Zimbabwean Inflation

Last updated on: May 23, 2008 at 9:27 am By Desh Kapoor

The Indian people and the government are both quaking with fear with inflation hovering at around 8%. The people can barely make two ends meet with prices soaring, and the government knows that if prices don't fall, the government will. But India is not the only nation grappling with rising inflation. The entire world is. So which is the nation with highest inflation rates? Read on. . . Zimbabwe: 355,000%! The inflation in Zimbabwe for the month of March 2008 rose to 355,000%! Yes, 355,000 per cent! It more than doubled from the February figure of 165,000%. Economists say that it is a miracle that the Zimbabwean economy is still surviving and prices have been rising to unprecedented proportions. Inflation surged between February and March following the sudden rise in money supply that flooded the economy to finance the 2008 elections. Apart from this food and non-alcoholic beverages continued to drive up inflation. Almost 80% of the nation is unemployed. The Zimbabwean central bank has introduced $500 million bearer cheques (or currency notes) for the public, and $5 billion, $25 billion, $50 billion agro-cheques for farmers. Just last fortnight the nation had introduced $250 million bearer cheques. A sausage sandwich sells for Zimbabwean $50 million. A 15-kg bag of potatoes cost Zimbabwean $260 million. But then, Zimbabwean $50 million is roughly equal to US$ 1! Read more

Arrival is the seed of Fear

Last updated on: May 23, 2008 at 8:46 am By Desh Kapoor

Truth is infinite and has no locii. When we try and place arbitrarily a coordinate for a value of what we call "Truth", then since the real Truth is infinite - our "Truth" gets challenged. Even after "arriving" at the our "Truth" we still seem to find something beyond that which renders our "Truth" incomplete. This act of declaration of arrival - through following of scriptures or dictates of a Master - and the feeling of incompleteness inherently creates a fear. Uncertainty around our capacity to pin down the Truth is what creates ego. For in absence of any real arrival we formalize the supposed arrival by giving it a stamp of "ONLY" or the "Best". So, our "arrival" or conclusion becomes better or more complete than others. Not because it is so, but because it has a mandate of a self-proclaimed "Judge" or the backing of Numbers. The louder the shrill, the more confident we feel of our arrival. The yearning of this safety - in numbers, in an authority, in a proclamation - betrays a fear not peace. It betrays the underlying incapacity as opposed to confidence. When we create a peg or a fixed reality for ourselves, the process is always the same - the yearning from here to that peg is cloaked as "Hope", the reaching there creates "Happiness", falling short creates "Sorrow", and the time after being there brings "Fear" (of losing it - for reality is dynamic and non-static). Read more

Khuda Jane Kahan Se Jalwaye Jana Kahan Tak Hai

Last updated on: May 22, 2008 at 3:10 pm By Desh Kapoor

I heard this song from Abida Parveen and its kinda tough to get over it since I heard first time (thanks to Pramila for suggesting it). It is very haunting. Khuda Jane Kahan Se Jalwaye Jana Kahan Tak Hai - Abida Parveen Read more

NATURAL INSTINCTS VS GADGETS

Last updated on: May 22, 2008 at 11:14 am By Marwa Aly

Are we loosing many of our natural instincts to Gadgets? If the answer is yes, read further to know what funny things can happen in future. Read more

India on the aggressive against China

Last updated on: May 22, 2008 at 4:27 am By Desh Kapoor

China is out trying what it can politically and militarily to corner and hurt India. Well, we are a strange land and people. For many centuries our ideas ruled over the Chinese mind through Buddhism and now without sending a single soldier their way, we seemed to have attacked China. It is sad though because it is a great tragedy for the common Chinese poor, but look at how the earthquake unfolded.... The Indian mass is continually pushing against the Eurasian land mass such that the Himalayas grow higher and get pushed eastwards. When the plate on the east of Himalayas (the South China Plate) could not handle the stress anymore.. it gave way! For centuries it seems the Indian land mass, which was essentially the "new kid on the block" coming from South to join with the Eurasian landmass, has been pushing at its Northern friend... and creating mess and misery for the Chinese. No wonder that country just hates our guts and wits! 🙂 Look at the self explanatory video below: Read more

Professor GD Agrawal's Fast unto death over Dam on Bhagirathi

Last updated on: May 21, 2008 at 4:28 pm By Desh Kapoor

Update (5/22/2008): You can now sign a petition to the Hon'ble Prime minister of India in support Prof G D Agarwal and the cause for which he has announced a fast unto death against the damming of the River Bhagirathi above Uttarkashi online by going to "Petition for Prof Agrawal's movement" ********** Dr GD Agarwal, former Dean, IIT'K and former Member secretary, Central Pollution Control Board, and a very respected personality in the environmental engineering world in India and South Asia has decided to go on a fast unto death against the damming of the River Bhagirathi. Professor Agrawal is a preeminent engineer in this area and his thoughts should be given proper weight in this project for a dam on Ganga. His concern is that due to inconsistent construction along the pathway and total apathy, the river - revered by many in India and abroad - is withering away. He has written a letter (reproduced below) which is eye opening. Some more information on his environmental concerns can be read from this blog tapasya-bhagirathi. Here is a brief bio of Dr. G. D. Agrawal from his blog. Meeting Dr. G. D. Agrawal in his spartan, two room cottage in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh, you would never guess what an accomplished and distinguished scientist he is – first Member-Secretary of the Government of India’s Central Pollution Control Board, former Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at IIT Kanpur and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. The list goes on and on. Read more

The "Q" factor

Last updated on: May 21, 2008 at 4:04 pm By Marwa Aly

If you thought it is about Quttrochi, I am not to be blamed. It is about the queue, which many a time we fail to follow, or get a kick in breaking it. Two years back, when I was returning from Thailand after a brief vacation, my co passengers, many of whom were Indians, clamored on touching down at Chennai airport. Their impatience was highly pronounced right from the touch down, which prevailed up to the taxi stand. All these passengers were at ease and disciplined, while boarding the plane at Bangkok airport. That set me thinking. Like the “QUEUE’ my thought process was also long, with inevitable breaks and jumps. During 80’s, one of my friends visited down south from Mumbai, after a long gap. While we were waiting for a bus to a small hill station, chaos and pell-mell reined supreme with no semblance of a queue or discipline. He compared the scene with Mumbai, where passengers waiting to board a bus, form a queue on their own, so that one can be sure about boarding a bus and their turn is predictable. Read more

Some PJs for this morning

Last updated on: May 20, 2008 at 5:43 pm By Desh Kapoor

These are as PJ as PJs (Poor jokes) come.. so I had to post them. Sometimes we all kind of love to enjoy them despite their PJ-ness! Sent by Raj. Q: What did the lonely banana say? A: I'm a"kela". Q: What did the green peas say? A: Nothing. They just "mutter"ed. Q: What did the potato say when it answered the phone ? A: "Aaloo?" Q: Where do cauliflowers hang out? A: In the Gobi desert. Q: What did the flower say to its girl-friend? A: Why do phools fall in love? Read more

Path has no meaning

Last updated on: May 20, 2008 at 6:25 am By Desh Kapoor

With the formulation of Planck's constant, our limits of observation were set. Beyond this limit, our observation lacked any meaning. The confidence of what we saw beyond this was imaginary and superstition. Try as we might to define the route that an electron took to reach the other side of the neutron, it was a mere conjecture. The postulation was a crushing mandate on not only classical physics but classical human philosophy - Path had no meaning beyond a point. We may keep yearning for it and try charting it or forcing it upon ourselves but that was merely to humor ourselves. How could something so dynamic and infinite at the same time lend itself to a static path? To reinforce this idea further, he used matrices to find the difference between observing the momentum first or the location and found that even that was equal to the same constant. He however added an imaginary number to the result to convey the message - a very significant one. In 1925, following pioneering work with Hendrik Kramers, Heisenberg developed matrix mechanics, which replaced the ad-hoc old quantum theory with modern quantum mechanics. The central assumption was that the classical motion was not precise at the quantum level, and electrons in an atom did not travel on sharply defined orbits. Rather, the motion was smeared out in a strange way: the time Fourier transform only involving those frequencies which could be seen in quantum jumps. Heisenberg's paper did not admit any unobservable quantities, like the exact position of the electron in an orbit at any time, he only allowed the theorist to talk about the Fourier components of the motion. Since the Fourier components were not defined at the classical frequencies, they could not be used to construct an exact trajectory, so that the formalism could not answer certain overly precise questions about where the electron was or how fast it was going. The most striking property of Heisenberg's infinite matrices for the position and momentum is that they do not commute. Read more

China wants to enter Indian territory to control it

Last updated on: May 19, 2008 at 5:58 am By Desh Kapoor

In an "off-the-record" meeting, a Chinese official laid claim to an area in Northern Sikkim and threatened that China would demolish some construction there. The news reached India through official circles and India threatened back. Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area. It seems there might be some re-enforcements but it shows very clearly what the Chinese designs are! This time they told us.. what if they just did that - a la-Kargil? And this was during a peace meeting with China! The history of peaceful dialog with China has such predictable results - of its ominous actions - that I find it nuts that we should even attempt to enter into one!! Lets just face it - the Chinese have had this complex from centuries and was most clearly expressed by one of its Ambassadors: India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. ~ Hu Shih Read more