10 future shocks - for the next 10 years

infoworld.com reports
Though may not be an alvin tofflers article or Nostradamus predictions, worth a read...

Shock No. 1: Triumph of the cloud

My main prediction is that the high cost of power and space is going to force the IT world to look at cloud services, with a shift to computing as a cloud resource occurring in the next five years. So like the old mainframe model where we didn't care how the machine is configured, we just dump requests to the machine and get results. In fact, cloud computing services
will resemble mainframe service bureaus. We're already starting to see cloud service bureaus, such as Amazon's EC2. Ultimately, the emergence of cloud computing will reduce the need for computing at the enterprise level. -- Brian Chee

Shock No. 2: Cyborg chic

By 2018, geek chic will look a lot like what today we'd call a cyborg. The human/machine interface will be ubiquitous, with people walking around giving voice/whisper commands and using earbud audio and an eyeglass display that superimposes a machine-enhanced view of the world on ordinary vision. Nobody will notice that half the population is cyborg, because we'll get there one small step at a time, as iPhone belt-clip holders give way to the iBeltBuckle, iGlasses (hey, that's catchy!), and iEarRings. A new generation of computer viruses will take over the new display technology. Sometimes they're fatal, as when the computer display shows an empty street, when in Actual Reality (AR) the street is filled with high-speed traffic. Other times they're just funny, as when the display insists on showing mustaches on every face in view. -- Bob Lewis

Shock No. 3: Everything works

You come home to do a little work on the computer, and when you turn it on, it boots up in just a few seconds with no issues. You open e-mail and it comes up without your having to wait. In fact, this new OS doesn't even have an hourglass icon! For the rest of the night, your computer does everything you ask it to do, without any waiting, hiccups, or errors. The interface is intuitive and sleek. It even changes based off what you're currently doing so that you can access features of the OS that you need while you're, say, working with e-mail or editing pics. We'll call this OS "Windows Sci-Fi" because we're all dreaming if we think that'll ever happen. -- Sean McCown

Shock No. 4: Nothing escapes you

In 1945, Vannevar Bush conceived of a device called a Memex that would store and retrieve all information accumulated throughout one's life. In the next 30 years, advances in speech and video recognition, the power of cloud-based computing, and real-time, continuous, wearable content capture will bring the Memex vision to life. Just think: You'll be able to leave a meeting without worrying about manually capturing your to-dos. You won't have to remember that interesting thing your friend mentioned over coffee. You won't have to write down the thought that sprung to mind when you saw an advertisement on TV or a billboard on the way home.

Vannevar's Memex vision will come to fruition through your next-next-next-generation PDA. The device will continuously capture all audio and video from your daily experiences and upload that content to the cloud, where it will be parsed to succinctly recognize your tasks, interesting information, and reminders -- all searchable, of course. A summary of important content from your day will be available through your PDA automatically. And yes, like Google Chrome, a "p0rn mode" option will ensure that the things you don't want remembered won't be. -- Savio Rodrigues


Shock No. 5: Smartphones take center stage

I see the smartphone evolving into the preferred instrument for constant connectivity, with voice interaction, facial recognition, location awareness, constant video and sound input, and multitouch screens. The keyboard won't go away completely, but it might be virtual: Think about typing in the air on an image projected from your "smart glasses." Business desktops would evolve into docking stations for your smartphone, with large screens and input devices, Gigabit or better connectivity, and local resources comparable to one of today's big servers (technical desktops would be similar, but with way more onboard CPU and GPU power, as well as massive memory and storage, all connected to massive servers and cloud resources). In this vision, the laptop nearly goes away. -- Martin Heller

Shock No. 6: Human-free manufacturing

We're already close to the perfect factory. (It employs one human and one dog; the human is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the human from touching anything.) Right now, manufacturing in the U.S. is up, while manufacturing employment is down. By 2018, automation will have hit enough labor sectors that while the GDP will continue to grow, fewer and fewer people will receive that growth in the form of wages. This will drive either social collapse or the establishment of a no-apologies welfare state. -- Bob Lewis

Vannevar's Memex vision will come to fruition through your next-next-next-generation PDA. The device will continuously capture all audio and video from your daily experiences and upload that content to the cloud, where it will be parsed to succinctly recognize your tasks, interesting information, and reminders -- all searchable, of course. A summary of important content from your day will be available through your PDA automatically. And yes, like Google Chrome, a "p0rn mode" option will ensure that the things you don't want remembered won't be. -- Savio Rodrigues
Shock No. 5: Smartphones take center stageI see the smartphone evolving into the preferred instrument for constant connectivity, with voice interaction, facial recognition, location awareness, constant video and sound input, and multitouch screens. The keyboard won't go away completely, but it might be virtual: Think about typing in the air on an image projected from your "smart glasses." Business desktops would evolve into docking stations for your smartphone, with large screens and input devices, Gigabit or better connectivity, and local resources comparable to one of today's big servers (technical desktops would be similar, but with way more onboard CPU and GPU power, as well as massive memory and storage, all connected to massive servers and cloud resources). In this vision, the laptop nearly goes away. -- Martin Heller

Shock No. 6: Human-free manufacturing

We're already close to the perfect factory. (It employs one human and one dog; the human is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the human from touching anything.) Right now, manufacturing in the U.S. is up, while manufacturing employment is down. By 2018, automation will have hit enough labor sectors that while the GDP will continue to grow, fewer and fewer people will receive that growth in the form of wages. This will drive either social collapse or the establishment of a no-apologies welfare state. -- Bob Lewis

Shock No. 8: Big Brother never sleeps

In the next 10 years, perfect governmental tracking and monitoring of each human being will become reality. Some people will accept LoJack implants for personal safety. Face-recognition technology tied to video monitors at street corners will also contribute. Also very possible: LoJack-style technology along with a digital voice recorder embedded in drivers' licenses (it's optional -- hey, driving is a privilege, not a right). The actual trigger will be pulled when Mercedes-Benz buys General Motors and acquires OnStar, which by then will be private industry's principle purveyor of "Personal LoJack" systems. Shortly thereafter, Russia will have acquired Mercedes, either through conquest or by buying it with oil money, so Russia will know the exact location and movement of most affluent Americans. So will China, which will have manufactured the LoJack transmitters, surreptitiously adding a backdoor feature that lets the Chinese government track everyone as well. -- Bob Lewis

Shock No. 9: Unbroken connectivity

Checking to see if you're connected to a network will seem as old-fashioned as turning on a device to get information in 10 years. Devices that are always receiving information (and displaying it on low-draw screens in the cover of phones and portable computers) will meet networks that are always available to make your interaction with the information world more like a flowing stream than a chain of data lakes. From sports scores to friends' activities, the idea of interrupting your activities to get the news will be a thing of the past. -- Curtis Franklin

Shock No. 10: Relationship enhancement

My 2018 prediction is that we use technology to remember and fortify social connections. You'll get together socially with a friend, geo-locate, take pictures, Twitter, make notes and videos, and so on, and it all gets automatically filed away. You may forget what happened, but you can access it all again when you search your own personal store, either by matching keywords or simply preparing for the next social event with same friend. There will be no difference between "online friends" and "real friends". This will be life-altering. We already have the freedom of not having to remember street directions. When we have the freedom not to remember what happened in social interactions, it raises a fascinating question: Will this solidify personal relationships or change them in some other way? -- Jon Williams

Can Nanotechnology make man immortal?

In his novel ‘Prey’, Michael Crichton created the fictional world of nanotechnology running amok in human life. Some believe that the tiny particles have the capability of reversing the aging process in humans. Is it possible for nanotechnology or the ‘power of the small’ to make man immortal? The current trend in technology does not point to that direction but some over enthusiasts feel that some time in the distant future nanotechnologists could decode the mystery of life and death. Currently the smallest human-made particle is 20 nanometers in diameter. A human red blood cell is 10,000 nanometers in diameter. By building an autonomous robot 1/10,000th time that of a red blood cell, it would be possible to program it in such a way that the tiny robot could reverse the aging process in humans when once inserted in the body cells. The interior of the human body would then replicate an ocean of floating nanobots commanding human metabolism.

While the concept of nanobots is in the theoretical stage but nanotechnology has been expanded to anti-aging treatments by direct infusion of electrons in the skin via nano current that is equivalent to over one-billionth of an ampere. Nanotechnology is currently used widely in dermatology and in regenerative medicine research. However, nanobots have not been tested yet but some nano devices have been found to work on a number of animal specimens. It has been possible to cure type-1 diabetes in rats with a blood cell-sized device. Scientists at MIT have been able to develop microscopic devices that can remove cancer cells from the blood stream and destroy them. Given the current rate of acceleration in technology, in the next two or three decades these devices are expected to become powerful enough to work inside human cells.

Source: NanoWerk
image

Falling Prey To Machines?

ScienceDaily Falling Prey To Machines?: "It's coming, but when? From Garry Kasparov to Michael Crichton, both fact and fiction are converging on a showdown between man and machine. But what does a leading artificial intelligence expert--the world's first computer science PhD--think about the future of machine intelligence? Will computers ever gain consciousness and take over the world?"

"Comparisons between the brain and electronic hardware are also difficult to draw. For example, the issue of 'fanout' demonstrates the complexity of the brain over even today's most sophisticated computers. Fanout refers to the number of connections an element in a network can have to another element of a network. Today's most complicated computers have a fanout factor of about 10. The human brain, however, has a fanout of 10,000.

'We don't have the faintest idea of what machines with that kind of fanout would be like, so inference from the capabilities of present machines to such machines is feeble at best,' notes Holland. 'As Nobel Laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann says, three orders of magnitude is a new science.'"

Manual for Conserving Paths - Paulo Coelho

Magnetohydrodynamic Propulsion

Motors without moving parts

In the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October (based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name), Sean Connery plays the captain of a Russian submarine. This much I remembered from having seen the film many years ago. I did not recall that the submarine in question—the eponymous “Red October”—used a special high-tech propulsion system that, having no moving parts, was silent. I’m sure my science fiction filter was on, and I just assumed at the time that the top-secret engine was the sort of almost-plausible futuristic contrivance any modern spy movie will have—and not worth taking very seriously. Just a few years later, though, Mitsubishi demonstrated a boat using a propulsion system of roughly the design Clancy described in his novel. And now variations on this technique are being used in electrical generators, nuclear reactors, and even spacecraft design.

Gimme an “M”

The scientific principle in question is known as magnetohydrodynamics, which is a fairly straightforward combination of magneto (as in magnet), hydro (as in water), and dynamics (as in motion). Those in the biz call it MHD for short. And yes: it uses magnetism to cause motion in water (or another fluid). MHD is not by any means a new discovery—academic researchers have been working on this since at least the 1960s, and the Journal Magnetohydrodynamics has been published since 1965 by the University of Latvia. But in recent years, MHD designs have begun to appear more frequently in everything from large-scale commercial operations to high school science fair projects.

The basic concept is simple, even though it relies on some complex math and physics. When a conductive fluid (such as saltwater, liquid metal, or even plasma) is exposed to a magnetic field and an electric current at right angles to each other, their interaction propels the fluid in a direction perpendicular to the other two axes. In other words, the fluid itself functions more or less as the moving part of an electric motor.

You can demonstrate this effect on a small scale if you have a free afternoon, a few tools, and a bathtub. Take a small plastic tube and glue a pair of nice, strong magnets onto the top and bottom (opposite poles facing inward). Then glue strips of metal to the insides of the tube on the left and right; these will be the electrodes. Affix this assembly to the bottom of a small toy boat. Wire the electrodes to a fairly high-power battery (being careful, of course, to keep the battery dry), and float the entire contraption in a saturated solution of salt and water. If the battery is strong enough and the boat is small enough, it will start moving through the water.

The Solid-State Paddlewheel

Of course, if you want to power a boat large enough to hold passengers, the engines will have to be pretty large. You’re going to need some very strong magnets—think helium-cooled superconducting electromagnets—plus an awful lot of electricity to provide current to the electrodes. Even then, you may find (as Mitsubishi did) that the thrust produced is a bit underwhelming. The prototype boats were expected to reach speeds of 200 kilometers per hour, but only got up to 15 km/h. Even though MHD drives have virtually no drag (unlike propellers), the energy conversion efficiency is currently pretty low. (Had they used the same amount of electricity to power conventional motors, the boats would have gone much faster.) Further technological advances are needed to make this a practical propulsion system for marine vessels.

As far as I know, there are no submarines using such drives now, but a Red October is at least more plausible than I’d previously have suspected. However, I should point out that MHD drives are only sort of quiet. By this I mean there’s no noise from an engine or propeller, but the electrodes do produce huge numbers of bubbles—after all, this design amounts to magnetically enhanced electrolysis, and electrolysis separates water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. So a submarine with an MHD drive would not be quite as stealthy as you might imagine.

Much more promising are designs that use other kinds of fluids that conduct electricity better. For example, plasma-based propulsion systems being studied for long-distance space travel use a variation on MHD. It remains to be seen whether technological innovations will make MHD an efficient and practical means of propulsion (terrestrial or otherwise), but the mere fact that you can induce motion in a fluid without either moving parts or combustion seems incredibly cool to me. As with so many scientific discoveries, truth is much more exciting than fiction. —Joe Kissell

Wireless Powering of LEDs via Resonant Inductive Coupling

Tesla's dream coming true..... I never knew we could do that so easily.. It was always trouble for me when i tried that...

The Big Bang and the CERN

Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old?

According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today -- including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies -- was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13 billion years ago.

The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang.

The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose center registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a hundred thousand times faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe
was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today's universe are much cooler than that.

There's another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That's because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.

A Cooling, Expanding Universe

For a brief moment after the Big Bang, the immense heat created conditions unlike any conditions astrophysicists see in the universe today. While planets and stars today are composed of atoms of elements like hydrogen and silicon, scientists believe the universe back then was too hot for anything other than the most fundamental particles -- such as quarks and photons.

But as the universe quickly expanded, the energy of the Big Bang became more and more "diluted" in space, causing the universe to cool. Popping open a beer bottle results in a roughly similar cooling, expanding effect: gas, once confined in the bottle, spreads into the air, and the temperature of the beer drops.

Rapid cooling allowed for matter as we know it to form in the universe, although physicists are still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons formed, and within a few minutes these particles stuck together to form atomic nuclei, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later, electrons stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.

About a billion years after the Big Bang, gravity caused these atoms to gather in huge clouds of gas, forming collections of stars known as galaxies. Gravity is the force that pulls any objects with mass towards one another -- the same force, for example, that causes a ball thrown in the air to fall to the earth.

Where do planets like earth come from? Over billions of years, stars "cook" hydrogen and helium atoms in their hot cores to make heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. Large stars explode over time, blasting these elements into space. This matter then condenses into the stars, planets, and satellites that make up solar systems like our own.

How do we know the Big Bang happened?

Astrophysicists have uncovered a great deal of compelling evidence over the past hundred years to support the Big Bang theory. Among this evidence is the observation that the universe is expanding. By looking at light emitted by distant galaxies, scientists have found that these galaxies are rapidly moving away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. An explosion like the Big Bang, which sent matter flying outward from a point, explains this observation.

Another critical discovery was the observation of low levels of microwaves throughout space. Astronomers believe these microwaves, whose temperature is about -270 degrees Celsius, are the remnants of the extremely high-temperature radiation produced by the Big Bang.

Interestingly, astronomers can get an idea of how hot the universe used to be by looking at very distant clouds of gas through high-power telescopes. Because light from these clouds can take billions of years to reach our telescopes, we see such bodies as they appeared eons ago. Lo and behold, these ancient clouds of gas seem to be hotter than younger clouds.

Scientists have also been able to uphold the Big Bang theory by measuring the relative amounts of different elements in the universe. They've found that the universe contains about 74 percent hydrogen and 26 percent helium by mass, the two lightest elements. All the other heavier elements -- including elements common on earth, such as carbon and oxygen -- make up just a tiny trace of all matter.

So how does this prove anything about the Big Bang? Scientists have shown, using theoretical calculations, that these abundances could only have been made in a universe that began in a very hot, dense state, and then quickly cooled and expanded. This is exactly the kind of universe that the Big Bang theory predicts.

CERN and the Big Bang

How do experiments at CERN improve our understanding of the early universe? Click the photo above to hear Dr. Alvaro De Rujula explain. You will need the RealPlayer in order to view this video.

In the first few minutes after the Big Bang, the universe was far hotter -- billions of billions of billions of degrees hotter -- than anywhere in the universe today. This heat gave particles of matter in the early universe an extraordinary amount of energy, causing them to behave in a much different way from particles in the universe today. For example, particles moved much faster back then and collided into one another with much greater energy.

If these conditions do not exist anymore, how do scientists study the behavior of matter in the early universe? One of the most powerful tools for such analysis is the particle accelerator. This device allows physicists to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang by making a beam of fast-moving particles and bringing them together in very high-energy collisions.

Researchers at CERN are using an accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to accelerate subatomic particles called protons to close to the speed of light. This is how fast scientists believed these particles moved in the instants after the Big Bang. By looking at the behavior of these protons, CERN physicists hope to better understand how the Big Bang created the universe.

photo: CERN

When completed in 2005, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will provide new insight into the past, present and future of our universe.

What is the fate of the universe?

The Big Bang theory raises some important questions about the fundamental nature of the universe: Will the expansion of the universe, set in action by the Big Bang, continue forever? Or will gravity stop the expansion and eventually cause all the matter in the universe to contract in a Big Crunch?

Scientists don't yet know the answers to these questions for certain. But particle physics experiments like the accelerator studies at CERN may offer some clues down the road. By probing into what matter is made of and how it behaves, such experiments can help us explore what the matter in our universe--the planets, stars, and galaxies--might be doing billions of years from now.

Courtesy: Exploratorium

Distant object 'found orbiting Sun backwards'

London (PTI): Astronomers have found an object in the icy Kuiper belt, which they claim is actually orbiting the Sun backwards compared to the planets in the Solar System. An international team, led by University of British Columbia, spotted the new object, called 2008 KV42, which lies in the Kuiper belt that is a ring of icy bodies beyond outer planet Neptune. According to the astronomers, the object's orbit is inclined 103.5 to the plane of the Earth's orbit, which means that as it orbits the Sun, it actually travels in the opposite direction as the planets. Observations have revealed that the object is about 50 kilometres across and travels on a path that takes it from the distance of Uranus to more than twice that of Neptune, the 'New Scientist' reported. According to lead astronomer Brett Gladman, the object was probably born in the same place as Halley-type comets that also travel on retrograde or highly tilted orbits -- lasting between 20 and 200 years, but they come closer to the Sun.

Vijender - The New Prince...

The latest cutie\hottie on the block is India's boxer Vijender Kumar. Now that's a real success story. The guy is the son of a humble bus conductor who comes from a village of boxers in Haryana.The dapper six footer , as media reports describe him, is pure star material - from attitude (sticking his tongue out at lensmen), to focus and determination, this 22- year -old has it made. From modelling to movies won't be that hard a leap, and I'm pretty certain there will be dozens of talent touts\scouts chasing the winner now. If anyone can challenge Dhoni's supremacy in the endorsement stakes, it's this guy.

However lets hope he never relent his boxing career as this fella has a long way to go in winning medals for our country...

SOME LOGICIAL THOUGHTS and STATEMENTS

1.Whenever you find the key to success, someone changes the lock.

2.To Err is human, but to forgive is not a COMPANY policy.

3.The road to success??.. Is always under construction.

4.Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but if you think again, neither does Milk.

5.In order to get a Loan, you first need to prove that you have ability to repay back.

6.All the desirable things in life are either illegal, expensive or fattening.

7.Since Light travels faster than Sound, people appear brighter before you hear

8.Everyone has a scheme of getting rich?.. Which never works.

9.If at first you don't succeed?. Destroy all evidence that you ever tried.

10.You can never determine which side of the bread to butter. If it falls down, it will always land on the buttered side.

11.Anything dropped on the floor will roll over to the most inaccessible corner.

12. 42.7% of all statistics is made on the spot.

13.As soon as you mention something?? If it is good, it is taken?. If it is bad, it happens.

14.He who has the gold, makes the rules ---- Murphy's golden rule.

15.If you come early, the bus is late. If you come late?? The bus is still late.

16.Once you have bought something, you will find the same item being sold somewhere else at a cheaper rate.

17.When in a queue, the other line always moves faster and the person in front of you will always have the most complex of transactions.

18.If you have paper, you don't have a pen. If you have a pen, you don't have paper. If you have both, no one calls.

19.Especially for engg. Students : If you have bunked the class, the professor has taken attendance.

20.You will pick up maximum wrong numbers when on roaming.

21.The door bell or your mobile will always ring when you are in the bathroom.
22.After a long wait for bus no.20, two 20 number buses will always pull in together and the bus which you get in will be crowded than the other.
23.If your exam is tomorrow, there will be a power cut tonight.

24.Irrespective of the direction of the wind, the smoke from the cigarette will always tend to go to the non-smoker

25.Before borrowing money from a friend, decide whether you need more.

26.There are three sides to every argument: your side, my side and the right side.

27.An expert is someone who takes a subject you understand and makes it sound confusing.

28.Many things can be preserved in alcohol. Dignity is not one of them.

29.Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.

30.When you're right, no one remembers. When you're wrong, no one forgets.

31.Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

32.Well done is better than well said .

33.Everyone makes mistakes. The trick is to make them when nobody is looking.

34.Where there is a WILL, there is a WAY, Where there is MONEY, there are many WAYS.

35.Where there is MONEY, there are many FRIENDS and RELATIVES.

36.Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Billion Indians, but where are all their medals ??

Billion Indians, but where are all their medals? - Hamish McDonald Asia-Pacific Editor

THERE is something truly Olympian in the disdain that the country with the world's second-biggest population has shown for its lack of Olympic Games success.

China has gone to ridiculous excess in hosting the current Games, combining the fanaticism of a Maoist "rectification" drive with East German-style incubation of athletes in its drive to be top medal winner.

But what of the other emerging Asian giant, India, which has 1 billion people to select from. It has dazzling cricketers with the eye of Sachin Tendulkar; thousands of village wrestlers; shooters expert at shikar (hunting); and horsemen who can skewer a tent-peg at full gallop.

Yet it usually manages to bring home only one medal per Olympic Games. Consistently, India throws out the modelling by economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers that postulates a link between population size and economic growth.

Only twice has India won two medals. First was in Paris in 1900, but that was by an English sahib named Norman Pritchard who received silver in the 200-metre dash and 200-metre hurdles. The second was in Helsinki in 1952 when wrestler Khashaba Jadav won a bronze, in addition to the routine gold for field hockey.

The run of hockey wins, which reaped all of India's gold medals until now, came to an end 28 years ago. This week, shooter Abhinav Bindra became his country's first individual Olympic gold medallist, winning the 10-metre air rifle event.

India, almost alone in the world, seems to apply the notion that sport is all about participation, not winning - the Kiplingesque adage that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, but how you play the game - and all that. Behind the sportsmanship, however is some grinding of teeth.

Rajeev Srinivasan wrote on the rediff.com website: "I am always embarrassed by India's wretched showing in the Olympics, which is a metaphor for the two things that haunt India: lack of a strategic intent, and lack of leadership. It is not that Indians are physically weak or incapable of competing at Olympic levels: in many sports at the junior level, Indians do very well indeed. The failure is in developing that early promise …

"One failure is in identifying an overarching goal: that of being the best in the world. This is an implicit assumption made by Americans: that America is the best of the best. Similarly, China has historically viewed itself as the Middle Kingdom and the centre of civilisation, deeming all others to be barbarians. But Indians have been content to be second-best, the sporting losers. We apparently do not believe we can win."

Shashi Tharoor, the novelist and former United Nations official, puts it even more starkly. "Every Indian who follows the Olympics has cringed scanning the daily list of medal winners, eyes travelling down past dozens of nations big and small before alighting on a solitary Indian bronze in tennis or wrestling," he wrote in his syndicated column this month.

"Worse yet, we have all known the shame of waiting day after day for India to appear on the list at all, as countries a hundredth our size record gold upon gold and Indian athletes are barely mentioned among the also-rans."

The excuses are many. Most of India's people live in villages, with poor nutrition and many illnesses and sports facilities are few. Only the wealthy, who traditionally supplied the cricketers and sportsmen such as Karni Singh, the Maharaja of Bikener who won a shooting bronze at Tokyo in 1964, had time and money for serious training.

The sporting bureaucracies are a byword for cronyism and freeloading, with the politics of the Board of Control for Cricket in India almost as intense as those for the national government.

Tharoor doesn't think failure is encoded in the Indian DNA. "Indian genes in a developing country did not prevent Vijay Singh emerging from Fiji to rival Tiger Woods as the best golfer in the world," he wrote.

"The newly globalised India can no longer content itself with mediocrity in this global competition. For a land with world-class computer scientists, mathematicians, biotech researchers, filmmakers and novelists, sporting excellence is the last unconquered frontier. But 2008 won't be the year in which that frontier is breached."

When it happens, something sort of noble will be lost.

Manjul Bhargava - Youngest Prof At US Varsity

MUMBAI: It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that you have a professional hiker by your side.

But when the gentleman you walk with - along the unending stretches at IIT Bombay, Powai - tells you that he arrives at the best solutions to complex mathematical theories while hiking, it makes you pause and wonder.

At 33, Manjul Bhargava is a whiz at maths, music and hiking. And he’s the youngest professor at Princeton University, US. When most people are still learning to navigate the rough and tumble of the workplace, Bhargava had hotfooted it to where he is now.

He did his PhD in number theory at Princeton - he cracked a 200-year-old problem - under his mentor, Andrew Viles. And was named professor at the tender age of 28. “It was weird. I started teaching when I was an undergraduate. And when I went into it full time, I was suddenly flooded with offers from different colleges for various posts.”

Why Princeton? “They had the best offer,” he grins.

But - er - math? A subject that intimidates so many of us mere mortals? To become a reasearcher in that subject, teach it, win prizes and be in love with it is, well, no less than a feat. “Maths is fun. It is a creative process. I always knew I had an inclination for maths. So going into research in the subject was natural for me.”

He believes in the huge potential for the subject in India, and will be teaching at IIT Powai and TIFR in Mumbai for about a month each year.

Bhargava is in India in connection with a string theory conference at TIFR. He also gave a lecture at IIT-B and is working on starting a music programme here. He is an adjunct professor at Princeton and IIT-B, and tries to visit once or twice a year.

“Maths is all about creativity. It’s an art... There is something about Indians that makes them good at maths. It’s either cultural or genetic.” Genetic, maybe. But cultural? “For generations, we have produced great mathematicians. Maybe it’s because of that,” he believes. And, of course, the obsessive importance attached to engineering in the country. “When you’re good at maths, you are immediately pushed towards engineering for economic reasons. Because for a long time, engineers were the ones who grabbed the good jobs.”

However, he feels, things are changing now in favour of pure sciences. “There are a lot more research jobs available. With so many institutes starting up, all the new IITs, they are going to need a lot more faculty.”

But most students dread the M word. That is one exam they will gladly pass up the chance to write. “That is true,” he says. “Sadly, in India, we tend to teach maths according to a structure. Students learn formulae by rote. Teachers should teach maths just like other subjects. Explain a theory, ask students to try and find answers and then guide them in the right direction,” he says.

Another problem, he points out, is that if you are good at any of the sciences, you are expected to choose engineering. “But that’s not the way it works. Someone who excels in maths need not be that good at chemistry or physics. Everyone has a knack for some subject. He or she should be encouraged to concentrate on that subject.”

The levels of teaching the subject here are way ahead of those in the US, he says. “As a child, I used to come down to India for months together. I used to look at textbooks here and wonder. Because the level of maths taught here is way above what their American contemporaries learn at that age.”

Bhargava counts number theory and tabla sessions among his passions. Just like the problems he solves on hikes. He seems pretty much at home walking these roads and talking about his life. Does he do it often? “Oh yes, I do. There are times when I am stuck on a theory and all I need is a long walk in the woods to arrive at a solution. I even take my students on hikes sometimes to explain or work out a theory.”

Maths is, of course, in his blood. His mother too is a mathematics professor. But his horizons have always been broader. “I always knew I was inclined towards maths. At graduation, I took a lot of classes. Even though my core subject was maths, I took credits in Sanksrit, paleontology and economics. Then I started taking classes during my undergrad years and things just kind of fell into place,” he says.

Would he consider moving to India, to share his love for maths? And where would he pitch tent? The answer’s simple. “Mumbai, definitely. It’s where maths and music come together for me,” he says.

Garmin Edge 705 GPS Offers Maps and Metrics for Data-Happy Cyclist

Garmin Edge 705 GPS

Type-A training tweakers, metrics maniacs, peripatetic two-wheeled geo-cachers and the geographically challenged now have something to collectively rally around: the Garmin Edge 705. This latest fitness offering from the GPS giant has more than a little somethin' somethin' for the can't stay put, always get lost, urban treasure hunting, serious bike training, and it's-the-journey-until-you-can't-find-the-destination types. The Edge 705 combines (take a deep breath) GPS maps and navigation, heart rate, cadence and power output into a palm of your hand wireless unit. It can display up to 16 separate metrics during the ride and combined with the included software and web-based apps it becomes an incredible tool for social networking, exploration and serious training analysis.

From a gander at the spec sheet, it seems setup and orientation would take awhile, but it turned out to be a breeze straight out of the box. You don't even have to calculate your wheel dimensions; it figures that out for you. Despite having to decipher some thick cyclist jargon, I was rolling in less than an hour -- map telling me my location and plotting a course to the trailhead while spitting out vitals all along the way.

That was just the appetizer because data readout, collection and save-your-ass navigation are just part of the equation. Connected to your Mac or PC back at the lodge, the Edge 705 offers a myriad of ways to breakdown cycling actions that you've done. The included software (called Garmin Training Center) is very serviceable and helps you track courses, training regimes, and the mass of recorded data. And if you want to know what others around the globe are up to, Garmin's recent acquisition, Motion Based, is definitely for you.

Hatched back in 2003 by outdoor data junkies Clark Weber and Aaron Roller, Motion Based
is a two-tiered site that combines the number crunching capabilities of
Garmin Training Center with a global community of GPS aficionados who
want to share their adventurous exploits. Users can easily upload their data to the Motion Based site and share activities. So let's say you're heading for France and want to get your Lance Armstrong on at the fabled L'Alpe d'Huez. No problem, just pick one of the many L'Alpe d'Huez rides uploaded by users on the site, click on "download to device" and you’ve got the whole course on your unit with turn-by-turn directions. The opportunities for fun and exploration are endless.

Think of a destination, search the more than 3 million activities in the database, download your choices to the Edge 705 and off you go on a magical tour sans mystery. Presently a separate web
application, Motion Based will be folded into the Garmin Connect site by September with a more robust and feature-laden platform.

For the power-hounds out there, Garmin has embraced the open source ANT+Sport wireless standard. This 2.4 GHz frequency is a low power, totally locked-in to your device protocol that like Bluetooth, seems to be taking some time to get traction. It makes sense that the powermeter
providers -- SRM, PowerTap, Ergomo, iBike and Quarq among them -- are taking their time since the Garmin co-opts their proprietary hardware, but it seems sensible and inevitable because the Edge 705 is a unifying device, and from our experience, is best of its breed. If you want the whole shootin' match right now, SRM is the best choice and the most expensive. Quarq's Cinq-O crank-based bolt-on should be on the market by the time you're reading this, although with limited crank compatibility. I wasn’t able to test the Edge with a powermeter, but
that’s coming, so keep an eye out on wired.com for a power update.

Over the course of a couple weeks I've put in more than 40 hours on the road and trail with the 705 and I found it to be incredibly accurate, even in close quarters with other bike-borne wireless electronics. It's righted my course a few times and has become an invaluable training
tool, enabling me to analyze ride and race data over a couple months and realize marked improvements. At the end of the ride, the Garmin Edge 705 seems to be the Holy Grail for cycling enthusiasts. It tells you where you are, points the way to a destination, gets you home and provides every bit of data you need to become a fitter cyclists -- if that's your thing. And in 20 years of reviewing god knows how many gadgets, this is one of the dozen or so for which I'd gladly plunk down my own dough. So if you see me tooling through the trees or on some deserted twisty with it aboard my Specialized, you'll know I put my money where my gob-smacked mouth was. —Jackson Lynch

WIRED Detailed maps and directions are spot-on. GPS reception is excellent even in heavily wooded areas. Software and web app integration are a boon to digit crunchers.

TIRED Needs capability for more than three bikes. CD-ROM user manual needs more detail. Should come with a glare-free screen skin. Must run the battery all the way down before the first charge or you'll only get about three hours of use.

$650 as tested, garmin.com

Study: Heart Bypass Better Than Angioplasty

Researchers have said that for patients with difficult-to-treat clogged arteries, a bypass surgery was better than drug stents. Based on the results of a major clinical study by Dutch researchers presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Munich, experts said patients who had angioplasties were twice as likely to require another procedure within a year. Douglas Weaver, president of the American College of Cardiology, said, "Despite the advent of drug-eluting stents surgery comes out a winner."

Doctors have two options when arteries become blocked as a means of treatment. The first is the increasingly popular, angioplasty, a non-surgical procedure where a balloon is pushed into a blood vessel to flatten the blockage, leaving a stent to prop the artery open, while in a bypass surgery, blood vessels are rerouted to detour around blockages. Introduced in the 1990’s, stenting gained popularity as doctors treated patients by inserting a catheter in the groin, a procedure that resulted in quick recovery time and patients are often walking around three days after the procedure. A bypass surgery is more complex and requires open heart surgery, a five hour long procedure under general anesthesia and patients need at least a month to recover fully.

In the study, paid for by Boston Scientific, makers of the drug-coated stent used in the trial, European doctors compared the effectiveness of open-heart surgery versus angioplasty on more than 3,000 patients in Europe and the United States. Patients who had acute heart attacks were excluded while those who had single and multiple vessel blockages were included in the study.

One third of the patients had medical conditions that required surgery while the remaining patients were randomly assigned to receive either surgery or an angioplasty. An average of nearly five stents was needed by patients who got an angioplasty.

One year later 14 % of the angioplasty patients needed a repeat procedure as compared to the 6 % of the surgery patients. Surgery patients had a lower death rate at 3.5 % while it was 4.3 % in the angioplasty patients. On the stroke risk front the surgery patients had a 2 % risk compared to the nearly zero risk for the angioplasty patients as doctors said surgery had an inherent stroke risk as compared to angioplasty.

Dr. Heinz Drexel, professor of medicine at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology said, "If you don't want to have another heart operation for at least a decade, you should pick the surgery. But that means you have to have your chest cracked open.” Drexel was not connected to the research.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found bypass surgery to be preferable for patients who had more than one clogged artery. "Surgery still comes out as the winner in a head-to-head trial," said Dr Weaver. "This comes down to a conversation with patients and making sure they know that with an angioplasty, there will be a higher rate of revascularization," he said, referring to the need for repeat procedures.

Dr. Tim Gardner, president of the American Heart Association said, "You invest more in terms of recuperation with surgery. But the advantage is durability."

Jonathan Halperin of New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center said, "The results of this study are perhaps going to cause cardiologists to pause for a moment and think before they necessarily assume that these are balanced technologies, where one is the equivalent of the other."

Keith Dawkins, Associate Chief Medical Officer at Boston Scientific, said despite not achieving its main goal, the study was reassuring for stent use. He told Reuters, "The primary endpoint was missed. But it wasn't missed because of safety concerns; it was missed due to revascularization.” Revascularization is the repeated need to clear blocked arteries.

Medical experts feel more data and research is needed and patients to be tracked for a longer period of time before it can be decided which is better surgery or angioplasty. "This only tells us what happens after one year," Drexel said. "We need to wait for at least five years to get a good answer about which therapy is really better."

FW: Leaf's Departure - Either Wind's Pursuit or Tree didn't ask to stay?

Tree
People call me "Tree".
I had dated 5 girls when I was in Pre-U. There is one girl who I love a lot but never dared to go after. She didn't have a pretty face, good figure or an outstanding charm. She was just a very ordinary girl. I liked her. I really liked her. I liked her innocence, her frankness, her intelligence and her fragility. Reason for not going after her was that I felt somebody so ordinary like her was not a good match for me. I was also afraid that after we were together all the feelings would vanish. I was also afraid other's gossip would hurt her.
I felt that if she were my girl, she'd be mine ultimately & I didn't have to give up everything just for her. The last reason, made her accompanying me for 3 years. She watched me chase other girls, and I have made her heart cry for 3 years. She was a good actor, and me a demanding director. When I kissed my second girlfriend, she bumped into us. She was embarrassed but smiled & said, "Go on!" before running off. The next day, her eyes were swollen like a walnut. I did not want to know what caused her to cry. Later that day, I returned from soccer training to get something & watched her cry in the classroom for an hour or so. My fourth girlfriend did not like her. There was once when both of them quarreled. I know that based on her character she is not the type that will start the quarrel. However, I still sided my girlfriend. I shouted at her & ignored her feelings and walked off with my girlfriend. The next day, she was laughing & joking with me like nothing happened. I know she was hurt but she did not know deep down inside I was hurt too.
When I broke up with my fifth girlfriend, I asked her out. Later that day, I told her I had something to tell her. I told her about my break up. Coincidentally, she has something to tell me too, about her getting together. I knew who the person was. His pursuit for her had been the talk of the School. I did not show her my heartache, just smiles & best wishes. Once I reached home, I could not breathe. Tears rolled & I broke down. How many times have I seen her cry for the man who did not acknowledge her presence?
During graduation, I read a SMS in my hp. It said, "Leaf's departure is because of Wind's pursuit. Or because Tree didn't ask her to stay"

Leaf
People call me Leaf.
During the 3 years of Pre-U, I was on very close terms with a guy as buddy kind. However, when he had his first girlfriend, I learnt a feeling I never should have learnt - Jealousy. Sourness to the extreme limit. They were only together for 2 months. When they broke up, I hid my happiness. But after a month, he got together with another girl.
I liked him & I know he liked me. But why won't he pursue me? Since he loves me why he didn't he make the first move? Whenever he had a new girlfriend, my heart would hurt. After some time, I began to suspect that this was one-sided love. If he didn't like me, why did he treat me so well? It's beyond what you will normally do for a friend. I know his likes, his habits. But his feelings towards me I can never figure out. You can't expect me a girl, to ask him. Despite that, I still wanted to be by his side. Care for him, accompany him, and love him. Hoping that one day, he will come to love me. Because of this, I waited for him. Sometimes, I wondered if I should continue waiting. The pain, the dilemma accompanied me for 3 years.
At the end of my 3rd year, a junior pursues me. Everyday he pursues me. He's like the cool & gentle wind, trying to blow off a leaf from a tree. In the end, I realized that I wanted to give this wind a small footing in my heart. I know the wind will bring the leaf to a better land. Finally, leaf left the tree, but the tree only smiled & didn't ask me to stay.
Leaf's departure is because of Wind's pursuit. Or cause Tree didn't ask her to stay.

Wind
Because I like a girl called leaf. Because she's so dependent on tree, so I have to be a gust wind. A wind that will blow her away. When I first met her, it was 1 month after I was transferred to this new school. I saw a petite person look ing at my seniors & me playing soccer. During ECA time, she will always be sitting there. Be it alone or with her friends, looking at him. When he talks with girls, there's jealousy in her eyes. When he looked at her, there's a smile in her eyes. Looking at her became my habit. Just like, she likes to look at him.
One day, she didn't appear. I felt something missing. I can't explain the feeling except it's a kind of uneasiness. The senior was also not there as well. I went to their classroom, hid outside and saw my senior scolding her. Tears were in her eyes while he left. The next day, I saw her at her usual place, looking at him. I walked over and smiled to her. Took out a note & gave to her. She was surprised. She looked at me, smiled & accepts the note. The next day, she appeared & passes me a note and left.
It read, "Leaf's heart is too heavy and wind couldn't blow her away."
"It's not that leaf heart is too heavy. It because leaf never want to leave tree." I replied her note with this statement and slowly she started to talk to me & accept my presents & phone calls. I know that the person she loves is not me. But I have this perseverance that one day I will make her like me. Within 4 months, I have declared my love for her no less than 20 times. Every time, she will divert away from the topic. But I never give up. If I decide I want her to be mine, I will definitely use all means to win her over. I can't remember how many times I have declared my love to her. Although I know, she will try to divert but I still bear a small ray of hope.
Hoping that she will agree to be my girlfriend. I didn't hear any reply from her over the phone. I asked, "What are you doing? How come you didn't want to reply?" She said, "I'm nodding my head". "Ah?" I could n't believe my ears. "I'm nodding my head" She replied loudly. I hang up the phone, quickly changed and took a taxi and rush to her place & press her doorbell. During the moment when she opens the door, I hugged her tightly.
Leaf departure is because of Wind pursuit. Or because Tree didn't ask her to stay...

Moral
In love, we win very rarely, but when love is true, even if you lose, you still win just for having the tingle of loving someone more than you love yourself. There comes a time when we stop loving someone, not because that person has stopped loving us but because we have found out that, they'd be happier if we let go....
Why do we close our eyes when we sleep? When we cry? When we imagine? When we kiss? This is because THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN THE WORLD ARE UNSEEN.
There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind, but keep in mind that letting go isn't the end of the world. It's the beginning of a new life. Happiness lies for those who cry those who hurt, those who have searched and those who have tried. For only they can appreciate the importance of the people who have touched our lives.
A great love? It's when you shed tears and still you care for them, it's when they ignore you and still you long for them. It's when they begin to love another and yet you smile and say, "I'm happy for you." If love fails, set yourself free, let your heart spread its wings and fly again. Remember you may find love and lose it, but when love dies, you never have to die with it.
The strongest people are not those who always win but those who stand back up when they fall. Somehow, along the course of life, you learn about yourself and realize that there should never be regrets, only a lifelong appreciation of the choices you've made. Loving is not how you forget but how you forgive, not how you listen but how you understand, not what you see but how you feel, and not how you let go but how you hold on.
It's more dangerous to weep inwardly rather than outwardly. Outward tears can be wiped away while secret tears scar forever...

It's best to wait for the one you want than settle for one that's available.

It's best to wait for the right one because life is too short to waste on just someone.

Philosophical Conundrums

Philosophical Conundrums of our Time
No.4: The Seven Ages of Man

Shakespeare would have us believe that the Seven Ages of Man go something like this: infancy (mewling and puking); boyhood (whining and shining); lover (sighing); soldier (jealous, with a beard); justice (fat and wise); pantaloon (spindly spec-wearer); second childishness (oblivious to everything).

Well, you can’t say that Shakespeare is too complimentary about his sex, but that’s fair enough, really. However, seeing as this was written a good 400 years ago now, we couldn’t help thinking that it was time for a bit of an update. But we discovered, while some parts fall short of defining what is modern-day man, others were still eerily accurate. So here goes…

Infancy
A formative time for the male race. While Shakespeare’s brat is nurtured by a nurse, who probably had several other brats to look after too, modern-day man is breast-fed, adored and spoilt by his mother, leading to a life-long dependence on the woman and/or fascination with large breasts, rather than some scrotty offerings that have fed half the village.

Boyhood
Whining, shining, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school? Sounds reasonable.

Lover
Blimey. Just how early did they get it on in Shakespeare’s time? Seems a bit of a leap here. For his “lover”, read our spotty adolescent. And while old Will might have been penning a few romantic lovenotes or two, this generation of teenage lovers are rather to be found scrawling “Debbie takes it up the arse” behind the bike sheds. And as for the eyebrow bit – well, your average 15-year-old will probably be aiming a little lower…

Soldier
Leaving aside the few thousand men that actually do join the army aged 18, the majority of men have to direct their aggressive, man-killing urges elsewhere. Apart from that, Shakespeare’s description is pretty accurate. Full of strange oaths? Just your average football fan. Bearded like the pard? Student. Jealous in honour and quick in quarrel? Punch-up over mate’s girlfriend. Seeking the bubble reputation, Even in the cannon’s mouth? Okay, it’s a while since I did English A Level, but I’d say this pretty much equates to that strange habit small blokes have of picking on the tallest guy in the pub.

Justice
Seeing as people tended to kark it a bit earlier in Shakespeare’s day, this description surely matches today’s middle-youth. So, yes, we have the fat belly, from one too many lagers rather than, perhaps, too many large chickens, and as for the wise saws, well, blokes of a certain age (mid-thirties up) do tend to bang on a bit and always think they’re right. Sadly, Will’s man does seem a bit more mature than today’s middle-youthers, however – the regression to second childishness has already begun, with an obsession with gadget, fast cars and doling out “justice” via a computer game.

Pantaloon
Looks a bit odd at first sight, but then we find that a Pantaloon, instead of being a type of trouser, is actually an “old wealthy suitor”. Rich, retired and mean and miserly, the pantaloon had a penchant for younger women, despite the fact, as we can see from Shakespeare’s original, he had specs, love-handles, and was a bit spindly. Any of your dad’s lecherous mates, then.

Second childishness
Shakespeare’s man ends up blind, deaf and oblivious to everything. Except themselves, we might add.

Babies or guinea pigs?

Last week, newspapers reported that 49 babies below the age of 12 months have died at India’s best known medical institute, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences , better known by its acronym AIIMS. The babies have died since January 2006, following the administration of new drugs and therapies.

On Tuesday, August 26, AIIMS said that the drugs used for clinical trials were ’safe’. The institute also strongly refuted allegations that the children chosen for the drug trials were from a poor socio-economic background. Read the PTI report [via The Hindu] here.

News of the infants’ deaths was obtained under the Right to Information Act when Rahul Verma [pl read his comment to AW in the comments section] who is associated with a non-government organisation called the Uday Foundation for Congenital Defects and Rare Blood Groups applied for information on ongoing clinical trials at AIIMS.

What he found out: 4142 babies were registered by AIIMS for clinical trials; of these, 2728 were less than 12 months old. And 49 (or under 2 per cent) had died in the past 30 months. For the same period AIIMS conducted 42 trials in its paediatric department.

As with most things Indian, health minister Anbumani Ramadoss has called for an inquiry to be conducted by the AIIMS director. The findings are expected to be submitted within a week.

AIIMS doctors have been maintaining that the children who died were ’seriously ill’ and were not a part of the intervention programme.

Nevertheless, the deaths seem to have focussed attention on India’s booming outsourced clinical trial business. According to Rahul Verma there is urgent need to regulate India’s booming outsourced clinical trial business, which he pegs at $120 million for the last year and which he estimates is growing at a whopping 25 per cent annually.

“When you are not able to afford a particular treatment in a private health care centre you look forward to getting free medication in something like this,” Verma recently told AFP.

“We wanted to know what are the socioeconomic condition of these people? Are they given consent forms and counselling?”

Good questions. Some years ago, I was in Chennai visiting the facilities of an NGO that provided medical treatment — much of it free — to poor HIV positive patients. The NGO’s director freely admitted that many new drug trials were being conducted at her institute. All the patients, she pointed out, were given counselling and trails were conducted only after their consent had been obtained.

But to a poor man or woman who had been served a death warrant, the promise of a breakthrough by a new drug is too powerful to resist. Especially, when he or she cannot afford expensive anti-retroviral drugs required for the treament of HIV/AIDS

Verma said the hospital did not provide information on the incomes of the families in the infant trials.

Incidentally, a clinical trial conducted in India costs 40 to 60 per cent less than what it would in a developed country. According to consulting firm, Ernst & Young the outsourced clinical research market in India could grow to two billion dollars by 2010.

Ramadoss has promised legislation and regulation of these trials. But given India’s desperately poor population and the numbers that simply cannot afford treatment and medication, there are serious concerns and questions about the practice and ethics of clinical trials in this country.

What do you think?

India Under Siege .. And The Traitors Within

Arundhati Roy joins the rally held by terrorists and Paksitani supporters and calls for India to give “azaadi” to Kashmir. Of course Kashmir’s separation will lead to the balkanization of India and that’s what this maoist activist eventually wants.

Here’s an article by Dr. Gautam Sen about the Islamic and Maoist Seige of India:

India is undergoing outright warfare, with its cities bombed at will and massive infiltration across its borders. The Pakistani rationale for cutting India down to size has rarely faltered since 1947 and echoes a much older Islamic tradition. It stretches back a millennium and reasserted itself the moment British usurpers of Islamic rule were expelled by Hindus. Of course the Anglo-American imperialists and cold warriors actively incited this diabolical outcome because they assumed Islam would be an ally against Soviet communism and Nehru’s India would not. The Arabs in general and the Saudis in particular eventually become co-conspirators in the project to restore Islamic primacy in the Indian subcontinent even if Hindus were to continue ruling it nominally as vassals. They correctly perceive that the ability to control and deploy India’s economic and demographic assets will allow them to challenge the Christian West. The Saudis are the main source of the catalytic funding for the jihad that is threatening to break India’s political will and evidently succeeding. The Chinese also became active after the mid-1950s in arming Pakistan and, more recently, encouraging its bombing campaign of Indian cities to curb the economic advance of India, which it regards as an irritating, lowly rival.

Within India, some mosques and madrasas are the fifth column that provides critical support for the aggression that it is encountering. Their role is to cultivate passive and active support for the Islamic onslaught. It entails ensuring that most Muslims refuse to co-operate in efforts to interdict Islamic terrorists by remaining silent spectators while the murderous bombings continue, provide safe havens in impenetrable Muslim areas for terrorists and a vital element of local manpower to the Pakistani and Saudi agencies engaged in terrorist activities. The deployment of Muslim votes strategically is also an important aspect of their overall goals in order to make it impossible for important Hindu families (rather than the nominal political organisations that they preside over) to survive politically without their consent. The economic sabotage of counterfeit currency produced by Pakistani government agencies is another aspect of the Islamic onslaught that has the virtue of making Indians themselves defray the cost of jihad.
Indian themselves are profoundly complicit in the project that seems destined to destroy their country and their civilisation. Two underlying factors that have facilitated the rapid expansion of the Islamic onslaught against India are its political culture and constitutional arrangements. The first is the product of the bumbling imbecility of the Gandhian project that de-legitimised the whole notion of self-defence, on which all societies are founded and to which the most important Hindu text is almost exclusively addressed. And it was Pandit Nehru whose arrogance and intellectual mediocrity accentuated and institutionalised this Gandhian self-destructiveness in India’s constitutional arrangements, again the product of the wilful ignorance of its leaders, created a parliamentary democracy after independence that guaranteed to highlight and deepen every division among its citizens. In a presidential system, by contrast, Indians would have been compelled to begin overcoming their multiple identities and the potential divisions they incubated because the constituency for president would have been a national one.

India now exhibits all the political and psychological symptoms of a defeated society. The unprecedented protests in Jammu have been greeted with surprise across the board precisely because they are exceptional. But the overall situation in India is dismaying, with virtually its entire political class overawed by the intimidatory truculence of Islam, anxious not to provoke even if it entails conceding the most fundamental norms of Indian society. The ascendant media, harbouring crude Western aspirations and their concomitant political interests, and elite higher education institutions dominated by Christians are gleefully nurturing a deracinated Indian establishment. Their purpose is to exercise influence over India by completely dominating its intellectual life and of course continue saving souls in the way it has done successfully by Christianising South Korea. The Islamic onslaught against India provides them with a window of opportunity, by keeping India off balance and preventing the emergence of a self-confident indigenous elite that might resist its imperialist designs. This is why Islam and Christianity co-operate cynically over what is becoming the spoils of a broken-backed India, postponing their own competition with each other until they have destroyed all traces of the civilisation of the Hindus first.

The economic success of India in recent years and the resulting additional resources at the disposal of the Indian State are not relevant to the grievous outcome threatening it. These huge resources are actually being used for electoral bribery or stolen and to purchase arms that have little relevance for the prosecution of the deadly internal war against Islamic and other forms of terror. Some of the terrorists have clearly formed a seamless political alliance among themselves, with the Naxalites publicly declaring support for Pakistani terrorists and no doubt benefiting from Pakistani largesse. It may also be hazarded that many individuals, media outlets and alleged human rights organisations are mere fronts for terrorists and the evidence is in the public realm in some important instances. The armaments being purchased with uncharacteristic purposiveness by the entire political class has some bearing on potential external threats to Indian security, but one suspects that the alacrity with which they are undertaken has much to do with spin-offs that result from bribes. But most relevant of all is the failure of India’s politicians to engage with conviction against internal terror by deploying appropriate resources and motivating trained personnel instead of hobbling them in the performance of their duties because of apprehensions about losing Muslim votes.

The end is not necessarily going to take the shape of an invasion by the rapist Pakistan army across the Punjab towards Delhi. In fact, India’s demise and the retreat of Hindus will express itself as an accentuation of trends and processes already underway, with occasional dramatic departures that underline the calamity unfolding. The expulsion of the Pandits, which failed to truly exercise even India’s official nationalists, is a harbinger of the shape of things to come. Hindus are likely to face expulsion from areas dominated by Islam though some of it will occur and is occurring in a huge swathe of eastern India because Hindus are voluntarily abandoning Muslim areas for fear of consequences if riots occur. These areas then come under implicit Pakistani rule under the guise of the autonomy of Sharia practices and constitute bases for militant activity against adjacent areas outside the immediate control of Islam. As the political balance changes in favour of Islam, the Indian political class will behave even more supinely, in a pattern that has already become well established, further sealing the fate of India. And with each success Islam will demand more, as it has increasingly begun to do dramatically in less than four years.

The first major Indian city likely to come under the total sway of Islam is Kolkata since its demographics are changing rapidly, with whole areas being abandoned by Hindus and becoming

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08.Tintin and the King Ottokars Sceptre
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09.Tintin and the Crabs with the Golden Claws
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10.Tintin and the Shooting Star
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11.Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn
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12.Tintin and the Red Rackhams Treasure
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13.Tintin and the Seven Crystal Balls
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14.Tintin and the Prisonres of Sun
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15.Tintin and the Land of Black Gold
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16.Tintin and the Destination Moon
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17.Tintin and the Explorers on the Moon
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18- Tintin and the Calculus Affair
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19- Tintin and the Red Sea Sharks
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20- Tintin in Tibet
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21- Tintin and the Castafiore Emerald
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22- Tintin and the Flight 714
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23- Tintin and the Picaros
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TINTIN BY OTHER WRITERS

This story was incomplete because of Herge's untimely death. Some other writers completed the story and got it published:

24.Tintin and alph-art(Some original sketch of Herge is included in this book)Read NowDownload NowNot Written by Herge, But u can buy these in some stores:

25.Tintin and the Lake of SharksRead NowDownload Now
A few stories written by different writers:

26.Tintin in thailand(Black & White)
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27.Tintin the freelance reporterRead NowDownload PDF

28.Tintin and the mysterious visitorRead NowDownload PDF

29.Tintin they explored the moonRead NowDownload PDF

30.Tintin and the voice of the lagoonRead NowDownload PDF

31.Tintin and the Flute of the WendigoRead NowDownload PDF

Setting goals alone isn’t enough, you have to set them right

PSYCHO TALK

“Set your goals high” — or so the story goes. You might have been advised by people left, right and centre to set your goals high in your life. But, does setting goals really help matters at all? If so, what characterizes a proper goal? Now, to take a close look at what modern psychologists have to say about goal-setting, read on. Why are you reading this article instead of doing something else? Your motivation for reading this article might be based on your goal of gaining some knowledge, which in turn might relate to a broader goal like a well developed world view.
Along the same lines, students’ motivation to prepare for an examination might be to achieve their goal of doing a course well, which relates to a broader goal like a well paid job. Psychologists have found that we set goals when we see a discrepancy between our current situation and the situation we want to be in. Setting a goal motivates us to engage in behaviours that can take us towards it, but the kinds of goals we set can influence the amount of effort, persistence, attention and planning we devote to a task. It is also to say that setting a proper goal deserves some thought.

Goal setting

In general, the harder the goal, the harder people will try to get there for so long as the goal looks achievable —’looks achievable’ being the operative words there. Goals that are impossibly difficult may not motivate maximum effort. Secondly, the person has to accept the goal. If a difficult goal is set by someone else, as when parents ask their son to get full marks in mathematics, one may not accept it. Next, setting clear and specific goals tends to encourage persistence in people. In plain English, specificity increases motivation. For example, you are more likely to keep reading this article if your goal is to understand the whole article than if it is to “do some reading.” Clarifying your goal makes it easier to know when you have reached and when it is time to stop. What it all comes down to is, a proper goal is quite an equation of the following: Balance between hardness and achievability; Acceptability; Clarity; and Specificity.

Write to the author at: psychologywithnavin@yahoo.com