Panorama creation using Dermandar

http://www.dermandar.com/create/

Wow, this thing is FAST!

I took some pics with the mobile, transferred to comp, selected them here and in a few seconds a 360 degree view was ready!

I got confused at the next step as there was an 'Upload' button as well as 'Save As' and I was thinking that what the heck, I have already uploaded the pictures. But actually, the website creates the panorama on our computer itself without doing any uploading. (I'm impressed!)

So now I press Save As and download a big stitched image file to my comp, and after that I press Upload, next screen it takes the panaroma's name and details. And THEN it takes a long time to upload the whole thing.

So, check out this address:

http://www.dermandar.com/user/nikhilsheth/

And.. we can embed it!


edit: changed to another higher res panorama we made later in the day

This panorama was made out of 9 photos, one of which is below:

use the Flash embed option instead of the default HTML5... the default one isnt working on my tiddlyspace at present.

more articles from the web.. on how we can create virtual tours..

Poor man's virtual tour with Dermandar

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/apps/dermandar-photography-app/#axzz1vwLGqe1U

Remember, this is all for FREE!

India’s male-female ratio crisis and an out of the box soution

Pre-requisite: please first watch the Satyamev Jayate episode on female foeticide that aired on 6th May prior to reading this. The link will lead you to its webpage.

I want to illustrate, using just bare numbers, how serious is the crisis arising from rampant female foeticide in India is in terms of there being a shortfall in women for men of marriageable age.

When we take the absolute countrywide numbers, they’re too large to immediately make sense to us, so let’s scale it all down to this scenario:

Imagine a small island nation with a culture identical to our own. Meaning that there is a “rule” that marriage by the marriageable age is a must, plus the cultural trend of preference for boys over girls. Take the present Indian sex ratio and imagine that every year there are exactly 1000 boys and 914 girls being born. For the sake of simplicity we imagine a 0% population growth rate.

The table below charts the yearwise progress of the island’s numbers of girls and boys. Imagine that everyone gets married at some age like 25, but we’re calculating how many couples will form and how many will be left single right from year 1.

From the first year, (ie, 25 years on), 86 boys are left single.

For year 2, there are not 1000 but 1086 boys available for the 914 girls. Here we will assume the same trend of Indian culture of a preference for older boys by the girl’s parents (and increasingly by the girls themselves), with the usual immediate advantage of an older boy being more well-off, more mature and more able to provide for the girl. So, all 86 of the boys carried over from the previous year get married to 86 girls from year 2. As a result there are now 172 single boys left from year 2.

These get carried over to year 3, and again the same circumstances. So now there are 258 boys left single from year 3.

This number of boys being left single increases year on year, and at the 11th year, the number of boys left single has crossed the total number of girls that will be born the next year. Also worth noting for the guys is that by year 11 (+25), of the 1000 boys that were born, only 1000-946=54 boys are able to marry girls from their own year. If there is just one school and college, this means only 54 of the 1000 boys will marry girls who they studied and graduated with. Remaining 946 have to wait for their juniors.

And from year 12, the extras literally spill over. There are now more boys staying single than those that will be born the next year. From year 12 onwards, NONE of the boys will marry their batchmates, plus 32 of their seniors will join the singles club with them. Of course, with the cultural preference being as it is, these 32 will definitely get married in year 13, but there will be even more boys from year 12 who will remain single even in year 13.

Now, of course we don’t marry off the kids at birth, meaning that the surpluses that started from year 1, are only observed from year 25 when parents seek to get their kids married and settled. Till then, imagine that this imbalance has gone unchecked, unobserved by the population of the island. Where is the chart at year 25 when the first shortfall of 86 unwedded males is physically felt by the people of the island?

By year 25, there are a whopping 3064 boys for the 914 girls…a factor of more than 3! 2150 boys … 70.2% of the total boys, including all of the boys born that year, are destined to be left single by the time the people of this island nation actually realize that they have a problem on their hands!

And this is what has happened in India. Sure, there are variations limiting the number of boys available for coupling including deaths and diseases, singledom, homosexuality etc. But the same variations affect the total women per generation as well, and seeing the distorted numerical relationship, even a minor offset in number of available girls translates to big offsets overall. It’s like the case of a scarce commodity causing major issues when it decreases even by a little. And even if one argues that of course girls will marry older boys, Duh, just shift the girls column up a few notches (so year 1 boys are to be paired with year 5 girls, suppose) – the end result is unchanged. There will still be a widening that will increase year on year.

The effects are already all around us. Haven’t we all witnessed an increase in large age gap marriages somewhere or the other among the people we know? 7~8 years difference between the bride and groom’s ages (guy being older) are no longer uncommon. But the same thing flipped (girl being older), is still very rare. This age gap has only widened over the past decade and it is because those men could not find anyone their age. For a whole gamut of other problems arising, the Satyamev Jayate episode covers them very effectively and I won’t go into them here.

I’m a solution oriented guy, so I’m not going to just bray about the crisis here.

So let’s go back to the island. In which ways would a solution be sought?

We could of course bring the sex ratio back to 1:1. Imagine that this process has already begun. But seeing the nature of things, this is a slow solution, will probably take a whole generation to work out, and does nothing to address the immediate problem which will get truly disastrous by the time the first balanced generation comes of age. I want to explore, what can be the immediate solutions?

1. War : Start a fight with some neighbours, start a war, use the excess males in the population as cannon fodder. Very evil as well as dangerous option, this can very easily result in mass casualties of even the women if the enemy managed to break the defenses. And this is just plain unethical. So, war is a strict No.

2. Import brides from elsewhere. Now imagine that there is no other place to import from since all other countries have the same crisis going on, or that this island is simply not an attractive enough option! Plus, such a huge addition to the island’s population will doom everybody, zero population growth must be maintained.

3. Throw out the excess males. Yeah, right. Where will they go? And who decides whom to throw out – the richer, older singles or the young, poorer ones who aren’t at fault? This too is an unfeasible option and could very well lead to genocide, if not direct then indirect.

4. Make mass clones of the women. Sure… suddenly the war seems like a far better option. Will the nerds fantasizing about whom they’d want to clone pause to consider that what makes a grown person isn’t just size of body parts but the combined experiences as a human being she’s had growing up over the years? The men will be marrying clones, not women!

5. Force most of the men to be celibate. IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? And whoever suggests that ought to lead by example!!

Have you noticed that all of the above have something similar : They’re all about either eliminating excess or adding more to make up for scarcity. It’s like in a thali there’s not enough vegetable (sabji) available for the rotis you have, so you’re either adding more vegetables or throwing away the excess rotis. One way you’re hungry and the other way you’re over-eating! And the last option is as dry and pointless as having only rotis. This isn’t a sustainable solution! What else can we do to make do with what we have? How can we solve this crisis without any elimination or addition?

And this takes us to the logical conclusion : In the thali, we alter the amount of roti that we take with each piece of sabji in order to balance things out.

It is said that the simplest solution, even if most controversial, is often the best one.

Ready? Here goes….

We have to let the women have more than one husband.

At the same time. With full respect to women’s rights. Not extra-marital, but totally legitimized.

How.. where.. why… well, take a look at the latter part of the Satyamev Jayate episode above and you will know that if we don’t do it legitimately and respectfully, its going to get done illegitimately and extremely disrespectfully.

There are several factors that would go into and result out of this, and the consequences are all ones that I like … most importantly it will once again restore gender equality.

I don’t have the time to go into this right now, but heres a link to a note on my web notebook where you might find some material I collect randomly until I can find a way to put it all together.

http://nikhilsheth.tiddlyspace.com/#[[Opinion%3A%20We%20need%20to%20accept%20women%20having%20more%20than%20one%20husband]]

Inviting your views as well.. please leave them in the comments here (and for God’s sake do not put them on the link on facebook that just vanishes off in a day!)

Parents Vs Love

Videos on self-perception and love

Here's a list of things I want you to see and this concerns love as well as how we perceive ourselves.

I'm linking to the people who delivered these talks so you can read their brief description and get an idea of what they'll be saying, where they're coming from. The videos of their talks are then on the right side of the same page. Even if you can't watch, do read what's there on those pages.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/tony_porter.html - makes a call to men everywhere: Don't act like a man. He pretty much sums up all the issues I have with people of my gender.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/brene_brown.html - studies vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Her talks turned my perceptions of weakness and strength upside down and resolved several nagging doubts I had.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/helen_fisher.html - gives an awesome insight into love and relationships. I STILL think it's just not fair and some things need serious thought and work.

Digging into the roots of gender discrimination in India and busting myths held about women

This topic is in ongoing development here:
http://nikhilsheth.tiddlyspace.com/#[[Discrimination%20against%20women]]

Found this in the Arvind Gupta readers library.

Read it from page 10 onwards (chapter 3)

It has a detailed account of the origins of discrimination between men
and women in Indian history, and shatters many long held myths along
the way.

On the web, here is a link to the same, though I found the pdf more
readable than the doc.
http://arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/sexismkalia.doc

Excerpt-

Anti-Feminine Statements
The denunciation of females as a group began with aspersions cast in
the Vedic literature: ".. .the mind of woman brooks not discipline.
Her intellect hath little weight.. .with woman, there can be no
lasting friendship..." (Upadhayaya, 1974: 159). Though Buddha
reluctantly allowed women- to become Sisters, establish convents and
join the order, he considered them inferior to the males. In his death
bed conversation with his favorite pupil Ananda, Buddha outlined a
principle for behavior toward Women, instructing that Buddhist monks
should avoid them because, "Women are soon angered, Ananda; women are
full of .passion.. .envious.. .stupid.. .women have no place in public
assemblies..." (Coomarswamy, 1928: 164). Mahabharata enjoined women to
refrain from studying Vedas. The Epics went to absurd lengths to
portray women as carnally insatiable lewds. 'They are inconsistent,
irreligious, licentious, fickle, crooked, ominous catalysts of
conflict leading to the destruction of families, cities, and nations'1
(Jayal, 1966: 228-230). The vituperations of Manu set the tone for the
denunciation of women in Indian literature. After a token tribute to
the need for honoring them, Manu portrayed women as base and ignoble
subjects. No woman, Manu recommended, should attempt to be
independent, even in her own house. In childhood, she should obey her
father, in youth her husband. If her husband dies before her, she
should defer to her sons. Single, married or widowed, at no point in
her life should she make her own decisions (Buehler, 1964: 147-151).
Literature between 600 and 1000 A.D. continued to reflect the tone of
Manu in its antifeminine stance. Even the poets of bhakti-kaal, an
otherwise enlightened group of folk writers, denounced the female as
the gate to hell, more poisonous than vipers and worthy of severe
disciplining.

Asceticism (Women as the Source of Evil)
Asceticism, particularly the doctrine of brahmcharya, placed an
unusual emphasis upon the desirability of freedom from sexual desires.
The female, as a source of pleasure, was depicted as a temptress.
According to this image, women lacked the moral strength of men. The
scriptures are full of anecdotes in which deceptive women act as
decoys to distract the ascetics from their higher spiritual pursuits.

...

How many deal-breakers does it take to break a relationship?

Got a feedback from some female friends saying “So True!” What do you think?

Further, what do you think should change, if anything?

What, and Who, causes War? And what can stop it?

Any philosophy that tells people to transfer over their powers of decision making, judgment and thinking into the hands of any external authority and to believe and go along with what they've been told by the authority without questioning;

Any philosophy that glorifies this,

Is going to lead to war.

Because that is exactly what a war needs to be able to happen.

The switching off of the independent thinking powers of the majority of the people.

If a religion is that philosophy that tells you to do as someone on top tells you, then the religion will cause war.

But it doesn’t need to be religion per se – it can be a political dogma, a technocrat doctrine, a corporate ethic, a community decision, a cult personality – anything. Anything that makes a few people or just one person believe they have all the answers and everybody else blindly trust that person or select people.

It is hence also possible for a movie star whom everyone loves exceedingly, to cause a war. Or a group of highly educated PhD’s who think they with their high quality brains can solve all the problems. Or a bunch of so-called scientifically driven process-oriented multinational corporations.

Such philosophies and groups and persons are there all over the place and any one of them can take over a community, a country and lead it to its doom.

So with this threat comes a ray of hope – the presence of a counter-philosophy that advocates for people to NOT give up their independent thinking ability, can act as a deterrent to war.

This counter-philosophy can also come from ANY source. The essential thing is that it must ask people to take back their powers of thinking and judgment and not blindly believe anybody.

It can be a religious institution, or a person, or any group of people, even just a theory. Or heck, even a bunch of kids. It can even be multiple sources independent of each other telling us the same thing, since here the core message is to NOT allow any limited entity to take over the collective mind.

But one thing is for sure : You cannot end war by replacing one authoritative philosophy with another. Repeating the same pattern that got us into a problem is not going to take us out of it.

So stop dreaming of that noble leader or leadership who will have all the answers, who will one day rise to power and put an end to all our problems. Ain’t gonna happen, buddy.

If we really want to solve the present mess, everyone is going to have to become their own leaders, their own thinkers, their own deciders.

~Peace out!~

Complicated behavior of women, or a symptom of a sick society?

Wanted to express something about … oh, cut the intros and let’s jump in.
Lots of talk all over the place about women being inherently crazy, proverbs about “don’t try to understand women”, about no one can tell how a woman’s mind works, etc etc.

Bullshit. If we can tell the chemical composition of the atmosphere of a distant planet just by looking at it and paying attention to detail, in this case too if you really go into the matter, analyze everything closely and pay close attention then you can begin to understand the fairer sex as well. I’m not saying anything about prediction or manipulation – My focus is to really understand someone, why they are the way they are, why they do what they do.

Irrational behavior of women is not because they're "wired this way". It's not "in their nature". Gentlemen and ladies, get this false myth out of your system.

It's just one more symptom of the sick, horrible state of our society and the way it treats its women. This includes the way its members, including women, treat each other.
As is the nature of disorders and symptoms, the receivers of irrational and torturing behavior that women are known to put people through (“emotional atyachaar”) are usually not the ones whose actions caused it. It takes a long time for the hurt to set in and disturb things, in some cases it spans entire generations. (alright, men behave badly too. But women are the mistreated ones here, as a result they exhibit this more.) So it is an inbuilt feature of this system to :
1. get women hurt by men or women,
2. then have them hurt men or women who are not at fault (and this little slice of the whole chain is what gets picked up and made an issue or mockery of in our media) and hence propogate the chain.
So if we really want to put an end to this madness, we’re going to have to put an end to ours. Men, you have to stop treating women like objects and property. A person is a person. Accept that and move on. Stop connecting your male ego with whether or not a woman is under your control.

Stop the obsession with Loyalty
Loyalty should be to a cause, not to any person. Because people can change. This applies to relationships too. Why this obsession with loyalty? From what I see, the only thing the loyalty concept does is make the guy lazy and retarded and lost most of his good traits out of a comfortable sense of security, and trap the woman with a guy whose quality drops meteorically. And then they sit and cry about “he’s no longer the loving, caring person he used to be”. In some cases this leads to seeking out extra-marital love. When that gets caught, everyone wants to blame the cheater, the traitor, the betrayer, the unfaithful. But hello, was the cheated spouse even worth being loyal to?
This even happens on the macro level – organizations and countries, once sure of full loyalty of their people, then inevitably go and do the most hideous of things with impunity because of this notion of security that loyalty gives them. Anyone who dares to question the actions of the people at the top, is then branded a “traitor”, dis-loyal to the whole institution. In families and communities, this obsession with loyalty leads to honor killings, domestic violence (nothing "domestic" about it, FYI) and a whole array of mental torture and emotional blackmail. This is my perspective : It is the same false notion of being loyal to fallible human beings that dooms relationships, organizations, whole nations.

This invites a lot of flak from people who don’t really get the difference between loyalty and commitment. So the obvious rebuke here would be “Oh, so you’ll abandon your commitment? Where is the honor, the ethics in that?”

People, there’s a HUGE difference between loyalty and commitment. Stop mixing the two. Stop justifying loyalty in the name of commitment.

Dictionary meanings:
Loyalty: Giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution

Commitment: A binding exchange of promises
Get the difference? In a commitment, both parties need to remain true to their promises. Both parties are accountable. If one fails to live up to the commitment, the other is empowered to walk away. There is accountability. Loyalty puts the whole burden on one person while making no room for accountability from the other.

Wow, loyalty Vs Commitment is a topic in itself! Will have to branch out here. (will update this line with a link when its ready)

To put it in short, a committed wife would leave an abusive or in any way unworthy husband. A loyal wife would keep suffering in silence. A committed person would identify and act proactively to remove the problems afflicting her. A loyal person would keep turning a blind eye, get afflicted by the problems and let them manifest themselves in her irrational, illogical and damaging behavior. By glorifying loyalty, we are insulting all the independent thinkers and doers out there, and paving the way for really screwed up mentalities across the board.

So, coming back to the subject of this post… MEN, if you want an end to all the crazy behavior and emotional atyachaar, we’re all going to have to start treating women like human beings, we’re going to have to put an end to OUR crazy behavior.

Update: Watch this guy's TED Talk to know precisely what is wrong with the man-box that men around the world have boxed themselves in: http://www.ted.com/speakers/tony_porter.html

This isn’t going to be easy or quick; it might take a whole generation for the damage to wear off. But let’s try to give our kids and their kids a better life. No one deserves to be subjected to this contorted, soul-destroying treatment that we today generalize by telling the women that “it’s a man’s world” and telling the men that “women are complicated”. We’re both getting hurt, let’s stop this.

Tip: To get informed about Nature Vs Nurture, Watch: The first part of the movie “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward”

Auto-Invest feature on RangDe.org in action

:)

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Why you ought to watch the Zeitgeist Movies - part 1

Some screenshots from Zeitgeist 1:

Warning: This post can offend you. Facts have that tendency. But the facts will never care about your feelings. It's upto you what to do about them. You could just move on to another page.

Pls wait a minute to let the images load:

Gods from civilzations past...

...and there were several others. Then along came...

HOW TO rescue your internet connection from persistent background internet traffic by your computer

posted this reply on the forum http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t306591-p3-akamai-technologies.html

Hi Patrick,
I think your problem was with the ACT of constant internet traffic happening from your computer without your explicit knowledge. Because I've been having the exact same problem.

Here's the solution: download the free version of NetBalancer
http://www.seriousbit.com/netbalancer/

I'm switching to a mobile internet plan in some weeks and it has a monthly bandwidth cap beyond which there's a hefty charge per MB. I'll get seriously screwed if this background internet traffic keeps going on.. Even I had turned off all automatic update downloading and still it continued.

I sensed an issue when my regular browsing became too slow. So to monitor the network usage I downloaded NetMeter (http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/index.php?PHPSESSID=fcd29f147c7b667fb78d8aaa5eeae369&action=tpmod;dl=item23). There I was in for a surprise - SOMETHING from my comp was using the internet full-time, and that too when there was NO update or anything of the sort going on. There was no virus or malware so clearly a legit process was the culprit here.

I searched for ways to track down which application is using the internet and came across this tool, NetBalancer. After installing (will have to restart the comp once, using win7) I found out that the system process svchost.exe is doing all the quiet downloading, that too at full speed! Suddenly Windows has become the equivalent of my teenage cousin secretly torrenting!

Using NetBalancer, I'm able to limit the connection speed of individual programs, as well as block them off from the internet entirely! I totally blocked svchost.exe for some time, then saw that NetBalancer's own website and some other sites weren't loading in Firefox (apparently there's some kind of interconnection). So then I kept a 5kb/s limit on it. And now the sites load fine and svchost.exe is no longer doing any constant browsing. Even after closing NetBalancer, nothing's going wrong, and on running it again its got traffic data from the time it was off.

I recommend using both NetMeter and NetBalancer. Netmeter has a nice graph that stays on top, rests in the taskbar next to antivirus etc and so keeps you in the loop. When you notice something fishy, turn on NetBalancer and catch the culprits!

Help needed to rehabilitate a TFI student who lost his home in a fire in Juna Bazaar, Pune

Hi,

Forwarding a request from a colleague in Teach for India, urgent help is needed to rehabilitate one of her children whose home was destroyed in a terrible fire in Juna Bazaar last week. If you have any of these items lying spare then please reach back:

From: Visha Mandloi , visha.mandloi2011 [at] teachforindia.org
Subject: looking up for some help for my class kid

hey all,

You all must be aware of the fire mishap that happened last week in juna bazzar.

One of my class kids house got completely destroyed in that fire. They have got nothing left with them except for the clothes that they were wearing at that time. By GOD's grace all of the family members are safe. I am thinking of helping them out out by collecting the undermentioned things with the support and help from you all.It can be anything which is just lying unused in your home.

please go through the list and see if you can help, it will be a great help to the kid and his family to start afresh.

also please reach out to as many people as you can who you think can potentially help.

list of the required things ( as discussed with kid's mother)  :

1.mattresses

2. quilts

3. bed sheets

4. clothes for one male(father), one female(mother, she wears saris only), one 10 year old boy one 7 year old boy and one 7 year old girl.

5. utensils(each and everything which is used in our homes)

6. stove 

7.fan 

8 .fridge

9. tv

10. fan

11. cupboards

 if you have something which is not on the list , but still could be required please reach out to me.

shoot me an email if you want to donate anything , i will let you know the details of where and how.

thanking you,

looking for a positive response.

-- 

Visha Mandloi Pundir :-)

fellow 2011-13

4th garde, S.G. Barve school,

Rasta Peth, Pune.

TEACHFORINDIA

The English Plurals -by George Carlin

The English Plural
according to ....

 We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes;
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese;

(there's more!)

Opinion: How Organized Religion causes Oppressive Regimes (and the other way around!)

Republishing (with some polishing) a comment to a question someone posted on FB:

Is there a correlation between religion being divine and theocracies being oppressive regimes?

My reply:

A religious tendency to trust and depend on in a higher authority for answers to the puzzling questions of life (often with unquestionable faith getting diverted to religious institutions that are made of fallible and corruptible men and not Gods)...

...translates into implicit trust without expectation of accountability in the governing authority who claim to know what's best for everyone. Take the cyclical and often disastrous assumption that whatever the ruling authority has done in any case is assumed to be good only because they are the ruling authority and we assume that they will only do what is best for their people. The dangerous part in this assumption is that the facts on the ground and data are completely ignored and we're simply floating on assumptions.

This is why scientific thinking and advancement ,which takes away the power of religious institutions by finding the answers to those puzzling questions through repeatable experimentation and proof and finding solutions to them as well, empowering the common man in the process, (example: using internet any human can now reach out his thoughts to millions of people at zero expense or communicate with anyone in the world with a tiny object in his hand : feats that would be considered as divine 100 years ago) ...

...has often also ended up diluting the powers of oppressive regimes (like what the Internet and mobiles did to Egypt and Tunisia).

 I would definitely say there is a strong corelation between the scientific method and people's empowerment.

Belgian cyclist on a world cycling and documentary tour at my place!

While on my way back from school day before yesterday, I came across a strange cyclist in the midst of the traffic. I can't really describe in words so attaching a picture.

So, he's Henri Vivegnis from Belgium. When I drew up alongside him and enquired about his bike, he showed me an address "Marathon Bahavan" - it was right around the corner and I guided him to the place.

And then being the nosy Gujju I am, I found out everything about him. He's from Belgium, and is on a world tour by cycle, attending Film Festivals. 

http://www.docuworldtour.be

And he's attending this for the next 3 days in Pune:

http://www.puneinternationalfilmfestival.com

He has cycled from Mumbai to Pune and after this he's going to cycle to Delhi.

I offered to accommodate him in case he doesn't have any place to go, and so he's at my place right now. Grateful to my Didi for being a gracious host coz I've been gone out most of the time over the last 2 days.

So, reaching out to all the cycling enthusiasts and those who want to show some hospitality : Please reach out! My situation at home isn't the very best right now and we have problems in arranging for proper food for his palate, and are having to depend on outside food. If someone can accommodate him or even just spend time with him it would be awesome! The film festival is from 9am to 7pm everyday and he's free outside those hours.

Also, HELP NEEDED for figuring out a way for our guest to cycle all the way from Pune to Delhi without getting killed! Has anyone out there done a similar car/bike ride??

At least let's meet up to check out the cool bike!!

Cheers,
Nikhil Sheth
+91-966-583-1250

Values

Do our children know how to count.... their blessings?

Can they read... between the lines?

Can they comprehend... the feelings of others?

Can they find the solutions to... the problems that haven't been solved yet?

Can they draw... a better future for everybody?

Can they question... the status quo?

Can they identify... the faults in the conventional methods?

Can they understand... the circumstances that determined a person's actions?

Can they predict... the consequences of their actions, and more importantly, of their inaction?

Can they determine... the true intentions behind the spoken ones?

Can they imagine... being in the other person's shoes?

Can they find... the facts and not just make assumptions?

Can they figure out... what will be the right thing to do?

Can our adults do all of the above?

Value education... educate values.

Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools

Dear Friends,

A veteran wikipedian in Pune, Ashwin Baindur, has started an ambitious project to compile a free offline digital encyclopedia for spreading to schools and homes all over India. This project will source the articles from wikipedia but will be child-friendly and available to use without any internet connection, and can run on even the slowest "dabba" PCs commonly seen in our government and low-income schools. More details in the forwarded email below.

Once compiled, spreading it will be as easy as sharing movies with your buddies - plug in a pen drive and Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+V (paste). If taken up passionately and spread virally, we can bridge the digital divide and bring a huge trove of knowledge to kids and teachers all over the nation who have never seen anything like it before.

How you can help: Go to:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AssY5vZfk1W5dEpGRGdPNl9VbFY0LW9sS1A5ODBzbkE#gid=0

.. read what is written there and start chipping in with article requests. This project is still in the compiling stage and needs your help. You need to think aloud and contribute the names of any and every India-specific thing that you can think of : places, people, festivals, culture, wildlife - whatever you think is a good general knowledge source that ought to be accessible to every student in India. You don't need to have any technical expertise to help here - just type in and you're done. There's space for over 3000 articles here, so be generous - jo bheje mein aaya daal do, editing koi aur lega.

Emmanuel's Visit

Shantabai Ladkat English Medium School, Nanapeth Pune had a unique visitor in November 2011. Emmanuel Engelhart from Switzerland is the creator of a program called "Kiwix" which runs "Wikipedia for Schools", a digital encyclopedia that runs on any computer, has over 6000 articles equal to 20 large encyclopedias. And it is completely free of charge, made to spread to schools for the benefit of teachers and students. 

Our school was one of the first in India to install and use this wealth of knowledge in our computer lab. So Emmanuel came to Pune specially to meet us and spent two full days interacting with all the students and the teachers, seeing his program in action in our lab and he even taught us a little French. We held a special ceremony for him to convey our gratitude for his noble and selfless work in the field of education that can empower millions of students all over the nation.

Addiction Vs Entrepreneurship

I found this quote on FB:

To feel superior to a self-destructive drug addict is the same as feeling superior to an entrepreneur whose enterprise has failed and burdened him with debt. They were both people who wished to experiment with new things. And some experiments fail. That's all there is to it. It doesn't give you the right to look down on them. They are no less human than you are.

Totally agree with the core message: We must treat everyone as humans. But, I think it was patronizing a little too much with the addict. Basically it reminded me about how people keep justifying addictions by saying things like "try something new once in a while" or "you should be open to experimentation!" and similar stuff. And that makes this a dangerous analogy, as it has one very critical flaw yet on the surface looks true and may even encourage people to enter into addiction in the spirit of freedom, experimentation and entrepreneurship. Indeed, it has. So, I commented to explain why the two are not similar...

There might be one slight devil in the details. The entrepreneur tried to do something that had NEVER been done before by anyone - for that is what entrepreneurship is. If there were already so many cases floating around of that exact same thing having been tried by others only to result in disastrous consequences, then that means our entrepreneur never learned from the world around him.

In which case he deserves to have failed and get indebted - you can't repeat a business idea as-is that's already been proven bad, it's stupid.

The drug-addict is REPEATING the exact same thing which 1000s of others before him have tried. It's not like he's pinching the needle in from a different angle so that's a novel concept. He's repeating someone else's experiment and he knows what the results are going to be. So if the bad entrepreneur deserved what he got, then what about the drug addict? Stupid is as stupid does :P

I guess it all hinges on what we define as "new" - new to just the person in question, or new to everyone?

--So, my message: Kids, don't fall for the lure of trying out these things in the spirit of doing something new. It is NOT something new. You're only copying 1000s of other people. By taking a whiff of a cigarette, a peg of alcohol or a snort or needle of a drug, you ain't doin' anything new, man. You're just being as stupid as the other idiots. You're copying an idiot's experiment! Are you really that boring?! If you want to do something NEW, something FRESH, do what a real Entrepreneur does - try something that has never been tried before by anyone around you.

Addiction = boring and old; not new. Be cool. Try something really new. Peace!

cross-post: "you should date an illiterate girl"

Can't help but cross-post this article - it sums up perfectly the chasm between "dream girl" and "dream woman" - it sums up perfectly what I can't stand about my fellow men and women - it sums up perfectly what I wish more women would be like if only this world would let them!

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

Jan. 19, 2011

By Charles Warnke

Charles Warnke is a 21 year-old writer based out of Berkeley, California.

Read more »

Date a girl who doesn't read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you've seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.
Let the anxious contract you've unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn't fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you've never been happier. If she doesn't, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn't read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

PAGE 2 (where the revelation hits!)
Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.
Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.
Date a girl who doesn't read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
Don't date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

A 12V DC home

Since my days in electrical engineering, this question has been bothering me: Most of the devices at our home that need electricity, need low-voltage DC power, not 230Volts AC.

The ones that do, are either run on AC just because DC isn't readily available (ceiling fans, washing machines, vacuum cleaners)..

..Or can now be succeeded by next-gen devices with far better performance and lower power consumption (CRT Vs. LCD displays, fluorescent tubelights Vs oLEDs)...

..And the rest are simple resistive circuits that run on both - including the traditional light bulbs, water heaters, kettles, toasters.

In fact, I'd say the only real uses of high voltage grid AC power supply are industrial ones where 3-phase synchronous motors and the like are needed. Homes and shops and offices : why bother?

The appliances we use at home usually have most of their weight in a hefty step-down transformer sitting inside the casing that converts the supplied power into a much safer 12 Volts, which is then converted into DC by AC-DC converter circuits. Crack open a computer's SMPS or a kitchen mixer or a TV and you'll find one inside. Laptop charger cords and mobile charger cords now have lighter electronic converters (albeit with a much shorter lifespan)
.
But now, a neighborhood biogas plant, a local wind turbine, a fuel cell, a solar panel can directly supply that low-voltage DC power! But unfortunately the electrical appliance industry today designs all products in a way that we need 230V AC (In India - in some other countries there is 110V also which is quite stupid as plugging into the wrong socket causes several faults, malfunctions and fires).

It's just so ridiculous, seeing that the AC-DC conversion results in inefficiency and power wastage! (and you can feel that in your power adapter heating up). If you wanted to switch to an off-grid electric supply today, you'd have to contend with this mind-boggling multi-step wastage:
1. Take the renewable-generated power and store it in a battery - WASTE POWER but unavoidable unless you're using fuel cells or your biogas turbine runs 24/7
2. Convert the electric power from LV DC to HV AC using an inverter - WASTE POWER
3. At the appliance end, convert the HV AC back to LV DC - WASTE POWER.

No wonder the entire grid power industry keeps gloating that getting off the grid is impractical - the present system we've been using since some decades makes it impractical for no fault of the poor little wind turbine or solar panel! And here we're not even looking at the issues of the actual things that are generating the power - it's purely the conventional systems at the user end that's wasting half the power away!

If the designers and the industry had had the foresight and had included an alternate DC supply socket in every electrical appliance that actually uses DC on the inside, then every home could have readily switched to off-grid renewable energy. Instead, the few expensive examples we see today, probably waste half of the renewable energy put in.

But the industry has locked us in.

So now I'm foreseeing a major demand cropping up for an industry in parallel with the rise of local renewable power replacing the grid : an industry that will re-wire and retrofit all existing electrical appliances to include a DC power socket. In most cases this will be as simple as drilling a hole in the casing and fitting a socket that will skip the transformer/converter sections and hook up directly with the device. Some rudimentary over-voltage and polarity protection will also be in order - but at the low voltages like 12V, it's easily doable. It's very simple, but essential for the concept of off-grid homes to turn to reality.

An offshoot of this: Say goodbye to the eternal safety hazard of the electric socket and switch. A person or child accidentally touching both terminals of a 12V DC outlet will NOT suffer intense burns; a short-circuit at this low level of voltage will be cut out by the protection system long before there can be any fire hazard (unlike 230V AC where the spark can burn someone or set things on fire and only AFTER the spark does the protection fuse kick in). The main fusebox, etc will longer be a very very dangerous place in the house. This "side-effect" of converting a home from AC to DC can be marketed as a major safety enhancement for the family.

Of course, it doesn't have to be this or that - we can have a transition model having both LV-DC and AC sockets available. Several homes in areas of frequent power cuts employ an inverter system anyway which kicks in when the power is out, replicates the 230V AC supply from the battery storage and powers most of the house sockets. In fact, these houses are great potential off-grid converts as you simply have to hook up the renewable power source with the existing battery and extend circuits from there to give DC power outlets to the whole house.

A house with DC sockets and appliances running directly off it - hoping I get to see this idea converted into reality some day!

14 Feb 2013 Edit: This entrepreneur, Gunter Pauli, is DOING IT! Check out his video/audio talk from this article: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2011/08/16/3293620.htm at 51:00 mins!

HOW TO deploy Wikipedia for Schools offline encylopedia on school computers

Bridge the internet divide; spread the light of knowledge to school computers the same way you share movies and songs with your friends: with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and a few clicks!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOffline_Wikipedia_install_guide.pdf

Thanks to Jessie and Emmanuel for their support and faith; it's an honor to be collaborating with you on this project!

Nikhil Sheth,
Teach for India Fellow, 2011-13
Grade 3 teacher, Shantabai Ladkat School, Nanapeth, Pune

The junior's turn

A bus loaded with passengers and a collection of senior and junior drivers is speeding towards a cliff. The senior drivers are all roundly criticized for having driven them in that direction, for never having learned to turn the wheel or use the brakes, and for having ignored earlier pleas of the more tech-savvy passengers who'd looked up their GPS and figured things out before they did. But now that the cliff is finally visible, all the passengers want the bus to halt, turn around and get back to safety.

However, the junior drivers are now at the wheel and they say it's their turn to push the accelerator; and they haven't been taught by the seniors to do anything else. They're only focused on "their turn", are pushing the accelerator more than ever before, and are oblivious to the fact that the whole bus is going to plunge over unless they stop mindlessly mimicking their seniors' past actions. They're also busy blaming the senior drivers along with everyone else, but don't want to make any changes on their part.

The junior drivers are the government-industrial complexes of India and China and some more developing nations. The senior drivers are pretty much irrelevant by now. The bus is our planet. The rest you extrapolate.

friendship Vs love in a venn diagram

Hoping that one day we can understand one another.

Distance makes the heart...

For men:

Proximity makes the heart grow fonder,
Distance makes the heart look yonder.

For women:

Distance makes the heart grow fonder,
Proximity makes her want a brother.

Yes, this post is a joke, a pot-shot, a jibe. Probably just more crap from me. Absolutely untrue. DEFINITELY not true in your case at least...

But tell that to all the women who only realized how much they miss and long for that one friend only after the poor chap has already given up, made drastic changes to his life and gone away.

Tell it to the women who desperately cling on to their long distance relationships, make themselves impervious to all other influences, stay ever faithful, only to find out much later that their beau's gotten bored of this dedicated routine and wants to move on.

And finally,tell that to all the guys whose female buddies / colleagues / classmates (who they worked with, talked with, grew to respect, appreciate, admire and gradually start to like) turned them into brothers or parked them forever in "the friend zone".

No more dead dinosaurs, sorry!

(just read a "breaking news: petrol price hike by another 2rs/lit on TOI)
Ok enough talk and theories. Time to put the foot to the pedal. 

www.abdn.ac.uk

Petrol prices are never coming back down, people. Even if we removed all the taxes and the surcharges that these email fwds complain about, there IS NOT ENOUGH PETROLEUM IN THE WORLD FOR INDIA's demand or for any other country - there were only that many dead dinosaurs in the ground and we've burned most of them off. 


(for the slow : That is correct. Petrol that powers your cars and bikes is actually extracted from the decomposed dead bodies of dinosaurs and other animals and plants that lived and died millions of years ago. In case you did not know that little yucky detail. That is why it is called a Fossil Fuel. Did you think it was coming from your oily neighbor's head??)


There were no infinite generations of dinosaurs. They died out, I'm sorry. There is no infinite petroleum. All the money in the world will not make any more of it for you. If you'd like to start now, there is a 65~100 million year waiting period. Just consider yourself lucky that the animals who died at the time were buried rather than cremated upon death. 

The age of petrol is over. Transition or suffer.

(edit: ok, for the sake of accuracy, petrol is more from dead sea creatures than dinosaurs, statistically speaking. But the dinosaur tag sends the message home. See the image below for a quick explanation)

www.ei.lehigh.edu

yep... we've been running the modern world off the desecration of our ancestors' graves... and actually imagining an infinite supply of dead bodies being stored under the ground... reminds me of Draupadis' vastaharan scene in Mahabharat, only this time it's Duryodhan who's praying that the sari never runs out.

Stupid... brainless... irrational... crappy... self-destructive...

I had given up on it completely.

Thrown in the towel.

Said goodbye to the concept itself.

Refused to adhere to the "quick fixes" prescribed by my peers : refused to drown myself in either the bottle or the work or in other distractions.

Moved on. Decided to make myself useful to others for a change. Decided that I will look at the world in ways others don't, that I will say yes where others say no, that I will see and realize solutions where others only see and create problems.

And I'd gone on to do great things - learned techniques in communication and deployed them to get the right things done, participated in movements, undertook undertakings which none of my peers would have thought doable, organized, mobilized - a lot of things. Made some awesome friendships. Had a whale of a time.

I had traveled with my mind across the length and breadth of human knowledge - I read, saw, analyzed, understood, went into the depth of things, made amazing insights and dazzled all with my newfound wisdom.

So why, why now, when there is a world full of things I Have to do and which I Can do - why is it surging back like a phoenix?

Why is it tossing me between extreme moods? Why am I crying uncontrollably?

Why is it preventing me from tapping the full extent of my abilities? Heck, why is it preventing me from even functioning normally?

Why do I suddenly feel the loneliness of an eternity? Even when everything is there why do I feel like nothing, and no one, is around?

Why am I hoping where there should be no hope; Why am I ignoring all that I can be doing instead? Why am I waiting endlessly for that which my rational mind knows doesn't stand a chance of happening? And in the process why am I ruining other thngs I can easily make happen?

Why am I choosing the melancholy music over rock? Why do I suddenly prefer the slow piano version over the orginal? Why have I lost my appetite for comedies and action and all entertainment in general?

Why am I suddenly a child again, why am I coming to silly conclusions? Why am I making up wild theories? Why am I actually considering going forward with my deliberations, knowing full well the consequences?

Why am I focussing only on the glorious possibilities and unlimited happiness in store "if everything clicks" without weighing in the risks and the pitfalls, without looking at practical factors? Without stopping to consider that there are people in this world other than myself with hearts and minds of their own?

Why am I ignoring the million other things I can be doing right now? Why am I not getting in touch with the scores of other people I should be catching up with, given only a limited time of rest remaining before the hectic routine starts again? Why am I not at all interested in talking with anybody, yet feeling inconsolably lonely at the same time?

Why am I mentally rehearsing awesome, elegant things to say and then ending up making an incoherent idiot of myself?

Why can't I explain this to myself, let alone anyone else?

Why has it taken such a hold on me? I didn't want this. I didn't ask for it. I admit I got distracted, but that's completely human! Why am I suddenly so afraid of being judged without a chance to be heard out? Why does the prospect terrify me?

Why the bloody hell am I writing a sentimental, introverted blog post in a place where I usually (and very proudly!) stick to practical, big-picture, analytical, fact-based works?

Stupid... brainless... irrational... crappy... self-destructive... heart!!

www.corruptionfree.in - report any incidence of corruption by SMS, twitter or email

Cross-posting from TOI article:

City student launches anti-corruption site

 

PUNE: Aditya Palnitkar, a std 10 student of the Abhinav Vidyalay, has launched a website to fight corruption, and has dedicated it to anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare. The site, www.corruptionfree.in, ... will make it possible for students and citizens to report cases of bribery, cheating, overcharging, forcible donations, extortion, scams and harassment in government offices by simply using their mobile phones.
Reports will be made available to media and enforcement authorities. The website (http://corruptionfree.in) is unique in the sense that citizens can report corruption via SMS, email or Twitter without even visiting the website," said 14-year-old Aditya.
Citizens can simply use their mobile phone to send a detailed report via SMS to 8446324670 or by email to email@corruptionfree.in.  

Awesome low-cost, high-tech initiative.. hats off to this whiz kid!

There are already some serious reportings collecting : check it out:
http://pune.corruptionfree.in/

I urge all citizens to come forward to offer to help him take this site forward - the main issues I forsee will be corrupt people spamming the site in an effort to discredit it, so just like in Wikipedia's case, we need a citizens' army to fight back the spam as soon as it's posted. This is very easy to do : use the Comments facility to flag any spam posts.

Subscribe by RSS (not to be confused with the political RSS, this is just a feed of alerts) with this link for Pune: http://pune.corruptionfree.in/feeds/posts/default - add it as a live bookmark or to google reader or something so you can keep track of latest posts.


Meanwhile we can also reach out to RTI and anti-corruption experts to come and comment on the individual posts to give more info to the concerned individuals on how they can have their issues redressed or what specific action is to be taken against the corrupt officers.

I usually don't go nationalistic, but in this case I'll make an exception.. feeling proud to see someone "doing something about it" that too in such an ingenius manner! Jai Hind!

How did the financai world forget this most basic design feature?

I don't understand one thing:

In all the adventure or sci-fi movies featuring some big ship or large machinery, and in all the fiction books writing about such things, everywhere you see a fundamental precaution inherent in the system : compartmentalization.

In the spaceship, if there's a sudden puncture in the hull in one section and all the air is getting sucked out, all the surrounding sections seal this one off - we can surely remember seeing the emergency doors automatically closing in and the film's protagonists just escaping from under in sp many movies, cartoons and serials by now. Same thing happens in submarines. In huge machinery too if there's an accident in one part then there are systems in place to isolate the fault. Even as an electrical engineering student I witnessed these protections being almost ubiquitous in every single diagram from the smallest motors to the most extensive extremely-high-voltage (EHV - yes, that's a real term used in electrical engineering!) distribution networks. Even in tales of centuries-old sea voyages with sailing ships and pirates and all, the punch-drunk ship doctor knows that to stop an infection in a wounded leg from spreading or to prevent the wound from sucking out all the blood in the sailor's body, the leg has to be amputated.

click on the image to see the article where this was published.

So how is it that now when I see all these financial experts and leaders : (who're supposed to the brightest minds in the world to have gotten through to all those ivy league colleges and to have led such huge companies and governments and made so much money) - when I see them talk or see reports of what they're saying about the Eurozone crisis, and the US debt, and the world finanical collapse and everything related - NOBODY makes any reference whatsoever to any compartmentalization-like protection in the super-duper-ultra-complex systems they claim authority over? Instead they go on and on about the exact opposite : portraying this whole thing as dominoes, with just one faulty piece being sufficient to destroy the entire setup.