A Thought for Today :

Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart -

Steve Jobs

(Grateful thanks to Vinod for the photo)

Facts & Figures-32: US spending for Energy Research

According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. spending for all energy research - nuclear, wind, coal, solar, biofuels, etc - was a meager $3.2 billion in 2006. The Pentagon spends that much in about 40 hours.

Excerpt from the article, ‘Uncle Sam Needs to Solve the Energy Crisis’ by Jeffrey D. Sachs in the May. 29, 2008 issue of TIME.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1810308,00.html#

Grateful thanks to Mr.Jeffrey D. Sachs and TIME.

Eyecatchers-78: "Road to Vastu"

It is only a few days back I wrote my views about Vastu. Here is a news item on Vastu from India Today.

Mumbai: When all else fails, turn to God and pray that everything works out. At least this is what the disbelievers will say of the Nagpur police’s latest road safety venture. Unable to check the growing number of accidents, the rural police are now relying on vastu shastra for divine intervention. Vastu expert Sushil Fatepuria, with the help of the police, has installed 12 vastu pyramids in accident prone zones to reduce “negative energies” and improve the “vibes” of the area.

Superintendent of Police, Yashasvi Yadav feels the results are encouraging. Since November, no fatal accidents have been reported at these spots. He, however, concedes that there is no scientific explanation for the experiment and explains that his team has stepped up conventional policing measures also. With stringent policing and a helping hand from vastu experts, Nagpur’s roads might just become safer. – Aditi Pai.

Courtesy: India Today, June 10, 2008.
Grateful thanks to Aditi Pai and India Today.

Letters-22: "Celestial Achievement"

By putting 10 satellites in orbit, ISRO has conquered yet another space frontier for India (“Scoring a Perfect Ten”, India Today, May 12, 2008). In the midst of grim news like starvation deaths and farmer suicides, the organization has given us a reason to celebrate. – S.Balakrishnan, Jamshedpur, Mail of the Week, India Today, June 10, 2008

Grateful thanks to Mr.S.Balakrishnan and India Today.

S&T Watch-10: Brain and Sarcasm

Scientists have located the part of the brain responsible for understanding sarcasm.

Courtesy: Claire Gutierrez, Weekly Review, Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 2008
Grateful thanks to Claire Gutierrez and Harper’s Weekly.

A Thought for Today :

All our dreams can come true -

if we have the courage to pursue them -

Walt Disney

Grateful thanks to Vinod for the photo.

How to Make Your Wishes Come True

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Have you ever wanted to be able to do everything you ever dreamt of or wished for? It's easy and a great way to get to know yourself better.

Steps

1. Make a list of what you want in life.
   
2. Prioritize the items on your list. Begin with what is most important to you.
   
3. Determine what you need to do to have that wish come true. For example,
   
   • Wish: To play the guitar well
     
   • Need to do: Take classes
     
   • Sit with a friend who knows how to play and get tips
     
   • Get some books from the library
     
   • Search the internet for information
     
   
   
4. Make it a point to do what you need to do in order to make your wish come true. Start slowly.
   

Tips

• Know exactly what you want because what you might have wanted when you were ten years old is not as important when you are fifteen years old.
  
• Are you doing this for yourself or for someone else? This will determine whether you'll stick to what you need to do to get what you want.
  
• Have patience. You have to keep practicing in order to get better. You also have to keep trying even if you fail the first few times.
  
• If you complete all the items on your list, congratulations! You can now start a new list with many new wishes. Life is filled with many opportunities and so much to offer.
  

Warnings

• As you are doing the tasks required to make your wish come true, you might learn or realize that this isn’t really what you want. Don’t be discouraged; it might lead to a new dream and/or a better understanding of who you are as a person.
  
• There might be more to do than what you initially thought, but understand that it is an iterative process.
  
• Wishes come true through hard work and persistence. It is not something that will happen instantly.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Express Your Individuality
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make Your Wishes Come True. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Stay Safe in the Sun

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Excessive sun exposure can cause sunburn, skin damage, skin cancer (the most common form of cancer), cataracts, and heat stroke. Take the right precautions to avoid these hazards and enjoy the sun safely.

Steps

1. Select an appropriate sunscreen.
   
2. Check your sunscreens SPF. The SPF, or "sun protection factor" number, contrary to popular belief, does not signify how strong the SPF is. It tells you how long it will keep you protected (theoretically). For example: it is in how many minutes you burn x the number that tells you how long it should last (even though you should reapply often, say every few hours, or more often if you burn easily). So if you burn in 10 minutes of sun exposure without any protection, SPF 30 will keep you protected for 300 minutes (in theory!).
   
   • Keep in mind that SPF is not cumulative. Applying one SPF 15 sunscreen and another SPF 20 sunscreen may give you slightly better coverage, but it does not add up to SPF 35.
     
   
   
3. Look for both UVA and UVB coverage. This means that the sunscreen will block both kinds of damaging ultraviolet light.
   
4. Look for a PABA-free sunscreen. Para-aminobenzoic acid, or PABA, was used in sunscreens for a long time, but it can stain clothing and cause an allergic reaction in some people.
   
5. Choose a water-resistant sunscreen, if you will be swimming or sweating. No sunscreen is truly waterproof, so you should reapply the sunscreen frequently, according to package instructions.
   
6. Choose a sunscreen that suits you. Some daily sunscreens aren't as gooey or smelly as some of the heavy-duty outdoor sport formulations. Some sunscreens come in spray-on, roll-on, and stick formats. Some sunscreens come with built-in insect repellent. Some even temporarily turn your skin a different color! If you dislike wearing it so much that you don't, it will do you no good. Wearing sunscreen need not be unpleasant, so smell and try different sunscreen brands and styles to find the one(s) that are best suited for you.
   
   • The word "sunblock" is a misnomer. Sunscreen slows the effects of the sun on skin by absorbing, reflecting, and scattering UV rays, but it doesn't stop them.
     
   
   
7. Apply the sunscreen generously. If you're using a cream, the amount of sunscreen you should use is about the size of a regular golf-ball, or 1 oz.
   
8. Start ahead of time. Ideally, begin applying sunscreen at least a half hour before you go out.
   
   • It takes approximately 20 minutes for sunscreen to become effective after it has been applied.
     
   
   
9. Use more than you think you need. Most people do not use enough sunscreen, stopping at somewhere between one fourth and one half the quantity applied to test sunscreens.
   
10. Don't just grease it on. Put a little on and rub it in. Then do it again and again, until you have a deep, penetrating layer of sunscreen. Do it right and you won't notice it at all and it will truly protect.
    
11. Be thorough. Put it on the most vulnerable areas: the entire face and forehead, especially the nose and tips of ears, back of the neck, backs of knees, and arms. Make sure to cover all skin that will be exposed. Don't forget the tops of feet, if you're wearing sandals. Have a friend help with hard-to-reach spots like backs and shoulders.
    
12. Keep your sunscreen relatively fresh. Expired sunscreen may not be as effective as recently-purchased sunscreen, but in general, any sunscreen is better than no sunscreen. If there's no expiration date, try it and see if it still works, or replace anything older than about three years.
    
13. Cover up. Light layers of clothing work best, in light colors which reflect heat, rather than dark ones, which absorb it. Try a shell or tank top, and then wear a light camp shirt open over that. Natural fibers like cotton are coolest.
    
14. Wear the right hat. Choose a hat with at least a 3-inch (8 cm) brim all around. A hat will also help to keep you cool. Baseball caps leave the ears and neck exposed, so they're not the best choice for sun protection. A hat will also help to protect your eyes from glare.
    
15. Wear light-colored, loose fitting clothing. It will keep you cooler and help prevent sunburn by reflecting the sunlight. Be aware, though, that clothing may not block sunlight completely. In fact, an ordinary t-shirt may only be the equivalent of SPF 5. Look for clothing designed to block sun, even up to SPF 50, if you spend a lot of time outdoors.
    
16. Wear sunglasses. Choose sunglasses that block UV light and wrap around to block light from the side, too. If you're not sure whether your old sunglasses adequately block UV, ask an optometrist to have them checked. Long term exposure to UV light can lead to cataracts. Wear sunglasses in conjunction with a hat.
    
17. Stay hydrated. Water is the best choice. If you'll be exercising heavily, a sports drink can help to replace electrolytes. Drink in proportion to how much you perspire, but remember that too much too quickly can harm you. It's best to take frequent, moderate portions. Too much sugar, as in soda, can undermine the benefits of the liquid, and alcohol can dehydrate you outright.
    
18. Stay out of the sun. Especially between 10am and 4pm, stay out of the sun as much as possible. Finding a spot in the shade, carrying an umbrella or parasol, and scheduling outdoor activities to avoid those hours can help to minimize exposure.
    
19. Limit your total time in the sun. Roll up car windows and run the air conditioning rather than dangling your arm out the window. Glass blocks UV light reasonably well.
    
20. Keep cool. If you have heavy physical activity to perform outside, try to do it in the morning or evening, not the heat of midday. Choose a shady spot to sit. Sip a cool drink. Take a swim.
    

Tips

• Use the 5-S mnemonic to remember sun safety:
  
  1. Slop on some sunscreen (at least SPF 30).
     
  2. Slurp up some water.
     
  3. Slip on a shirt—you can buy SPF 50 shirts and clothing now.
     
  4. Slap on a sun hat—with at least a 3" brim all the way around, not a baseball hat.
     
  5. Step into the shade.
     
  
  
• Use these tips in combination. That is, put on sunscreen, SPF-protective clothing, and a hat. Stay in the shade during the worst parts of the day.
  
• Remember that children need to be educated, not just greased up! Teach them why skin cancer is far and away the most common cancer, how sun damage causes it, and how to protect themselves.
  
• Keep sunscreen, sunglasses, and a hat available. Leave them in your bag or vehicle so that they'll be there when you need them.
  
• Don't forget your lips, they can get burned too. Slather on a lip balm with SPF 15+.
  
• A T-shirt isn't always effective: the SPF of a plain White T-shirt can be as low as 4!
  
• Some fabric dyes are commercially available to raise the SPF of fabrics to as much as 30. Shop around if you spend a lot of time in the sun.
  

Warnings

• Sunscreen is not a complete solution by itself, nor a license to spend unlimited time outdoors.
  
• It's possible to get sunburned on a cloudy day, and it's possible that the clouds will clear up during the day. Take and use sun protection even if it's cool and cloudy when you leave.
  
• It is possible to get burned through clothing. Clothing typically has between a 3-10 SPF. Wet clothing has even less. To be safe, apply sunscreen underneath clothing. However reapplying under clothing or under bathing suits can be cumbersome; therefore, an easier alternative might be washing clothes with a product that offers protection to clothes, such as Rit Sun Guard, which can provide an UPF (Ultra-Violet Protection) of 30 to clothes and lasts for 20 washes.
  
• If possible, you should purchase a sunscreen that is paraben-free. Parabens have been linked to breast cancer.
  
• When skiing or snowboarding, it is common to get a sunburn on your face. If you are planning to have some fun on the mountains, in any season, put on your sunscreen!
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Prevent a Sunburn
  
• How to Treat a Sunburn
  
• How to Make Sunscreen
  
• How to Get Rid of Sunstroke
  
• How to Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night
  
• How to Check for Skin Cancer
  
• How to Get a Tan Tattoo
  
• How to Apply Sunscreen
  

Sources and Citations

• Australia's Health campaign on how to stay safe in the sun, by Wikipedia
  
• Scientific American article about sunscreen.
  
• Scientific American "Ask the Experts" column about how sunscreen works.
  
• Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Healthiness by Dr. Dean Edell, p. 340-342.
  
• Wikipedia article on skin cancer
  
• Wikipedia article on cataracts.
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Stay Safe in the Sun. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

A Thought for Today :

Give pleasure. Lose no chance in giving pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit – Henry Drummond.

(Grateful thanks to Vinod for the photograph).

Eyecatchers-77: "Orange Consumption"

For the third year in a row, the consumption of oranges in Britain declined because people were too busy to peel the rind off the fruit.

Courtesy: Claire Gutierrez, Weekly Review, Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 2008.
Grateful thanks to Claire Gutierrez and Harper’s Weekly.

Environment-2: Green Power

Two students from Virginia University, Manoj Sinha and Charles Ransler of Darden School of Business, have started a major project with an Indian partner to supply electricity to villages in Bihar by burning rice husk. The partner, Gyanesh Pandey, an engineer, oversees the operations of Husk Power Systems in Bihar. As of now, two pilot rice husk generators provide power to about 10,000 hamlets. The project has the potential to reduce 200 tonnes of carbon emission annually in each village compared to diesel or coal generators. Also, it may help turn the huge piles of husk that accumulate in many villages into two valuable products: ELECTRICITY and ASH, which can be sold to cement factories. The company is planning to put the mini power plants in hundreds of villages within a few years.

Courtesy: The Week, June 8, 2008.
Grateful thanks to The Week.

S&T Watch-9: Supercharging Lithium Batteries

Battery developers continue to push for supercharging lithium batteries . Researchers recently unveiled a nanowire electrode that could more than triple lithium batteries’ energy storage capacity and improve their safety. Nanowires of silicon just a few atoms across can absorb and release about 10 times more lithium ions than the graphite electrodes that are commonly used today.

Additional advances will be required before lithium batteries with nanowire electrodes deliver major increases in performance of electric-vehicle is the need to scale up the process of making nanowires, which have yet to be mass-produced for commercial application. Another limitation is that while silicon nanowires make great anodes, lithium-battery technology has greater need for improved cathodes. Labs are working on novel materials for cathodes. That is the holy grail for this business. Anyone who can generate much higher cathode capacity will bring a huge breakthrough.

Courtesy: The Week, June 8, 2008
Grateful thanks to The Week.

How to Protect Yourself from Workplace Monitoring

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Surveys suggest that 3 out of 4 companies monitor employees' online activity. Protect yourself from workplace prying by following a few simple rules.

Steps

1. Cover your clacks. If you suspect the man is logging your every keystroke, install Spyware Doctor 3.8. It'll expose Any program running silently in the background while you work. (Note: you may need an admin password to install the app. If your IT department refuses to help, try bribing them with a spool of blank DVDs.)
   
2. Surf undercover. Prevent your boss from tracking your daily URL crawl with a Web-based program like The Cloak, which masks the addresses of sites you visit by redirecting your browsing through its domain.
   
3. Change up your email. Don't use your work email for anything other than, well, work. If you want to send private messages over your employer's servers, set up an encrypted email account with a provider like Hushmail.
   
4. IM on the DL. With an admin password, you can download an encrypted service like PSST or a program like Encrypted Messenger, which encodes most IM clients. The quick and dirty way: open an AOL IM account and use the Web-based chat service. With all the Web activity at work, the chance that anyone will notice your texting is small.
   
5. Get peace of mind. Still spooked? Check out the Electronic Privacy Information Center's guide to cloaking tools.
   

Warnings

• Always use Extreme caution when trying anything of these things. If you are caught, you will most likely find out what it is like to have unlimited free time on your hand.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Remove Spyware
  
• How to Install and Use Ad Aware for Spyware Removal
  
• How to Look Busy at Work Without Really Working
  

Sources and Citations

• Wired Magazine - Original source of this article. Shared with permission.
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Protect Yourself from Workplace Monitoring. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Unblock Blocked Websites

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit


An editor has suggested that this article be merged with: "How to SpecialBypass a School Filter" Per the merge policy, if these topics are determined to be similar but distinct, then the articles will remain separate. Please comment on the discussion page. Notice added on 2008-02-01.
He is how to unblock those annoying pages that keep you from going to a website at school. For example, imagine this. You're already self-educated. You read the Odyssey in fifth grade, and now your high school teacher wants you to read it again and look on some website to figure out who all the characters are, which of course you already know. So if you want to ditch that and do and check your Neopets auctions instead, here is how.

Steps

1. Type in whatever website you want to go to. If it is blocked then go to www.cloakmyurl.com. Type your website address into the box on cloakmyurl.com and you are done.
   
2. Note that for some schools, that will be blocked. If so, try other proxy sites (these can be found with google).
   

Warnings

• You might get caught
  
• You could get in serious trouble
  
• You may be banned from the computer lab
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Unblock Blocked Websites at School. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Letters-21: "Dumb Cops?"

Are our policemen so dumb that they store hand-grenades that can go off anytime? (‘Bombs don’t matter’, The Week, May 18, 2008). It shows they are not trained even in the most basic things. The blunder would have cost many lives. No wonder many films show the Indian policeman as a pot-bellied, idiotic character. The government should take proactive steps to give policemen a more respectable image. Again, a common sight on the streets is of cops misbehaving with citizens. Giving policemen crash courses in mass psychology will help them deal with people in a more professional way. (Dinesh Bhatia, on email).

Courtesy: ‘The Week’, June 8, 2008 (Letters)
Grateful thanks to Mr.Dinesh Bhatia and ‘The Week’.

A Thought for Today :

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 (Grateful thanks to Vinod for the photograph).

Eyecatchers-76: "Chennai Egmore Railway Station celebrates 100 Years"

The station handles about 25 mainline trains and 115 suburban trains and about one lakh people daily. Its average earning per day is Rs.17.06 lakh, according to a Southern Railway press release.

Excerpt from The Hindu, Maduria, June 11, 2008.

S&T Watch-8: 'Roadrunner, the Latest Super Computer'

Roadrunner, the world’s latest super computer, performs million billion calculations per second. It is said that what takes 46 years for 6 million people to do a sum, Roadrunner does in one day. The very same sum will take 1500 years for the world’s first super computer, Cray 1. That should give you an idea about how fast Roadrunner is. It costs US $ 120 million.

It will help scientific studie4s like how HIV vaccines should be administered, mapping of human brain, nuclear fusion, which bring the world limitless cheap energy and climate change.

Based on “Roadrunner is here” by Ian Sample, Guardian Newspapers Ltd, 2008 and excerpted from The Hindu, Madurai, June 11, 2008.

Grateful thanks to Ian Sample, Guardian Newspapers Ltd and The Hindu.

Facts & Figures-31:

1. India has around 40 million widows. [‘The Week’, April 20, 2008 (‘The Living Dead’)]. Many of them are already disadvantaged economically and socially. But life becomes hell for hem when they are made victims of superstition. Society should fight this evil. Widows deserve more respect. (Letter from O.P.S.Bhadoria, Gandhinagar).

2. Much to the worry of environmentalists, India is on the way to becoming the third largest carbon emitter by 2015.

Courtesy: ‘The Week’, June 08, 2008 - Grateful thanks to 'The Week'.

Random Thoughts-12: "On Vaastu"

After numerology, it is ‘Vaastu’ now. Again I picked up the idea during my morning walk. I have already about this hospital. It was an ambitious project: a Medical College Hospital. Even after so many years, the college is nowhere in sight. As for the hospital, it started well and then decline set in. Now under the new management with a clear service motive, it is slowly – very slowly – picking up.

Obviously, the management should have been racking its brain: Why? Why? With very nominal fee (Rs.10 per month per person for any number of consultations!) and real care of the patients by a capable well-qualified physician, why does the hospital not flourish, especially when private hospitals are overcrowded and where the patients are being fleeced under some pretext or the other. Probably at this stage, somebody must have come up with the bright idea of ‘Vaastu’.

First the main entrance was closed and signs were put there directing the patients to the newly-constructed entrance a little farther off. It did not stop there. After a few days, a granite wall was springing up completely blocking the old entrance. It was a pathetic and painful sight to me. When things start failing, human beings, even those with spiritual background, fall a prey to all sorts of advice and desperately try to clutch anything to hold on.

Will the change bring success and prosperity, sorry, more patients to the hospital? Though not necessarily a believer in ‘Vaastu’ , I pray that the hospital succeeds, for it is in the interests of the common people of the locality that such a hospital should not close.

May the Good Lord bless the hospital! May the management succeed in their attempt to revive the hospital!! May it serve the sick-poor and bring them health and happiness. And lastly, may Goddess Visalakshi turn her benign eyes on the place and a full-fledged hospital comes up there, fulfilling the dreams of the promoters of the project!

For reading a detailed article on 'Vastu Shastra' from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaastu