosks in Villages soon' - M.Dinesh Varma

The public-private partnership initiative to bridge the digital divide by opening Internet kiosks across villages in Tamil Nadu is likely to be rolled out over the next few months.

As many as nine players have bid for a stake in operating an estimated 5,400 cyber kiosks or Common Service Centres in the State. The bidding process concluded on Friday and a shortlist is expected to be framed soon.

"We are looking to place orders by the end of the month," IT Secretary C.Chandramouli told The Hindu.

Each kiosk would have a computer, a scanner and printer, besides broadband-enabled Internet connectivity. The Common Service Centres were being set up in the State as part of a Union Government drive to take the benefits of Information and Communication Technology to the grassroots.

An estimated one lakh such centres were proposed across the country on a ratio of one for every three villages. The exercise was estimated to cost about Rs.5,500 crore, to be shared by the Centre, the State Government and the private sector.

The kiosks would offer a range of e-governance services, including issue of application forms, certificates and payment of electricity, telephone and water bills.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, December 12, 2007