TEDx Chennai

IIT-M to host Chennai’s first TEDx conference Karthik Subramanian

TEDxChennai 2009 will be first independently organised TED event for city

Official website offers opportunity to sign up and nominate TED Stars

CHENNAI: A group of enthusiastic young volunteers, drawn from fields as diverse as the media to information technology to entrepreneurs and students, are working against the clock to put together Chennai’s first TEDx conference at the IIT-Madras on November 29.

TEDxChennai 2009 will be the first independently organised Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) event for the city through a licence granted from the Sapling Foundation, a private not-for-profit organisation based in the U.S. that has pioneered the conferences.

TED conferences are popular “by invitation only” meetings devoted to “ideas worth spreading.” Over the years, they have become pivotal in bringing to the spotlight, innovators, both established and upcoming, from various fields. The list of speakers at the annual international TED conferences has included former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, among others. The videos of all the TED talks have been hosted for free online on the official website www.ted.com since 2006. They are today among the most popular viral videos of all times, garnering some 176 million views in all.

The TED India meeting organised was held in Mysore in the first week of November and featured, among others, Minister of State for External Affairs and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and Massachusetts Institute of Technology student and inventor of Sixth Sense technology Pranav Mistry. The demonstration of the Sixth Sense technology, a wearable device that enables innovative interactions between the physical and the digital worlds, was a huge hit at the international TED meet held in California in March.
Annual affair

Earlier this year, TED curator Chris Anderson called for applications from individuals across the world to apply for independently organised TED conferences that would be marked as TEDx. Kiruba Shankar, who is a part of the Knowledge Foundation, which has previously organised conferences such as Blogcamp, an ‘unconference’ of bloggers, and Proto.in, a platform that brought together entrepreneurs and investors, had applied and TED granted the licence. “We intend to make it an annual affair,” he says. “There are a lot of interesting innovators from south India, and TEDx Chennai can be the event that showcases them.”

In true new media style, the TEDxChennai organisers have been running most of the management via online networking tools such as a wiki, through their personal blogs, an official twitter account (@tedxchennai) and a dedicated group on Facebook. The official website — www.tedxchennai.com — offers, for anyone who visits, the opportunity to sign up and nominate TED Stars — trailblazers from various fields — who will receive special invitations to the event. “The idea is to keep it a community-driven event as much as possible,” says Benedict Gnaniah, advertising professional and one of the organisers. “We will put out audio podcasts and host videos for posterity. That would drive the importance of the event and will encourage us to make it an annual event.”

Those who have confirmed participation at the TEDx as speakers include Padmashri awardee and head of the Telecommunications and Computer Networks Group, IIT-Madras, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Carnatic music innovators Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan, chief functionary of Prajwala, an anti-trafficking NGO, Sunitha Krishnan and former Chief Vigilance Commissioner N.Vittal.

TED meetings

Kodungayur

"Lead Kindly Light" is one of those wonderful hymns that is tucked safely in the showcase of the churches and homes since 'christian love songs' have taken over. This happens to be one of Mahatma Gandhi's favourite song too....

The light has to lead us but where? it has to lead us to knowledge of truth.. The simple truth about the suffering of people around us...and hence we decided to launch this song in the form of a CD on the Oct 2nd (Gandhis Birthday) at a Garbage collection centre in Kodungayur.. the chief guest will be the kids who work in the garbage dump and are taken care of by the government.

There are two video...enjoy

This was the last song in the children s concert I had attended at the Music academy... had a great time

I was reading Patrick Barkham write a...

I was reading Patrick Barkham write about “Just how much TV should Children watch?”
this article was written in specific reference to Australia taking
steps to ban TV viewing by children below  yrs.  And how is this
possible? one really does not know.  One is a moral problem and the
other is the overall degradation of the brain.  I was quite appalled to
see a clip of a Japanese show for children. Basically, it’s a children’s show (geared for boys ages 6 to 11) called The Ancient Dogoo Girl, and
it’s about a teen girl (who hopefully is played by someone older) with
some sort of ancient magic bra that shoots energy weapons or spikes or
magic beams or some such equivalent.

Iam one who beleives, or lets put
it this way neuroscience has proved beyond doubt that any consistent
activity to the brain can actually wire the brain and adapt to that
environment.  So if a child is exposed to too much of television, the
wonder of the visuals can actually give the child a “slack-jawed look”
, it can kill neurons and the synaptic connections that are made in
order to discriminate signals from ‘noise’.

I have personally observed
children who are termed ADHD at schools are actually those who are not
able to processess sound on a sustained level, why they have this
problem of distinguishing between signals and noise, and eventually
find a problem  in processing the target sound and rejecting the
distractors.  The teacher talking, is the target sound in class,
children who have spent the early ages on high television viewing have
a problem.   For them target sound in most cases are accompanied by
dynamic visuals if that does not happen the child rejects it, rather
the childs brain, rejects it as distractor sounds and starts processing
other noises.

A good brain development for a
child depends on a good environment at home.  If a home emphaises
reading over  viewing then the conversation at home tends to be on a
higher level and a child growing up in such an enviroment will surely
be wired to take on academic challeges with ease.

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Religion in the public sphere

Unless the secular character of the public sphere is retrieved, the religious character that it has come to have could impinge on the functions of the state.

On March 15, 2007, Jurgen Habermas delivered a lecture at the University of Tilberg in the Netherlands, on ‘Religion in Public Sphere,’ an expanded version of which has appeared as a chapter in his latest work, Between Naturalism and Religion. In the debate that followed the lecture, the most important issue that was raised related to the relationship between modernisation and secularisation.

For a long time it was held that a close link existed between the modernisation of society and the secularisation of the population. Consequently, it was argued that the influence of religion declined in post-enlightenment society. This assumption, Professor Habermas suggests, was based on three considerations. First, the progress in science and technology made causal explanation possible and more importantly, for a scientifically enlightened mind it was difficult to reconcile with theocentric and metaphysical worldviews. Secondly, the churches and other religious organisations lost their control over law, politics, public welfare, education and science. Finally, the economic transformation led to higher levels of welfare and greater social security. The impact of these developments, it is argued, has led to the decline of the relevance and influence of religion.

Opposed to the modernisation-secularisation paradigm is the view that the influence of religion in the public sphere has not only not declined, but in fact, has increased. It is held by many scholars that the modernisation thesis has lost its validity in the contemporary world, as there are tendencies which suggest that there is a worldwide resurgence of religion. Such an impression is based on three factors: missionary expansion, fundamentalist radicalisation and the political instrumentalisation of the potential for violence. On the whole, although “data collected globally still provides surprisingly robust support for the defenders of secularisation thesis,” Professor Habermas terms secular societies as ‘post-secular’ in which “religion maintains a public influence and relevance.” At the same time, he held the view that “the secularist certainty that religion will disappear worldwide in the course of modernisation is losing ground.” It is not only that this expectation has not been realised, religion has emerged as a powerful influence in the public sphere all over the world. This is particularly so in India.

A national survey conducted by the Centre for Developing Societies, New Delhi, testifies to the growing influence of religion in Indian society. According to this survey, four out of 10 people are very religious and five out of 10 are religious. That is to say that 90 per cent of the respondents claimed to be religious — performing rituals, visiting places of worship and undertaking pilgrimages. Among them, 30 per cent claimed to have become more religious during the last five years. An increase in the number of religious institutions is also an indication of the greater hold of religion on society. Enlightenment and modernity in India have not led to the decline of the influence of religiosity. If anything, it has only increased.

The public sphere emerged in Europe in the 18th century within the bourgeoisie society as a discursive space in which private individuals came together to discuss matters of public interest. The separation of powers of the state and the church and the enlightenment virtues of reason and humanism, and the economic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, contributed to the formation of the public sphere and shaped the transactions within it. The existence of the public sphere was contingent upon the access of all citizens to, and protection of individual rights by, the rule of law. In essence, the character of the public sphere as it evolved in Europe in the 18th century was secular and democratic.

The formation and development of the public sphere in India during the 19th and 20th centuries had a different trajectory. This was primarily because India was under colonial domination and Indian society did not have the necessary independence to shape its destiny. The political, economic and intellectual conditions were qualitatively different from the one in which the public sphere in Europe took shape. The passage to an uninhibited state of enlightenment and modernity was not part of its experience. The constraints of colonialism warped the economic development, inhibited the efflorescence of renaissance and enlightenment, suppressed democratic aspirations and tried to undermine secular consciousness. Yet, within these constraints emerged what has come to be described as colonial modernity, which was at best a caricature of what was witnessed in Europe. The contradictions within this modernity, existing as an island in a traditional pool, induced the Indian intelligentsia to seek an alternative, the endeavours of which were articulated through the highly restrictive transactions in the public sphere.

For a variety of reasons, the ability of the agencies which contributed to the formation of the public sphere in India — such as the media, voluntary organisations and social and religious movements — to constitute a public sphere was restricted. Unlike in Europe the public sphere in India was not the product of a free bourgeois society; it took shape within the political, social and economic parameters set by the colonial government. Its social base was very weak, consisting of the nascent middle class emerging out of the structures of colonial governance. The media were constantly under the surveillance of colonial rule; the reach of the voluntary organisations was limited and the social and religious movements could not transgress their respective caste and religious boundaries. As a consequence, the public sphere was not vibrant, nor could it acquire a fully democratic and secular character. This in a way emerged out of the ambivalence of the colonial state: its liberal pretensions on the one hand and authoritarian compulsions on the other. As a result, it could not but monitor the transactions within the public sphere.

The legacy of colonial rule imparted to the public sphere in independent India an internally contradictory character. In terms of conception and constitution the public sphere was democratic and secular, but it was not so in practice. Several sections such as women and Dalits were excluded, and by and large it remained a preserve of the educated upper castes. Moreover, either created or controlled by the colonial bureaucracy, their democratic rights were considerably restricted. Yet, the public engagements within the public sphere indicated a continuous struggle for democratic ideals and practice.

As an institution mediating between civil society and the state, debating issues of public interest, the public sphere is secular in character. In India, however, the public sphere reflected the co-existence of the secular and the religious. The media were essentially secular, but an undercurrent of religious consciousness was reflected in their concerns. For instance, the contributors to the Letters to the Editor column of Bombay Gazette in the 19th century described themselves with their religious-denominational descriptions — Hindu, Muslim, Parsee and so on. They were all debating public and secular issues, but while doing so carried with them their religious baggage. The religious identity was true of voluntary associations also as was evident from their denominational names. Many of them were organised on religious terms.

If religion is a private matter, as considered by the Indian state, would it be proper to allow it to be active in the public sphere? The Indian state has not successfully resolved this contradiction. The official policy of equal recognition of all religions has only led to the reinforcement of this contradiction, because it has opened up more and more public space to all religions. As a result, what has become prominent in the public sphere is not secular reason but religious celebration. The public sphere has succumbed to the celebration of religiosity, based on rituals and superstitions.

Two conclusions are in order about the transactions in the public sphere in India. The universal experience of the modernisation-secularisation connection appears to be true of India. It is particularly so because the renaissance, enlightenment and scientific revolution being either borrowed or weak, the capacity of modernisation in India to impact on secularisation and marginalisation of religion is itself not pronounced. Instead, religion remains a powerful force in civil society. Secondly, the use of religion for political ends has substantially increased during the last few decades. Such a development has serious implications for a secular state and society. Retrieving the secular character of the public sphere is therefore imperative; otherwise its religious character is likely to impinge upon the functions of the state.

(These are excerpts from the valedictory address delivered at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, on September 4. Professor Panikkar can be e-mailed at knp8@rediffmail.com)

Keywords: Religion, secular character, public sphere, religious character, functions of the state

Astroturfing

Dealing with fake support

Bobbie Johnson

Employees’ rally or a cynical marketing ploy? Astroturfing — faking support for a product or cause — is on the rise on and offline.

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* While the term astroturfing goes back to the mid-1980s, the practice began many more years ago

* Despite checks and balances, some people remain concerned that the power remains firmly with the astroturfers

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What do healthcare reform, climate change and financial regulation have in common? The answer is that they are all issues covered by astroturf, the practice of creating fake grassroots movements, usually by lobbyists and PR experts. These attempts to manipulate the media and public opinion seem to be on the rise — spurred on in part by the political mood and the reach of the internet.

“Astroturf front groups have been everywhere this summer, spreading misinformation about healthcare reform, carbon emission caps and financial regulation,” says Timothy Karr, the campaign director for the U.S. website freepress.net. “A healthy 21st-century democracy doesn’t need phoney front groups. We need openness, accountability and real debate.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, Greenpeace uncovered a campaign in which American oil industry workers paraded as part of a supposedly spontaneous movement opposed to climate change regulations being considered by U.S. legislators.

Thanks to a leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute, Greenpeace learned that the “Energy Citizens” protest group was founded by the oil industry trade association and therefore indirectly funded by ExxonMobil, Shell and others. At the same time, a congressional inquiry found that letters to lawmakers attacking the proposed legislation — letters purporting to be from concerned members of the public — were also backed by energy groups.

The API responded to the accusations by saying that the Energy Citizens meetings were an attempt to lift the morale of oil industry workers, not to influence politicians. “There’s a lot of folks out there that would like to suggest that anybody that doesn’t agree with their views somehow doesn’t play by the rules,” the API president and author of the memo, Jack Gerard, said. “We disagree strongly with that.”

The Energy Citizens example is not a one-off, however. While the term astroturfing goes back to the mid-1980s, the practice began many more years ago. Unscrupulous marketers and lobbyists have long found ways to advance their paymasters’ agendas — including manufactured mail campaigns, fake crowd protests and, increasingly, use of the web.

A “sock puppet” is a fake online identity created to support an argument - and, in many cases, they are untraceable. Richard Levangie, who writes about climate change astroturfing at the One Blue Marble website, says he first came across it in the mid-1990s. “I was passionate about slowing the rise of teenage smoking in my home province, and thought about starting an advocacy group that would work with teenagers ... that’s where I first came up against astroturfing, in the form of smokers’ rights groups who were ignoring the science about secondhand smoke, and who were trying to reframe the issue as freedom of choice.” Astroturfing can range from a few forum posts or a comment praising a company to something closer to harassment, and from genuine disagreement and independent troublemakers to organised “trolls”, all the way to the entirely fake campaigner.

News organisations are increasingly finding themselves pawns in this game. While political tit-for-tat is common in web forums and on sites, the proliferation of certain comments around certain topics often leads to the suspicion that somebody else may be pulling the strings. “It’s frustrating. They should have zero credibility, but they’re still around, still peddling misinformation,” says Levangie.

That is not to say that all dissenters are puppets, of course. Climate change is just one area where strong feelings are common and run deep enough to encourage a hard core of protesters to spread views that exist at the fringe of scientific thinking. Just last week, one comment on the Guardian website said: “There is no concrete evidence that man is responsible for climate change.” In some cases, however, commenters offer fake credentials or pose as disinterested parties when the opposite is the case - and from time to time they are caught red-handed.

Several authors have been found leaving glowing reviews of their own books on Amazon, while a bizarre case emerged in 2007 involving John Mackey, the chief executive of high-end U.S. supermarket chain Whole Foods, who used a pseudonym to disparage competitors on message boards. More recently, a US PR company was found to have been writing fake positive reviews of a client’s iPhone software.

The question of astroturfing comes up regularly in the world of public relations, says Jon Silk, the creative director of Lewis PR in London. “Clients new to online PR will often ask the question: ’Can’t we just anonymously post positive comments?’,” he says. “It takes time to explain how influence works — that it should start with a good product or service, and have a clear message that must be communicated to the right people in the right way.”

Ann Bartow, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, believes the most straightforward way to combat astroturfing is to force commenters to use real names. “The obvious solution is to require some transparency and not accept anonymous comments - but there’s also this idea that anonymity is important - that you can get certain information if people’s identities aren’t tied to it,” she says.

At the very least, this would allow publishers to trace suspected astroturfers. However, it can be difficult to expose those who cover their tracks — and may only be possible by comparing personal details across a number of websites to spot patterns of behaviour.

This opens up privacy concerns - though, as Bartow points out, few outlets that publish comments would run letters from readers they suspected of being mouthpieces for an organised smear campaign.

Fortunately, while the web lets astroturfers spread their message, it can also be used as a means of trapping them. Last month (AUG), the New York attorney-general, Andrew Cuomo, sued a cosmetic surgery chain that had been caught leaving fake testimonials online.

The company, Lifestyle Lift, had been encouraging employees to post fictional reviews, and after emails emerged in which managers told staff “I need you to devote the day to doing more postings on the web as a satisfied client”, their days were numbered. The outcome was a $300,000 fine for the firm.

Silk says that while the rise of social media means a planted message on Facebook can reach people very quickly, it can also backfire when the truth is discovered. “The one thing that many companies don’t understand is that the desire for a quick hit often ends in failure,” he says. “Positive sentiment takes time to build. You wouldn’t try to make friends at a party by going up to strangers and telling them how great you are.”

However, whatever checks and balances are put in place, some people remain concerned that the power remains firmly with the astroturfers: as soon as they convince somebody to buy the wrong product, drown out other voices or torpedo important policy debates, the damage is done. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009

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Letter to editor The Hindu - Mother Teresa

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Mother Teresa would probably be delighted if we comprehend the spirit of what she did. She understood and brought to the forefront the ‘strength’ that can be found in the weak and the vulnerable and she derived her meaning and strength from it. She was weak herself with no remarkable academic/professional credentials, yet she was strong. If we understand that the strong and the celebrated are actually vulnerable and the weak and the meek and the lowly are actually strong, we can, like Mother Teresa, find meaning in serving. The top-down condescending approach will not help.

Link to the story

Benedictg on youtube

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some fun

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William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White wrote in their book ‘The Elements of Style’ the following paragraph.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outlinE, but that every word tell.”

The lines were written by Strunk in the original book, and while writing the introduction for a later edition, White had the sense to mention them in the introduction. The ‘Elements of Style’ of course is about writing in English. But the idea expressed here is very important for filmmaking. I’d like to say it like this.

“Vigorous filmmaking is concise. A scene should contain no unnecessary shots, a sequence no unnecessary scenes, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the filmmaker make all his scenes short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every shot tell.”

Of the hundreds of theories on filmmaking I find this the most fundamental and its application the hardest. It is hard mainly because it is quite difficult to determine which shot is unnecessary and which is not. In Strunk’s mind things were black or white. Either a word was important, or it wasn’t. I don’t know whether he ever considered that one word could be less important than another, and therefore its contribution though small, still be helpful. For those who live by grays and fractions, the decision-making could indeed be tough. But it is an approach I’d consider worthwhile.

Later on in the introduction, White quotes Strunk again. This time as Strunk makes his axiom a little softer, and for me, clearer.

“It is an old observation, that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.”

Strunk wasn’t that inflexible after all. But what he does with this last paragraph is take the argument into the realm of individual preferences. And from that realm, unfortunately, the argument can never come out.

I have a feeling the book is full of such lessons, or as I like to consider them, approaches.

By Satyaki Roy in Facebook

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M E N A N D I D E A S
The Dharma Of Capitalism
Gurcharan Das

In January this year, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, former prime minister Tony Blair of England and German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off a debate in Paris on the nature and future of capitalism. It was in response to the global economic crisis. This article is a contribution to this debate.
The idea that an ancient Indian epic might offer insight into capitalism’s nature, on the face of it, appears bizarre. The truth is that the Mahabharata’s world of moral haziness is far closer to our experience as ordinary human beings than the narrow and rigid positions that define debate in these fundamentalist times. Capitalism is also about ordinary persons – buying and selling goods in the marketplace.
The Mahabharata believes that human beings are flawed and these flaws make our world ‘uneven’, vishama, making us vulnerable to nasty surprises. Duryodhana is one of the chief causes of ‘unevenness’ in the epic. Others too have their flaws – Yudhishthira’s weakness for gambling, Karna’s status anxiety, Ashwatthama’s revengeful nature, Dhritarashtra’s excessive love for his eldest son and so on. These defects are dangerous and they drive the epic towards calamity. Investment bankers on Wall Street and rating agencies suffered from similar infirmities. And they have brought the global capitalist system to its knees.
John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, had a comparable insight about our ‘uneven’ world. He lived during the Great Depression when there were also many calls to end capitalism. The unevenness of the world is caused by what Keynes called ‘animal spirits’, which drive businessmen to take risks, often in the face of insufficient knowledge. Nobel Prize-winner John Nash (portrayed as the hero in the movie, A Beautiful Mind) traced this to ‘asymmetries of information’. And this leads to crises – such as the dotcom bubble, in which many sensible persons quit their jobs in order to make a fortune. It burst in 2000 but was soon replaced by another mania of the ‘smart flippers of securitised mortgages of subprime properties’, which sent the world into a recession in 2007. Keynes believed that a capitalist economy left to itself is unstable, and needs state regulation.
Standard economic theory makes the mistake of ignoring the role of human passions and animal spirits. Ever since Adam Smith, classical economics has assumed that capitalism is inherently stable. People buy and sell rationally, and this results in equilibrium. Classical economics ignores vishama – that people get into manias and even paanwallas start buying shares on the basis of rumours. When manias take over, there are bubbles and when bubbles are pricked confidence falls sharply and the whole economy collapses. Hence, we need regulation to ensure people are not falsely lured into buying bad assets. This regulation, however, must not kill the ‘animal spirits’ of entrepreneurs, which is what happened in India during the ugly days of the licence raj…and we almost lost two generations.
If Keynes thinks the answer lies in regulation, the Mahabharata seeks to ‘even’ out the world through dharma. Dharma is a complex word – it means virtue, duty, law, religion depending on the context, but it is chiefly concerned with doing the right thing. The Mahabharata recognises that it is in man’s nature to want more. Dharma seeks to give coherence to our desires by containing them within an ethical life. No amount of regulation will catch all the Duryodhanas and the Ramalinga Rajus of the world. What is needed is self-restraint on the part of each actor in the marketplace in order to build trust within society. The sunny world of Adam Smith may have been a tad optimistic, but Smith understood the importance of trust which underlies each transaction in the marketplace. This trust is the ‘dharma of capitalism’.
Regulators and central bankers around the world are wrestling with how to reform their financial systems. They are expending huge energy in debates between the political left and the right when the greater divide is between conduct in accordance with dharma and adharma. It is not enough to punish Ramalinga Raju. Institutions must also develop a culture of self-restraint and reward an act of goodness, one of the very few things of genuine worth in this world.
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MOMOs in Chennai

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Well after listening to so much about MOMOs from Binu, finally I got to taste it... It was at Kirk when Benjamin Das brought a few packs and put it up for sale... Yummy..

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Recipe

For the dough:
All purpose flour - 2 cups
salt to taste
Warm water

For the filling :
Cabbage - 1 cup finely chopped
Onions - 1/2 cup finely chopped
Mushrooms - 1/2 cup
Carrot - 1 finely chopped
Salt to taste
Garam masala - 1 tsp
green chillies - 1 finely chopped ( u can reduce this according to ur taste..)
Garlic pods - 1 finely chopped
Ginger - 1 tsp finely chopped
Tabasco sauce - 1 tsp ( u can add chili sauce)
Oil - 2 tsp

Method :

Firstly we will make the dough. Take the flour in a bowl and salt and water to it. Knead it into a nice smooth dough. Keep aside.

Now we can make the filling. For the filling shred the cabbage, chop the onions, mushroom and carrot finely.
In a pan take some oil and add the chopped garlic and ginger to it. saute for 1 min and then add the chopped onions. Add the green chillies and the garam masala and saute once again.

Now, add the chopped vegetables to it along with salt and the tonasco sauce and mix well. Cook for 2 minutes and ur filling is ready. U dont need to cook the vegetable too much.

Take a small amount if the dough , roll it into a small circle of 4 inch diameter and place a spoon ful of the filling in the centre of the cirle. Get all the sides of the circle to the centre and pack the filling. Do the same with the whole dough. Steam of the dumplings until they are cooked well.

Chicken MOMO recipe in Chennai Times

Sour episode turns sweet

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Interesting twist Shipa Shetty had a torrid time with Jane Goody on the ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in 2007show, one of the demeaning terms used by Goody was 'poppadoms'. Shilpa came out with tears and the crown in the show while Goody became a villain in India for racial abuse and lost lucrative deals and went on to apologizing to Shilpa.

Now the twist Shipa is planning the crispy appetiser to be on top of the menu to honour Goody’s memory. “Shilpa thinks Jade will have a little chuckle in heaven about the poppadoms. and she just thought, ‘Why don’t I just create my own range?”
Interesting twist to an episode that was sour and ready to tickle the taste buds.


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The Tone Deaf and Brain circuits

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People who are tone-deaf can’t detect differences in musical pitch but usually have normal hearing and speech. In the small study done in Boston, brain scans showed there was a difference in a particular brain circuit between those who were tone-deaf and those who weren’t. Among the tone-deaf, researchers discovered there were fewer connections between two areas of the brain that perceive and produce sounds.
“The anomaly suggests that tone-deafness may be a previously undetected neurological syndrome similar to other speech and language disorders, in which connections between perceptual and motor regions are impaired,” said Loui, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.
For the study, the researchers used an MRI-based technique called diffusion tensor imaging to examine connections between the right temporal and frontal lobes.

It is known that this region, a neural “highway” called the arcuate fasciculus, is involved in linking music and language perception with vocal production.

The researchers took brain images of 20 people, half of whom had been identified as tone-deaf through listening tests. They found that the arcuate fasciculus was smaller in volume, and had a lower fibre count in the tone-deaf individuals.

"Jinnah was a great man" Jaswant Singh

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Jaswant Singh on his book, his perceptions of Jinnah, and the political milieu of the time..

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Jinnah charges Mahatma Gandhi of being a demagogue.

He created something out of nothing, and single-handedly he stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him.

His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man Mahatma Gandhi was a son of a Dewan. All of them were born to wealth and position, Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved out in Bombay a position in that cosmopolitan city being what he was poor. He was so poor, he had to walk to work. He lived in a hotel called Watsons in Bombay and he told one of the biographers that there's always room at the top but there is no lift and he never sought a lift.

The interview script in The Hindu

The Hindu Editorial on Jinnah

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The evolution of the Temple

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THE essence of the philosophic quest in India is the ways and means to lose the ego and attachments to the illusory material world. The journey on the path to enlightenment is often assailed by confusions, created by the Lila, or the dynamic play, of the illusions perceived through one’s limited and subjective sensibilities. These illusions, termed Maya or Mithya, keep one bound by one’s desires to the ephemeral world. The constant aim of the great teachers has been to devise a means and a path to true understanding. This path is sometimes itself diverted and becomes enmeshed in illusions.

The Philosophic quest in India is to lose the ego and attachments to the world. Lila or the dynamic play creates confusions by the illusions by ones limited and subjective sensibilities. While there is a path or a way already available the ‘great’ teachers want to devise their own path to true understanding rejecting the one already provided. The path that man seeks to provide gets enmeshed in illusions.

• Take the Linga representing the formless one, a symbol to meditate upon and be born again in realization of the oneness in creation. Contrast this to the promise of being above creation. The shrines that were built with walls around the garbha-griha (womb chamber) representations of the formless Divine were made. The position of wall niches with deities, their orientation and other details were set out in the texts called the Agamas. By the time of the Cholas in Tamil Nadu, the temple walls had become repositories of a pantheon of deities.

• The role of the temple was also expanded to make it a major cultural and social institution. Arrangements were made and housing colonies were created to accommodate the 400 dancers, musicians and others who were employed for the daily temple ceremonies. Naturally, the architecture of the temple grew in keeping with its expanding role in the life of the community.

• Further developments of the temple complex occurred under the Vijayanagar kings, who ruled from their capital at Hampi, in present-day Karnataka. In the 16th century, monumental temples were constructed under them in a style that became characteristic of Vijayanagar. There were imposing gateway towers, much taller than those above the shrines. These were visible from afar and reflected imperial magnificence as well as the grandeur of the Divine. It was through these portals that the worshipper entered the exalted world of the spirit, leaving the mundane behind. The temple complex expanded horizontally as well to accommodate larger numbers of people. Large and elaborate pillared halls with impressive sculptures reflected the power of the kingdom.

• The grandeur of temples was further enhanced under the Nayakas by the making of prakaras, or enclosed corridors. These connect various parts of the temple and create a most dramatic and impressive effect as the devotee walks through them on the way to worship. The most famous of these is at the Siva temple at Rameswaram. The temple’s corridors, whose breadths range from five to six metres, run for approximately one kilometre. The ceilings are more than 7 m high. Each of the several hundreds of pillars is elaborately sculpted.

• One of the greatest achievements of the Nayaka period was the making of the Meenakshi temple in Madurai. It is one of the largest temples ever made and was created during the reign of Tirumalai Nayaka, in the mid-17th century. The complex is built around two shrines: one dedicated to Siva as Sundaresvara, the Beautiful Lord, and the other to Parvati, his consort, as Meenakshi, the Fish-Eyed One. The vast temple has eight impressive gateways, one rising to almost 200 feet (60 m). Each gateway is covered with several hundreds of sculptures. The temple authorities estimate that there are 33 million sculptures in the Meenakshi complex. Even if that number is not based upon an actual count, the temple does convey such an impression. By the end of the first millennium, a significant change had come into the worship at South Indian temples.

• Temple architecture was expanded to serve the needs of these festivities for which large numbers of worshipers gathered. Every evening at the Madurai temple, the deity Meenakshi is placed in a bed chamber for the night. Siva, symbolized by the image of his feet, is then carried to her. In the morning, they are awakened by the singing of devotional songs.

The search is still for the peace that can only be found within, for the body is the temple. However, the grandeur of the deity is celebrated in all aspects of life.
Original Article from Frontline

Kamahl

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Kandiah Kamalesvaran (Tamil: கந்தையா கமலேஸ்வரன்) or Kamahl (born 13 November 1934) is the stage name of an Australian cabaret/easy listening singer and recording artist who is perhaps best known for his song The Elephant Song, as well as his sensitive interpretations of standards in the repertoire of popular music. Kamahl began his music career in small time band "Radial Arm".(source wikipedia)
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Remembering Mr Collaco, the artist and the father of 3 children who loved music, a good drink and made his living by drawing.... I used to hear this song from his apartment when I was a kid.
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Pee During Shower (english subtitles) from Fernando Sanches on Vimeo.

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Most sustainability messaging revolves around anxiety-inducing statistics about how we’re going to boil in a pool of our own sweat lest we change our ways. Alas, countless psych studies have shown that such fear appeals simply don’t work for behavioral change. The most compelling environmental nudges don’t have to be serious to be taken seriously.
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Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

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Poet Ted Hughes, (books by this author) born in the town of Mytholmroyd, England (1930). He grew up in the countryside, surrounded by moors. He joined the air force and was assigned duty as a wireless mechanic in an isolated spot in rural Yorkshire, where he read Shakespeare all day. He went to Cambridge and studied anthropology and archaeology, and he was especially interested in mythology. A few years after he graduated, he helped found a literary magazine, and at the launch party he met an American student named Sylvia Plath. They were married less than four months later.

Sylvia Plath (books by this author) worked on her own writing, but she also helped her husband. She typed up his poems and sent them out to magazines, and she encouraged him to enter a contest sponsored by the Poetry Center in New York City, a contest whose judges were W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Stephen Spender. Hughes won first place, and his poems were published as The Hawk in the Rain (1957), which got great reviews and made Hughes famous.

Hughes and Plath had two children together, but they separated in 1962 when Hughes had an affair with another woman. The next year, Plath committed suicide. Hughes didn't write his own poetry again for years, but instead, spent his time editing and collecting Plath's poetry. A few years after Plath's death, Hughes' lover killed their four-year-old daughter and then herself.

In 1984, Ted Hughes became the poet laureate of Britain. He died in 1998, a few months after publishing Birthday Letters, a book of poetry about his life with Sylvia Plath, a life that he had refused to discuss in the 30 years since her death.

Ted Hughes wrote many books of poems, including Crow (1971), Moortown (1980), and Wolfwatching (1990), and also children's books, including The Iron Man (1968).

He said: "It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something — perhaps not much, just something — of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees… and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being — not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses — but a human being, we call it poetry."

courtesy Writers Almanac

New advertising units

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RFID chips that connect print ads to more dynamic content on the web, ads that can shift from one screen to another, ads that are linked to what friends are chatting about online, and targeted advertising of all sorts.

Agencies are looking for new ways to integrate their clients’ brand experiences with more interactivity on the page, and these new units provide a way for them to accomplish this while capitalizing on the halo effect of the high-quality media brands.” A set of new principles and unique display advertising units are being introduced to foster innovation and leverage an environment that research has proven delivers better results for advertisers.

These new advertising units reflect the publishers’ desire to achieve four key objectives that will guide the evolution of online display advertising into its next phase:

* Inspire creativity and high-quality advertising: Develop display units that will inspire a creative renaissance in high-quality advertising by providing a larger canvas for creativity, content and functionality.
* Provide a greater share of voice for the advertiser: Increase the relative proportion of advertising space (in a single unit) to editorial content and, where possible, run fewer but more captivating ads on the page.
* Introduce a measurement to capture impact: Develop a metric that emphasizes the impact creative advertising can have on Web viewers while preserving the Internet’s well-established ability to engender response.
* Enhance interactivity to build user engagement with brands: Offer a broad range of interactivity built into units such as video players, lead capture and advertiser content that will be sharable and have permalinks to spotlight and encourage the best in creativity, while weaving the advertisements deeper into the social fabric of the Web.

The proposed new advertising units are:

* The Fixed Panel (recommended dimension is 336 wide x 860 tall), which looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
* The XXL Box (recommended dimension is 468 wide x 648 tall), which has page-turn functionality with video capability.
* The Pushdown (recommended dimension is 970 wide x 418 tall), which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.

source : nieman lab
: online publishers

Post Modernism

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Dick Hebdige, in his ‘Hiding in the Light’ illustrates this:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.
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My Tribute by Andrae Crouch

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This is my favourite song... when I was young I used to play the chords and sing, twas very complicated but loved it so much...Thanks to Rampert who taught me the chords

Tamil as Classical Language

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WHEN the Government of India declared Tamil a classical language a year ago, a gathering of educationists, social scientists and technocrats at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai issued a clarion call to the intellectual fraternity for the preservation of invaluable literary works of the ancient language using modern tools. While sharing the euphoria over the honour done to the ancient language, MIDS Chairman M. Anandakrishnan observed, "If the language is to be protected, mere status enhancement will not do, the value of [the language's] assets also must be enhanced. They must be made performing assets" (Frontline, November 5, 2004). He said, "Tamil's assets are not only Purananooru, Agananooru and Thirukkural... We have a long tradition of assets in literary works, books on varied subjects, including science, newspapers, journals and so on." Regretting that "there is not even a bibliography of Tamil publications, let alone annotative bibliographies", Anandakrishnan called for "concerted efforts" in such directions. Similar suggestions came from several linguistic scholars and language experts as well.

Frontline link

Review - Journey of a Christian Job seeker

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The Journey of a Christian Jobseeker
Agnes Olubunmi Amos

The relevance of this book today can only be matched by the ‘true to life’ honest musings of the author about the turmoil and the stress of finding a job. The strand of hope that is a constant through out the job hunt is wonderfully captured in the ‘affirmation’ at the end of every journal entry, notice the ‘I, Me & My’ pattern – its personal. Testimonies generally follow, High Challenge – God Intervention – Victory Banner formula, this book breaks away from that pattern by being honest and vulnerable and yet give the reader the hope of standing firm on the rock of the Word. The interaction of the author’s journal entry with ‘reason together’ and ‘fountain of hope’ is a tinderbox, capable of exploding more thoughts.

One is certain the professionals of the ‘Info era’ particularly, would have gone through this path - they will find it easy to relate and actually give them a “somebody has been peeking into my diary feeling”. And for all those who are yet to traverse this path this book equips them with the toolkit to pass through the difficult path without even realizing it. Its simplicity and the summation at the end somehow will leave one with a confidence that ‘facing the rough sea is fun after all and one ends up becoming stronger’.

This is a rare gem, too expensive to ignore.

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Activity for Time Management

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First, grab a pencil and paper. Think back to the time you started school, all the way back to kindergarten. One of the first things you learned was how to identify shapes. Next you learned to draw them. On that sheet of paper I want you to do something very simple. Draw one triangle. That was simple, wasn't it? Now, draw as many triangles as you can in twenty seconds. Stop. Count how many you were able to draw. Write down that number. Do you think there might be another way to complete this activity and draw more in less time?

Start at one side of the paper and draw connected W's all the way across the page. Now put a line across the top and the bottom. See how many you can draw in twenty seconds using this method. Wow, that creates a lot of triangles! In only a few seconds you have learned to do this activity more efficiently and effectively in a much shorter amount of time. A seemingly insignificant change can make a significant difference in what can be accomplished in a given amount of time. In fact, you most likely made up to four or five times as many triangles the second time around.
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Electronic Cigarettes or E-Cigs for short is a completely non-flammable product that uses state of the art sophisticated micro-electronic technology to provide users a real smoking experience without the tobacco and tar found in traditional cigarettes. It looks, feels and tastes like a real cigarette, yet it isn’t, it is truly a healthier alternative.

Fit Brains

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Around the time we hit 30, our brains begin a slow, steady downward trajectory, or so popular wisdom would have it.



Surf the Net often

When you search the Internet, you engage key centres in your brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.

And these few clicks may be more mentally stimulating than reading, say UCLA scientists. Their studies found that Internet searching uses neural circuitry that’s not activated during reading — but only in people with prior Internet experience. MRI results showed almost 3 times more brain activity in regular Internet searchers than in first-timers, suggesting that repeated Googling can be a great way to build cognitive strength over time.

Tip: Spend around 20 minutes a few days a week searching topics you’ve always wanted to learn more about regardless of how seemingly frivolous: Whether you’re researching a celebrity’s latest pratfalls or musical harmony, the benefits to your brain are the same.

Exercise

Yes, exercise can stave off or delay dementia but did you know it can actually reverse brain aging too?

A team from the University of Illinois’ Beckman Institute recently reviewed dozens of past studies and found that aerobic exercise boosts not only speed and sharpness of thought but also the volume of brain tissue. As little as 50 minutes of brisk walking 3 times a week was found to have this brain-expanding effect.

Tip: For an added boost, walk in the park: University of Michigan researchers found that volunteers whose course took them through a tree-filled setting performed 20 per cent better on memory and attention tests than those who walked downtown.

Brush and floss

Oral health is clearly linked to brain health, according to a team of British psychiatrists and dentists.

After studying thousands of subjects ages 20 to 59, they found that gingivitis and periodontal disease were associated with worse cognitive function throughout adult life not just in later years.

Tip: Follow your dentist’s advice. Floss daily and brush your teeth for 2 minutes at least once a day.

Drink sparingly

Limiting cocktails is beneficial for cognitive function.

Keep your alcohol consumption within the safe and healthful limit: no more than one drink a day. The more alcohol a person drinks, the smaller his or her total brain volume becomes, according to a recent study. The link between drinking and reduced brain volume was stronger in women probably because smaller people are more susceptible to alcohol’s effects.

Tip: If you like a glass of white wine with dinner, make a spritzer by replacing some of the wine with sparkling water. You’ll cut your intake even more.

Eat blueberries

New research shows that the purple-hued fruits may help sharpen your thought processes.

After National Institute on Aging and Tufts University researchers injected male rats with kainic acid to simulate the oxidative stress that occurs with aging, rats that had been fed a diet containing 2 per cent blueberry extract did better navigating a maze than rats that didn’t get the compound. In another study, the same researchers found that rats that ate blueberries showed increased cell growth in the hippocampus region of the brain. The researchers theorise that anthocyan in the dark blue pigment found in blueberries is responsible for these cognitive changes; it contains chemicals that may cross the blood-brain barrier and lodge in regions that govern learning and memory.

Tip: Stock up on blueberries when they’re on sale, and sprinkle them over your cereal or yogurt or fold them into your smoothie. Off-season, buy them frozen; they’re every bit as nutritious as fresh.

Do puzzles

Amazingly, you’ll knock a decade off your cognitive age.

In a University of Alabama study of nearly 3,000 older men and women, those who participated in 10 60-to 75-minute sessions of brain-boosting exercise sharpened their mental abilities so much that their brains performed like those of people more than 10 years younger.

Tip: Start small whip out a booklet of basic puzzles when you’re riding to work on the train or waiting in a long checkout line. As your skills improve, graduate to more challenging brainteasers.

Meditate

More than just a great stress reliever, meditation can also enhance your brain’s grey matter.

Participants in a new study from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston appear to have experienced growth in the cortex, an area of the brain that controls memory, language, and sensory processing. In addition, meditators in a University of Kentucky study performed better than their non-meditating counterparts on a series of mental acuity tests.

Tip: Make the practise a regular habit. The participants in a recent study meditated an average of 40 minutes a day. But you can start with 15 on your lunch break or before you leave for work. Sit upright, close your eyes, and focus on whatever you’re experiencing in the present moment, whether it’s birds chirping in the distance or just the sound of your own breathing.

courtesy The Hindu Link