The Dutch chocolate maker Droste is famous for the visual effect on its boxes of cocoa. The image contains itself on a smaller scale. This is called the "Droste effect" in any good Dutch dictionary. [Example]

Escher was a Dutch artist of the 1950's. His painting "Prentententoonstelling"(1956) has embedded Droste Effect and also has a spiral grid which is unique. A website is aiming at visualizing the mathematical structure behind Escher's Print Gallery. Make sure you watch the animations from these links: Droste Picture and Escher Picture.
(Via Penny Dreadful)

| posted by Ramki @ 9:29 PM

A photo blog by David J. Nightingale: Chromasia. A wide variety of styles. What I liked most about this photoblog is that if u click on comments for each photo, you get detailed camera settings for each photo like apeture width, shutter speed, focal length, flash etc. This info is really valuable for photography enthusiasts. With my primitive digital camera, I was trying out each setting and finding out what each one changes in a snap. If you have a good digital SLR camera, you can have this photoblog as a reference.

| posted by Ramki @ 8:54 PM

Sending a weak electrical impulse through the front of a person's head can boost verbal skills by as much as 20 percent, according to a new study by the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. [more]

 "It appears to decrease the firing threshold of neurons in the path of the current ".

| posted by Rajan @ 4:52 PM

Days after a police constable raped a 16-year-old student inside an outpost at Mumbai's Marine Drive, a front-page article in the Monday edition of Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna partly blamed such incidents on provocative clothes girls wear. [more]

The politicisation of rape, that is what has happened in Mumbai. The ruling party Cong-NCP combine and the Shive Sena have turned the shame of Mumbai (when a constable raped a teenager in the middle of the day while on duty) into blame game. " [more]

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil on Wednesday said it will be wrong to criticise the whole force for an isolated incident and instead blamed the laws which could be exploited by cops to "harass" people. [more]


How do we expect any progress in India when its law makers & upholders are upto such dastardly acts. The people making such statements should be sent to school again and put in jail with the same constable. They are no better than him and in most likelihood much worse than the constable in terms of being potential social miscreants. Was there something wrong in the way we achieved freedom. Why dont we have well-intentioned politicians who atleast make it look as if they are concerned with the welfare of the society. Why do NRIs even feel proud of India ??

| posted by Rajan @ 9:42 AM

Purely for newspaper freaks - Over 200 newspapers...More than 50 countries...Original format, layout and pagination... PressDisplay delivers the world's leading newspapers to you before they appear on newsstands in their home countries.

Magnifying lens, bookmarks, full text search, and archival access - these powerful digital tools enhance your reading experience and make it easy to navigate your newspaper.

I know that Trash of India has a similar tool for displaying their valuable content. Pressdisplay requires a sign up though! With the logins in bugmenot, you can browse for maximum of 20 pages. For anything more, I guess you can clear your browser cache and start allover again.

| posted by Ramki @ 9:24 PM

Hitachi recently announced creation of high density hard drives with 3D stacking of the bits. Watch this nice hi-tech video from Hitachi, explaining the benefits of using perpendicular bits for magnetic storage: Get Perpendicular.

| posted by Ramki @ 5:40 PM

It's not too early to start modifying your code: Computer systems worry over  pending "year 10,000" problem.
 
Concern is building system-wide over a pending problem in computer systems  known to software experts as the "year 10,000 bug," a problem which may have catastrophic consequences for computer systems everywhere on the morning January 1, 10,000.  

While sentient bios and most constructs will be out partying in the new age   that night, computer systems all over the galaxy will suddenly begin miscalculating dates because their designers decided long ago to store the year as a 4-digit number.  

| posted by Ramki @ 5:35 PM

We could very well be architecting a SoP for employees working on the Toyota assembly line, in the next couple of years. Human area networking or Personal Area Network (PAN) is not a new concept. Thomas Zimmerman developed and proved the PAN technology concept that uses the natural electrical conductivity of the human body to transmit electronic data in 1996. " Using a small prototype transmitter (roughly the size of a deck of cards) embedded with a microchip, and a slightly larger receiving device, the researchers can transmit a pre-programmed electronic business card between two people via a simple handshake. What's more, the prototype allows data to be transmitted from sender to receiver through up to four touching bodies."


Zimmerman's publication in IBM systems journal can be found here. The paper is well written and an interesting read. " The transmitter T capacitively couples to receiver R through the body (modeled as a perfect conductor). The earth ground provides the return signal. The circuit reveals that body capacitance to the environment E degrades PAN communication by grounding the potential that the transmitter T is trying to impose on the body. For example, in one experiment, standing barefoot reduced communication between wrist-mounted devices by 12 dB."


April 29 2005: Technology Review carries this article about NTT developing a new "human area networking" technology called RedTactont that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data. Replacing the electrical sensors of a Media Lab-style system with faster lasers and electro-optic sensors showed dramatic results. It makes the technology competitive with other short-range communications technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee, and UWB. If true, the group hug could turn into a productivity tool as well as a motivational technique.

My view:
Every generation in the last 200-300 years has been thrilled by the inventions they made. Clearly the way we have built up on our knowledge is exponential. In our generation "Information Technology" and "Genetics" together have thrown open so many doors. It takes some time and effort to even understand what we would be capable of and how we as a race could potentially misuse this new information/understanding. The progress being made is to some degree contributed to the information disseminating power of the internet, Engineers/scientists of the world should make an effort to stay abreast of the new data being thrown our way every minute of the day. They should visualize the synegistic potential of  different key technological inventions. Good Luck !

| posted by Rajan @ 10:28 PM

No prank here. It is based on Image processing research from a UK university. So see how you'll like after 40 years...

| posted by Ramki @ 4:49 AM

Body Piercing is becoming more and more popular these days and there are dozens of different types of piercings you can get. There are also lots technical terms for the how's and why's of the procedures and taking care of them afterwards.

When you walk into a piercing parlor to get a new piercing, whether it's your first or your fiftieth, you may hear some words you haven't heard before. Once you're in that chair and about to have a hole put in your face or some other body part, you may be too intimidated or swept away by the adrenaline of the moment to stop and ask "What the heck are you talking about?"

| posted by Ramki @ 4:32 AM

Checkout this license plate collection group's website. A group of enthusiasts have tried to group all the license plate formats that have been issued in countries around the world. The India license plate page is not active though!

Also checkout Coke Bottles of the World Home Page - a collection of coke bottle designs and ads that have been released in various countries.

Airchive.com is an online museum of commercial aviation. With the Airbus largest passenger aircraft A380's last week's first flight and the recent article on lazydesi on Boeing and Airbus fighting for market share in Asian aviation industry, this website makes an interesting read.

| posted by Ramki @ 4:26 AM

The Harvard Museum of Natural History has this very nice exhibit of life-size glass models of 847 species of flowers, with remarkably accurate anatomical sections and enlarged flower parts. I think this is a very commendable effort on the part of the artists.

| posted by Rajan @ 10:18 AM

It started as a college prank and someone tried the same in his office too : Install a robo in the toilet, which makes all sorts of crazy sounds. If u can handle it, try listening to the audio clips in the website:http://www.triggur.org/robodump/

Demand-surplus:
There are so many Gmail invites now that a website is arbitrating the distribution of the invits to the needy: http://gmail.afraid.org/

| posted by Ramki @ 5:11 PM

If only we can undo events in our lives like deleting chapters in a book.... I think a part-II of this video is in the making.
Watch this awesone animation.

| posted by Ramki @ 4:50 PM

No offence to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. But someone found this strange similiarity in his appearence:

| posted by Ramki @ 4:42 PM

"Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once." - Virginia Woolf

A quote from Thinkexist - an extensive collection of quotations. It requires free user registration if u browse more than 10 pages of quotes.

| posted by Ramki @ 10:17 PM

Top ten Firefox browser annoyances, as seen by a Mozilla Suite user.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22634
I agree with #4 and #9. Others are not at all bothering me.

| posted by Ramki @ 10:09 PM

Checkout the bigview -- an amazing website on three major cultures and their spiritual as well as technological advances.

The website explains Buddism, Greek philosophy and Chinese 'Tao-Te Ching' philosophies.

The translation of Lao-Tse's verses and interpretation of Chinese Ying-Yang theory (male-female theory: stating that at any point of time either male or female powers dominate an individual or the world in general) have been explained nicely.

Checkout Budda's resume and here's an excerpt from a commentary on his life "He sees a decrepit old man, a diseased person, a corpse being cremated, and a sadhu (=holy man, hermit). Siddhartha realizes that there is old age, sickness, and death, and that people ultimately have little control over their lives. The fourth sight provides the inspiration that leads to a dramatic change in his life."

However I liked the explaination of Greek philosophies the most. Each Greek philosopher's work has been beautifully explained. A greek philosopher Zeno's paradoxes on motion and illusion are as follows:

To evince that motion and change is an illusion, Zeno presented the following paradoxes:

1. The Racecourse. Imagine a racecourse of a given length, say 100m. The runner starts at the beginning of the racecourse and reaches the goal in a given time. In this example of motion, the runner traverses a series of units of distance, foot perhaps. Zeno holds, that each unit of distances can be divided into smaller distances, 1/2 foot, 1/4 foot, 1/8 foot and so on, until at last we have an infinite number of distances. How can the runner traverse an infinite number of distances in a finite amount of time?

2. Achilles and the Tortoise. The swift Achilles and the tortoise hold a race contest. Because Achilles is a sportsman, he gives the tortoise a head start. While the tortoise is already moving towards the goal, Achilles starts and pursues the tortoise. In a few seconds he reaches exactly the point, where the tortoise has been when Achilles started. However, during this time the tortoise has moved forward and it takes Achilles a certain amount of time to make up for this distance. Again, the tortoise has moved on in that time and Achilles needs another, smaller amount of time to make up for it. The distance between Achilles and the tortoise will always be divisible and, as in the case of the racecourse, no point can be reached before the previous point has been reached, thus Achilles can never overtake the tortoise.

3. The Arrow. Does the arrow move when the archer shoots it at the target? If there is a reality of space, the arrow must at all times occupy a particular position in space on its way to the target. But for an arrow to occupy a position in space that is equal to its length is precisely what is meant when one says that the arrow is at rest. Since the arrow must always occupy such a position on its trajectory which is equal to its length, the arrow must be always at rest. Therefore motion is an illusion.

We are all aware of Pythogoras theorem. The incommensurables theorem was based on this theorem and here is the explanation:

For Pythagoras, his theorem led at once to the discovery of incommensurables, which appeared to disprove his whole philosophy. In a right-angled isosceles triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is double of the square on either side.

Let us suppose each side is an inch long; then how long is the hypotenuse? Let us suppose its length is m/n inches. Then m²/n²=2. If m and n have a common factor, divide it out, then either m or n must be odd. Now m²=2n², therefore m² is even, therefore m is even, therefore n is odd. Suppose m=2p. Then 4p²=2n², therefore n²=2p² and therefore n is even, contra hyp. Therefore no fraction m/n will measure the hypotenuse. The above proof is substantially that in Euclid, Book X." (Bertrand Russel, History of Western Philosophy)

This shows how Pythagoras' proposition immediately raised a new mathematical problem, namely that of incommensurables. At his time the concept of irrational numbers was not known and it is uncertain how Pythagoras dealt with the problem. We may suspect that he was not too concerned about it. His religion, in absence of theological explanations, had found a way to blend the "mystery of the divine" with commonsense rational thought.

From Pythagoras we observe that an answer to a problem in science may give raise to new questions. For each door we open, we find another closed door behind it. Eventually these doors will be also be opened and reveal answers in a new dimension of thought. A sprawling tree of progressively complex knowledge evolves in such manner. This Hegelian recursion, which is in fact a characteristic of scientific thought, may or may not have been obvious to Pythagoras. In either way he stands at the beginning of it.

  Please explore the site fully as it has lots of interesting reads.

| posted by Ramki @ 5:43 PM

ExxonMobil, one of the world's largest oil companies, has embarked on a crusade to discredit and marginalize Global Warming and the wealth of scientific research supporting its existence. This Mother Jones article  offers a comprehensive look at the ways in which ExxonMobil has attempted to influence public opinion about Global Warming and downplay its environmental effects.

One of the links from this page points to an article which calims the following when talking about the Kyoto Protocol. " Absent from the debate is the discussion of human ingenuity and our ability to adapt to our environment; when the temperature increases, we turn on the air conditioner. More people die from cold temperatures than heat, ... "global warming could actually save lives". It is much more important to focus on innovative technology for energy sustainability and security."

The US, the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, does not intend to ratify the Kyoto protocol, claiming that this will slow done industrial progress. How can you even say these things aloud let alone publish them ?!!!

PBS had this awesome program where they showed how the global climate is so tightly interlinked . Kids in carribean were reporting more and more asthma cases and this was tightly coupled to the rains in the Indian ocean. The rains/thunder would cause some wind patterns in the atlantic to change which would cause more sand to blow over from the Africa's to the America's. Also more sand because the rivers in the Africas are drying out due to ill-planned industrialization and higher temperatures. With this kind of knowledge and scientific ability we still are not able to do much because of the lack of political will and the political will seems to be more or less on a leash held tightly by the industry moguls.

| posted by Rajan @ 2:22 PM

Can someone without both hands win a swimming race? Well, look at the video in the link below.

http://media2.big-boys.com/files/nohands.wmv

I really salute this boy for his determination and confidence.

| posted by Ramki @ 12:24 AM

In every home there ought to be books that are friends. In every day, at least in every week, there ought to be some time which can be spent in cultivating their friendship...You need not be any one's enemy; but you need not be a friend with everybody. This is as true of books as of persons. For friendship some agreement in temperament is quite essential.

This is the caption on the front page of ibiblio.org. Its a nice collection of stuff you can read. Links to project Gutenberg, other blogs and lots of other places you can find interesting material to read.

| posted by Rajan @ 2:07 PM

Are the Indians developing new tastes ?? Apparently Yes according to this NYT artlcle. Monica Bhide, the author of this article, is talking about an affluent "upper middle class" who are beneficiaries of the free market economy, and have a penchant for spending. "Live life King Size"  seems to be their Mantra. This section of the society is at the moment confined within city limits , but the rural India is also seeing glimpses of such developments. Are these changes for the better ? Do we (Indians)  want to become the credit card toting, nascar driving consumers or do we want to be 'traditional' and save up for our kids school/old age /emergencies? Do these developments widen the chasm between the haves and have nots ? I am not sure if consumerism translates into more money for the local industry and thus more empowerment of the average Indian.

Excerpt from this article :
"As large as India's middle class is - it is estimated to make up about a quarter of India's population of more than 1 billion - for most of the country the new dining options are out of reach. Some fear a copycat phenomenon, as new eating habits are emulated by those who can't afford them."

See the comments section for a local copy of the article.

| posted by Rajan @ 12:26 PM

Putfile is a media upload website. Lots of non-copyrighted videos have been uploaded by users and anybody can search for specific videos in it. The variety of videos you can find there is amazing.

My liking for Chinese and Japanese continues and it made me search for them there also. Here is what I found:

1. An amazing Japanese commercial
2. Soon this might happen in Bombay suburban trains too if they go high-tech!
3. And u thought that Chinese restaurants still treat you the traditional chinese way!
4. Japanese wassup!
5. A group of young girls are shown THE RING movie video.
6. Watch what you are doing!
7. Listen to this hilarious audio on a chinese takeaway prank.

The best ones are the following ones. Now I understand why Rajnikant movies are so popular in Japan. Actually they stole his stories and made commercials out of it!

Sega is a videogame creating company are following are their ads:
Ad1
Ad2

Eventhough these videos are non-copyrighted, thanks to putfile.com for hosting them. If you have lot of time to kill, you can give multitude of searches and dig lot more interesting videos from there!

| posted by Ramki @ 1:07 AM

A Netherland firm Bathroom-Mania is working on very creative toiletware design.



Checkout their other products here.

| posted by Ramki @ 12:15 AM

Whatever u do in ur life, finally this is all there in it!
Please watch the following video to see what I mean! (Please copy the link and paste it in a new window. Otherwise it links to the homepage www.yonkis.com, which has certain links that may not be safe for work!) However, I thank them for the video.

http://www.yonkis.com/media/corre.wmv

Life is too short to be wasted. 
"Har pal yahan Jeebhar jiyo" - Live every moment of ur life.
So stop thinking more about what you have failed to do and start thinking about how happily you can live in the days remaining.

| posted by Ramki @ 8:40 PM

Yahoo News has a live webcam coverage of all the events at Vatican:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s&u=/pope1/static

The video quality is extremely good. Video newsfeeds from Reuters and AP have been around for a while now. But these are prerecorded newscasts (mis)interpreted by the so called news reporters and manipulated by the so called Governments and corporates. But live webcams during popular events add a new dimension to it. You can watch the events happening live, without any dilution/interpretation from the news reporters.

If a reliable news gathering website like Yahoo or Google sets up such webcams with 24x7 news feeds, a common viewer like me can report some quality news(?) about the same, provided that I have all the time in the world!

| posted by Ramki @ 7:25 PM

A very nice program which impresses on us that any of our economic endaevors should be qualified by a deep and scientific analysis of the environmental dimension of our actions. This was written in bold red in the Milenium Assessment Survey .

With the strongest nation in the world being led by a person who is more focussed on enriching financial supporters of his party how much can we expect? Who should be driving this ? Shouldn't the corporate world realize that this is not just a conscientous thing to do but the logically/economically the right thing to do.

| posted by Rajan @ 9:25 PM

" Wavesat, a leading developer of WiMAX silicon chips, C-DOT, the premier telecom technology centre of the Government of India and the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), the Government of Canada's primary research facility into telecommunications technologies, today announced they have begun working together to build a cost effective fixed wireless access solution, based on IEEE 802.16-2004 standard suitable for long reach broadband communication solutions. "
Whats encouraging about this article on WiMAX is the involvment of an Indian institution in its development. It would be awesome if India can get broadband in its rural parts with less investment.

| posted by Rajan @ 11:10 AM

Small cute eyes are a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese.
A japanese company has comeup with a makeup kit which allows them to fold their eyelids and glue it together so that more of the eye is visible. Apparantly this makeup kit has become very popular in Japan.
Watch the flash video explaining this makeup here.
Can't believe they are actually doing it!

P.S: My spoilt lazy mind is not thinking about any other application for this kit.

| posted by Ramki @ 11:24 PM

You might have read about crazy and absurd patents granted by the US and European Patent offices.
Following are two good sites listing the most impractical/illlogical patents granted:
http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk/morepats.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/crazy.html

 But the best ones are the following patents by Arthur Paul Pedrick - an extremely prolific British inventor in the 1960's. Bursting with ideas, he clearly felt that he had to share them with the world, without bothering about the practicality of the ideas.
http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk/pedrick.html

Some good patents are:
1.UK Patent No. GB1047735. Piping snow and ice balls from Antarctica to irrigate the Australian desert. The patent suggests this will solve the world famine problem. The snowballs accelerate under gravity from 10,000 feet (3,000m) high on the Antarctic plateau, reaching 500 miles per hour (800km/hr) at sea level. They are then pumped naturally through the pipelines, by the Coriolis force due to the Earth's rotation.



2. UK Patent No. GB1361962. Pedrick's ultimate deterrent to solve the Cold War. The UN places three nuclear bombs on earth-orbiting satellites. If these detect that one of the superpowers has been nuked by one of the others, they are automatically programmed to drop on Washington, Moscow and Peking, ensuring the mutual destruction of all three.


3.UK Patent No. GB1453920. A solution to a "Towering Inferno" fire in a skyscraper. Rolled-up fire curtains are provided at roof level. When a fire starts, the curtains are released to envelope the sides of the building and extinguish the fire by suffocating it. So that the occupants of the building can breathe, they must go to certain rooms, where apertures in the fire curtains allow air to get in.


4. UK Patent No. GB1204648. Irrigating the Sahara Desert by piping fresh water from the mouth of the Amazon. The patent also suggests an alternative to the Channel Tunnel between England and France. Both use a semi-buoyant tube submerged 200 feet below the sea surface.

Brimming with bleeding edge technology ideas??? Well... I got that feeling too. Please post ur comments patentable ideas.

| posted by Ramki @ 3:03 AM

I have seen people sniffing in tobacco, ultra strong cold relief balms. But not this! Maybe you can try it if you are too bored and too lazy to do anything adventurous outdoor. ;-)

Came across the funny quote in the subject line somewhere and queried the mother of all search engines (for a change) on sniffing, and it revealed some more good quotes:

• "I think college administrators should encourage students to urinate on walls and bushes, because then when students from another college come sniffing around, they'll know this is someone else's territory." - I guess this must have been from some frustrated Indian college HOD.
• "Kissing originates from animals sniffing each other"
• "I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose" -

| posted by Ramki @ 12:54 AM

I guess I found someone sharing similar traits of Lazy Desi's...
http://www.lazygeek.net/

Sathiyon... we are not alone in this lazy world.

| posted by Ramki @ 9:29 PM

Here is a slide show called "Identity" from Kansas University -
Indian Students Association:
http://www.ku.edu/~kuindia/dhoom_slides.htm

Very nice pictures of India complemented with a very good background score.

| posted by Ramki @ 8:31 PM

" Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project
they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of
millions of developing world kids. It's a grand idea and a daunting
challenge: to create rugged, internet- and multimedia-capable laptop
computers at a cost of $100 apiece.

That's right, the price of dinner for four at a moderately priced
Manhattan restaurant can buy a Third World kid what Negroponte
considers an essential tool for making it in the 21st century. The
laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million
units and bought by governments, which would distribute them. "

Very nice effort but riddled with all the problems possible. If it
comes to rural India, the logistics should be handled by NGOs or
corporate India. Is this do-able by one of us in India or do you need
to pull strings at processor companies and political circles ?
Is there something called a digital divide in India ? I know in Mumbai
even the kids in the slums have some awareness of computers. Although
their first attraction to the machine being the multimedia abilities.
I can imagine rural India having a real problem, but aren't institutes
like NIIT adding to the clutter of sign-boards even in the smallest of
towns.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67115,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
OR
http://tinyurl.com/68lo4

| posted by Rajan @ 3:37 PM

This news is very encouraging. If it takes off it will create a lot
more jobs than the software industry.

" BANGALORE, India — Intel Corp. will locate a production facility in
the southern Indian city of Chennai, according to a news report Monday
(April 11) quoting India's union minister for communications and
information technology, Dayanidhi Maran.

No further details about what will be manufactured at the proposed
plant, or whether it will be a fabrication facility, were available.
Past reports have assumed that an Indian manufacturing facility would
imply the construction of a wafer fab. Other observers have said this
is unlikely, and that a test and assembly facility for the chip
packaging is more likely.
According to a report in The Hindu of Chennai (formerly Madras), "All
multinational companies look for a very good deal and other
incentivespointing out that Intel had finalized its plans for a
manufacturing facility in Chennai." It quoted the minister as saying:
" They [Intel] are waiting for the special economic zone policy to be
announced."

The report said the minister had assured Intel Chairman Craig Barrett
when they met last year that the project would be put on a fast track
arrangement.

The minister was also quoted as saying that the federal government had
formed an interministerial task force from the telecoms, commerce and
finance ministers to coordinate all issues regarding the Nokia
manufacturing plant to make mobile devices announced last week.
Nokia's plant is also coming up in the state of Tamil Nadu, though not
in Chennia, the state capital.

Three more global telecom equipment manufacturers are shaping their
India plans, including Motorola and Nortel Networks, it quoted Maran
as saying."

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3J0QVI2102VKCQSNDBCSKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=160700166
OR
http://tinyurl.com/6tg93

| posted by Rajan @ 7:19 AM

Check the NewScientist article on India's launch of EDUSAT - an
educational satellite meant to bring school education to remote
locations in India. Almost every small village has some access to
electricity and probably a TV too. Buy a receiver and you can educate
a village.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996423

Found this link from Slashdot. Drifted into the following website from
Slashdot's discussion:

http://www.dep.iitb.ac.in/

a distance education program set up by IIT Bombay where they teach
engineering level classes online. Seems a little pricey though at Rs.
3500 per course.

Anyone remembers the UGC programs in India where they used to have
lectures in various scientific fields. I was a very avid watcher of
the programs.
-Shankar

| posted by Ramki @ 3:27 PM

I got this as a spam, but a beautiful poem neverheless. It apparently
started as a chain letter, but I am forwarding it because of its
simple message. After all, something good comes out of spam :-)

-Shankar

Slow Dance (by Anonymous)

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's
Erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into
The fading night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,"hi"

You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

When you run so fast
To get somewhere
You miss half the fun of
Getting there.

When you worry and hurry
Through your day,
It is like an unopened gift
Thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

| posted by Ramki @ 3:25 PM

What miracle happened to you or someone that you know recently? Did
this happen within the past month? If not, just wait a little more, it
is due now - because of the Law of Large Numbers, a very important one
in Probability Theory. More on this in :

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=00094511-E068-10FA-89FB83414B7F0000

BTW, the author Michael Shermer is a very good writer.

-Shankar

| posted by Ramki @ 3:19 PM