Great things from people you can't imagine

Last updated on: December 28, 2006 at 7:10 pm By scriptoriumseo1

Quite a few news on Railway Minister Lalu Yadav recently addressing group of students from the elite Harvard and Wharton Business Schools of the US. I feel he deserves credit though not as acclaimed by him as he has proved that people can really do great things once they really aspire for it. It was really surprising from Lalu who was only known for corruption and had never done anything good to anyone other than himself. Lalu himself acknowledged the role of officers who helped make the railways a Rs 13,000-crore (Rs 130 billion) surplus organisation within 30 months by saying, "IAS officers are not good here. They are good for law and order."................"I gave them a bonus. I took the traders into confidence. I also took the employees into confidence," he said........................."I wish he hadn't taken all credit for the success. I wish he'd given some credit to the railway board," a student from Harvard told PTI.................Another student felt the handing over of power to the middle management of the railway ministry was the key to Lalu's success story. more Read more

The Blogger Babes of the World!

Last updated on: December 28, 2006 at 5:37 pm By Desh Kapoor

Blogging has come of age. Really. The Management Consultants (Tom Peters . Seth Godin) are blogging for their lives.. and so are many other experts. In a field where geekiness rules, I guess we have missed some glamour out there in the blogosphere!! Here are some of the top blogger babes in the blogosphere.. who do some serious blogging even on geeky topics and politics! But they could have sold anything with their looks... really! Here is a sampling... Read more

Culmination of the Self Help Movement!!

Last updated on: December 28, 2006 at 3:46 pm By Desh Kapoor

Liked the cartoon a lot!! Read more

The Vulnerable Telecom Cables!

Last updated on: December 28, 2006 at 7:00 am By Desh Kapoor

This is a pretty scary scenario!! If a few telecom lines under-sea are cut off that can disrupt the communications of a country big time!! The disruption here was caused by the damage to the lines under the sea in Taiwan due to the earthquake of the magnitude of 6.7 richter. But the point is that someone's enemy could have done this too... With one blow, Mother Nature triggered the largest telecommunications outage in years, cutting off or slowing telephone and Internet traffic in Asia from Beijing to Bangkok. Read more

Musical Condom: Music from Down Under!

Last updated on: December 28, 2006 at 6:36 am By Desh Kapoor

People are very innovative. They try to make progress upon existing stuff or create new one. For example, tires were created out of wheel etc. Here is a guy from Ukraine who had nothing better to do in life. So he created a .... .hold your breath.. a musical condom!! Yes, this thing has small sensors that are linked to a small electronic device - and as the sales pitch goes there is no danger of being electrocuted! Thanks Heaven.. I mean that would be quite a thing right? Someone was busy making music while having a go at it, and suddenly shouts because he is being electrocuted and it all looks like a natural orgasm to his partner! And with a sigh he passes into history and the lady thinks she made him really wild! Read more

Indian Genetic Material is DIfferent from Rest of World but Similar within

Last updated on: December 27, 2006 at 5:49 pm By Desh Kapoor

This was an extensive effort that was undertaken within the US of the Indian Americans. What it shows are two things: 1. Indians have a genetic make-up that is different from the rest of the people of the world 2. The Genetic Material within India is not too differentiated This should be seen in view of the migration pattern of the human population that has been mapped based on the genetic material. It opens up a lot of questions for this study and others: - If as the migration patterns show the "Indian" strain also went to Europe and Australia then how come the Indian genetics is peculiar to India? - If the Indian genetic material across the entire geography of the subcontinent is so similar then what is the relevance of the Aryan-Dravidian theory?? Also, it is important to remember that the Indian civilization did spread unto the areas in what later became Persia and Afghanistan. So the stream that you see in the image going onto the Europe was actually the Indian stream itself! Good questions that need to be explored as this study of genetics goes on... Indians make up one of the major human ancestry groups, with relatively little genetic differentiation among the people from different parts of the country, according to a new US study. Although the study used participants that may not reflect a random sample from India, these results still suggest that the frequencies of many genetic variants are distinctive in India compared to other parts of the world, an Indian American scientist who led the study said. Read more

How Musharraf was Taken to Task by a Mullah on Democracy!! Must Watch!

Last updated on: December 27, 2006 at 4:47 pm By Desh Kapoor

I have never been a fan of Musharraf - the Pak President. But I was not ready for this tirade from a bearded Mullah - a student leader in Pakistan - during a seminar in Karachi (?). And the tirade is not about any Islamization of Pakistan but a real HARD lecture to Mushy on the revamping of economy and on the failure to restore democracy! He actually gives India's example of democracy and exhorts Mushy to learn from India in this field. I do not understand the chaste Urdu that he speaks completely - but his arguments (of what I did understand) were very cogent and articulate! Absolutely a must watch!! Read more

Breakthrough of the Year sparks Fissures in the Mathematics World

Last updated on: December 27, 2006 at 2:11 pm By Desh Kapoor

This is a tale of soap operas where a solution for an intractable problem in mathematics brought so many skeletons out of the Mathematics world that it is amazing! Poincare had a conjecture in Mathematics. The original articulation of the conjecture was as follows: Consider a compact 3-dimensional manifold V without boundary. Is it possible that the fundamental group of V could be trivial, even though V is not homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere? Something more on the Poincaré conjecture In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture (IPA: [pwɛ̃kaˈʀe])[1] is a conjecture about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere amongst three-dimensional manifolds. The conjecture concerns a space that locally looks like ordinary three dimensional space but is finite in size and lacks any boundary (a closed 3-manifold). The conjecture claims that if such a space has the additional property that each loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is just a three-dimensional sphere. An analogous result has been known in higher dimensions for some time. After nearly a century of effort by mathematicians, a series of papers made available in 2002 and 2003 by Grigori Perelman, following the program of Richard Hamilton, sketched a solution. Three groups of mathematicians have produced works filling in the details of Perelman's proof. Read more

Christmas Tree is from the Egyptians and precedes Christ and other myths of Christmas!

Last updated on: December 26, 2006 at 10:34 pm By Desh Kapoor

Did you think Christmas Tree, Exchanging gifts, and celebrating birthdays was Christian? Well, think again. Here is an article that debunks all these as Christian practices! Interesting read.... Merchants regularly report that over 60% of their annual retail sales occur during the Christmas shopping season. This represents a tremendous amount of gift buying. Most today believe that gift-giving comes from the Bible example of the “three wise men” (the Bible gives no number) presenting gifts to Christ. Is this true? Where did exchanging gifts come from, and what does God’s Word say about it? Read more

Moths drink tears of Sleeping Birds!

Last updated on: December 26, 2006 at 9:52 pm By Desh Kapoor

Nature is strange. There are no value judgments involved in the lives of animals. They just live as they have been created and according to their birth's characteristics. Are they good or bad? Here is a moth which drinks tears from a sleeping bird's eyes. This particular one is found in Madagascar but there are other cousins of his who drink tears from animals! Read on (link) A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds. Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the apparently unique sight in the island state’s Kirindy forest. Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away. Read more

How many chapters are in Proverbs?