The celebrated Swiss Army Knife turns 125.
This knife was designed to help Swiss soldiers to dismantle their gun and to open food tins.
The next version came in the form of "Originally named "Schweizer Offizier Messer", eventually becoming a universal cult icon.
An interesting article is available on the BBC site here.
And the Guinness World Record making knife with 314 blades, making it the world's biggest penknife, was also created - putting pride ahead of everything else.
I wish I had one in my pocket.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Martial Arts Syndrome
In the name of martial arts, people break bricks, and even get themselves run over by vehicles. I wonder what is martial about it. Or what art is there in it?
A recent news article has drawn our attention towards such acts of 'bravery' supported in a government school near Villupuram, Tamilnadu.
Children were made to lie down with their hands stretched on the ground. A man rode his motorcycle over the hands. This act was witnessed and appreciated by the crowd of parents, teachers, and onlookers.
What are they going to achieve by these 'feats'?
Can they ever escape when run over by an MTC bus or a speeding truck?
Why don't they just teach self-defence?
There are lot of other strategies to develop endurance.
What is there to be proud of such things?
I simply don't understand.
A recent news article has drawn our attention towards such acts of 'bravery' supported in a government school near Villupuram, Tamilnadu.
Children were made to lie down with their hands stretched on the ground. A man rode his motorcycle over the hands. This act was witnessed and appreciated by the crowd of parents, teachers, and onlookers.
Image courtesy: Times of India
What are they going to achieve by these 'feats'?
Can they ever escape when run over by an MTC bus or a speeding truck?
Why don't they just teach self-defence?
There are lot of other strategies to develop endurance.
What is there to be proud of such things?
I simply don't understand.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Learning Esperanto
In a comment to my previous post, Brian Barker has suggested the site:
http://en.lernu.net
Exploring this site, I found that learning Esperanto is cool. And the course designed by Hokan Lundberg and Bertilo Wennergren is straight-forward and user-friendly (without any false links and unwanted bells and whistles).
I started by learning Esperanto numerals. It's pretty easy to learn and remember.
Basic numbers
0 - nul
1 - unu
2 - du
3 - tri
4 - kvar
5 - kvin
6 - ses
7 - sep
8 - ok
9 - naŭ
10 - dek
100 - cent
1000 - mil
11 - dek unu
12 - dek du
20 - dudek
25 - dudek kvin
237 - ducent tridek sep
1983 - mil naŭcent okdek tri
2002 - du mil du
And I took up a 'Level 1' exercise and scored centum!
Interested? Try http://en.lernu.net/lernado/gramatiko/konciza/kalkulvortoj.php
Good luck!
http://en.lernu.net
Exploring this site, I found that learning Esperanto is cool. And the course designed by Hokan Lundberg and Bertilo Wennergren is straight-forward and user-friendly (without any false links and unwanted bells and whistles).
I started by learning Esperanto numerals. It's pretty easy to learn and remember.
Basic numbers
0 - nul
1 - unu
2 - du
3 - tri
4 - kvar
5 - kvin
6 - ses
7 - sep
8 - ok
9 - naŭ
10 - dek
100 - cent
1000 - mil
11 - dek unu
12 - dek du
20 - dudek
25 - dudek kvin
237 - ducent tridek sep
1983 - mil naŭcent okdek tri
2002 - du mil du
And I took up a 'Level 1' exercise and scored centum!
Interested? Try http://en.lernu.net/lernado/gramatiko/konciza/kalkulvortoj.php
Good luck!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Esperanto
For aspirants of a unified world, Esperanto might be one of the answers.
Esperanto was devised in the 1880s by Dr. Ludwig Lazar Zamenhof (1859-1917) who was a Jew, born in Poland. Disheartened by the strong anti-Semitic feelings of the time, Zamenhof formulated Esperanto as a neutral international second language. He thought this would pave way for the liberation of Jews from the hands of racism.
Commenting on the formation of a separate Jewish state out of erstwhile Palestine, he said,
In his book Dr Esperanto, Zamenhof defines a simple grammar and a vocabulary of 900 words. He derived these words from Romanesque, Germanic and Slavic languages.
To create new words, you an add appropriate suffixes and prefixes.
Optimists say Esperanto will become the new international language sometime in the future. We'll have to wait and see.
And Esperanto means 'Hopeful'.
Esperanto was devised in the 1880s by Dr. Ludwig Lazar Zamenhof (1859-1917) who was a Jew, born in Poland. Disheartened by the strong anti-Semitic feelings of the time, Zamenhof formulated Esperanto as a neutral international second language. He thought this would pave way for the liberation of Jews from the hands of racism.
Commenting on the formation of a separate Jewish state out of erstwhile Palestine, he said,
"Jews will be living there as if on a volcano… conflicts and persecutions there will not stop until the Jews are expelled from there once again".
In his book Dr Esperanto, Zamenhof defines a simple grammar and a vocabulary of 900 words. He derived these words from Romanesque, Germanic and Slavic languages.
To create new words, you an add appropriate suffixes and prefixes.
Optimists say Esperanto will become the new international language sometime in the future. We'll have to wait and see.
And Esperanto means 'Hopeful'.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Newsbringers
We take so many things for granted. Newspaper is one of them.
The newspaper reaches us after passing hundreds of hands, miles of transportation, and finally the sweats of the paperboy. What does it take to be a paperboy? Definitely, you need several skills to be one. You got to balance yourself and the huge stock of papers on the carrier and both sides of the handle bar of your bicycle.
You got to move swift as a sparrow through narrow streets. You got to protect the papers from the rain, dirt, and other things. And finally, you got to DELIVER - at the right time, at the right place.
I came across an interesting book titled "Rain: What a Paperboy Learned About Business" by Jeffrey J. Fox. Though the book is written in an American context, the concepts discussed holds in any environment. The author lists some great people of the U.S.A., who were paperboys in their early years. The list includes Isaac Asimov, physicist, Warren Buffett, investor, Tom Cruise, actor, Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist, Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, and many others. Immediately, I thought of our own Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who used to deliver papers in his hometown.
Jeffrey Fox observes that most of those who've worked as paperboys are successful in several fields. He even suggests that hiring former paperboys is smart business. He explains the importance of sincerity, dedication, hard work, and all other qualities essential for a paperboy, which are as essential to any business. He uses a simple case study of an enthusiastic teenager named Rain, and applies his experience to common business strategies. It's a very simple book with a great attitude. Worth keeping in offices to boost employee commitment.
The newspaper reaches us after passing hundreds of hands, miles of transportation, and finally the sweats of the paperboy. What does it take to be a paperboy? Definitely, you need several skills to be one. You got to balance yourself and the huge stock of papers on the carrier and both sides of the handle bar of your bicycle.
You got to move swift as a sparrow through narrow streets. You got to protect the papers from the rain, dirt, and other things. And finally, you got to DELIVER - at the right time, at the right place. I came across an interesting book titled "Rain: What a Paperboy Learned About Business" by Jeffrey J. Fox. Though the book is written in an American context, the concepts discussed holds in any environment. The author lists some great people of the U.S.A., who were paperboys in their early years. The list includes Isaac Asimov, physicist, Warren Buffett, investor, Tom Cruise, actor, Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist, Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, and many others. Immediately, I thought of our own Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who used to deliver papers in his hometown.
Jeffrey Fox observes that most of those who've worked as paperboys are successful in several fields. He even suggests that hiring former paperboys is smart business. He explains the importance of sincerity, dedication, hard work, and all other qualities essential for a paperboy, which are as essential to any business. He uses a simple case study of an enthusiastic teenager named Rain, and applies his experience to common business strategies. It's a very simple book with a great attitude. Worth keeping in offices to boost employee commitment.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Thank You, Professor Yash Pal!
“My daughter has come first in the whole district in the tenth standard board exams,” my English teacher boasted in our class. I retorted to my friend Gopi “No wonder. After all he didn’t teach her.” Parents want their children to be Number One either because they were Number One in their times or they weren’t Number One in their times. Newspapers show the Number One celebrating his or her (mostly her) success with their parents or friends.
In the background, schools dump the mostly irrelevant and unpractical concepts into the young minds, eating the time which the children should have been playing or having some kind of fun. As a CBSE student, I used to boast “our syllabus is tougher than state board syllabus. Getting 350 out of 500 there is like getting 450 here.”
With students easily crossing the 400 mark and now the 450 mark, more stress has been put on presentation of answers, optimal choice of questions, and other intricacies. Eventually, I gave up my ambition of becoming a teacher. Practically, I’d have been a facilitator, bullying students all day‘Each mark is important. Each second counts. The Board Exam is your life. Don’t repent later.’ Being a teacher, I’d have ended up teaching nothing, which I’m doing right now.
Talking about education sector reform is fun. But implementation isn’t. When the nation builders are ready to implement the sixth pay commission recommendations with immediate effect, they cite bureaucratic bottlenecks in implementing reforms, or even mild changes. And the reform committees and enquiry commissions in this country work in their own way. Hence they take their own time. Take the Liberhan Commission for instance. Set up in December 1992, the retired judge took 16 years, 48 extensions, and 399 sittings to submit his report. And what the hell is it going to tell? The whole nation witnessed what happened, who laughed, who cried, who never laughed, who did everything, and who did nothing.
The review committee on the National Curriculum Framework, headed by Prof. Yash Pal, has been comparatively efficient and faster. It took only 3 years to submit the report.
Professor Yash Pal, the great Indian Scientist who brought Science to the common man’s drawing room through Turning Point in Doordarshan, has come up with his remarkable and revolutionary recommendations. The main recommendation is the making the Standard X public exam optional.
Another recommendation is the formation of a centralized and more autonomous body on the lines of the Election Commission to replace the time-tested and failed bodies such as UGC, AICTE, and NCTE.
Talented and deserving people are being put into nation building – for example Nandan Nilekani in the Unique ID project. Good sings. Thanks, Professor Yash. At least kids will have the relief that they don’t have to be the ‘State Number One’ and ‘District Number One’ until Standard XII now.
In the background, schools dump the mostly irrelevant and unpractical concepts into the young minds, eating the time which the children should have been playing or having some kind of fun. As a CBSE student, I used to boast “our syllabus is tougher than state board syllabus. Getting 350 out of 500 there is like getting 450 here.”
With students easily crossing the 400 mark and now the 450 mark, more stress has been put on presentation of answers, optimal choice of questions, and other intricacies. Eventually, I gave up my ambition of becoming a teacher. Practically, I’d have been a facilitator, bullying students all day‘Each mark is important. Each second counts. The Board Exam is your life. Don’t repent later.’ Being a teacher, I’d have ended up teaching nothing, which I’m doing right now.
Talking about education sector reform is fun. But implementation isn’t. When the nation builders are ready to implement the sixth pay commission recommendations with immediate effect, they cite bureaucratic bottlenecks in implementing reforms, or even mild changes. And the reform committees and enquiry commissions in this country work in their own way. Hence they take their own time. Take the Liberhan Commission for instance. Set up in December 1992, the retired judge took 16 years, 48 extensions, and 399 sittings to submit his report. And what the hell is it going to tell? The whole nation witnessed what happened, who laughed, who cried, who never laughed, who did everything, and who did nothing.
The review committee on the National Curriculum Framework, headed by Prof. Yash Pal, has been comparatively efficient and faster. It took only 3 years to submit the report.
Professor Yash Pal, the great Indian Scientist who brought Science to the common man’s drawing room through Turning Point in Doordarshan, has come up with his remarkable and revolutionary recommendations. The main recommendation is the making the Standard X public exam optional.
Another recommendation is the formation of a centralized and more autonomous body on the lines of the Election Commission to replace the time-tested and failed bodies such as UGC, AICTE, and NCTE.
Talented and deserving people are being put into nation building – for example Nandan Nilekani in the Unique ID project. Good sings. Thanks, Professor Yash. At least kids will have the relief that they don’t have to be the ‘State Number One’ and ‘District Number One’ until Standard XII now.
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