Sachin Tendulkar’s double century blows away talk of 50-over demise

March 2nd, 2010 by rk No comments »

Sachin Tendulkar’s breathtaking double century against South Africa is one in the eye for one-day critics.

So 50-over cricket is dying, and only muscle-bound, switch-hitting and reverse-sweeping batsmen can survive in the modern one-day jungle. Pah! Sachin Tendulkar certainly blew those couple of absurd and trendy notions asunder last week with his record-breaking one-day international double century against South Africa.

Its greatest glory was that it was an innings with which any era could identify; one of stunning convention and wonderful simplicity, full of straight-blade shots from a bat that somehow appears broader than any other.

There were cover-drives aplenty, all directly from the text book, which was not bad for a man who was so concerned about the stroke that he recently made a Test century with barely a single drive.

The area behind the bowler was explored relentlessly and the leg-side boundary found regularly with a late flick of the wrists. This truly was a victory for placement over power.

I hope the myopic county chairmen who voted against 50-over cricket were watching. This is a form of the game that must prevail. And if properly marketed and scheduled (is it any wonder that county 40-over matches are more popular when played in high summer rather than the Arctic April afforded 50 overs?), it can do.

The Australians may be bored of it, but they’ve just played 10 matches in a month.

The delirious thousands in Gwalior offered a very different tale: Tendulkar’s innings will live always in the memory.

No Twenty20 or 40-over innings will ever be able to lay claim to that.

Source: The Telegraph

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UPO Online 2009

February 10th, 2010 by rk No comments »

Find me here :)

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Social Media Revolution

February 10th, 2010 by rk No comments »

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Indian startup to help copy your brain on computers

February 1st, 2010 by rk 2 comments »

Now, Swiss scientists and PIT Solution, a little-heard of IT startup in Technopark in Kerala will be working on the Blue Brain Project, the world’s first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, reports Financial Express.

The $3 billion project is expected to be completed by 2018, said Brain Mind Institute of Swiss Federal Institute Director Henry Markram to Financial Express. The project is billed as an attempt to build a computerized copy of a brain – starting with a rat’s brain, and then progressing to a human brain-inside one of the world’s most powerful computers. It is an international project, propelled by Swiss Federal Institute, and involves several countries and ethics monitoring by UN bodies. India is yet to be part of the project.

The immediate purpose is to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations. “The study of rhodent brain has given us a template to build on. This would help in unraveling human brain,” says Markram. “The whole idea is that mental illness, memory and perception triggered by neurons and electric signals could be soon treated with a supercomputer that models all the 1,000,000 million synapses of brain.”

The key finding is that irrespective of gender and race, human brains are basically identical. “We will be able to map the differentiations by nuancing the patterns later. The exciting part is not how different we are but how similar we all are,” says Markram.

Source: Silicon India

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How to cure just about anything

February 1st, 2010 by rk No comments »

Medical Science is wonderful at certain
issues, like trauma. If you are in an
accident, medical doctors are saviors and magicians.

However, for the majority of illnesses,
medical doctors do a mediocre job fixing symptoms but a terrible job at fixing the cause — and they also unfortunately do a great job at creating new problems (which they call side-effects).

This email presents one way to look at almost all illness.

When you (or, at least, when your cavemen
ancestors) were confronted with a
life-or-death issue like an attack by a
fierce carnivore, you needed to immediately activate your fight-or-flight mechanism in order to save your life.

That was a good thing and it worked.

It worked to save your caveman’s life.

It had negative side-effects but these were not as significant as the fact that you survived the incident.

What is the fight-or-flight mechanism? It is the release of degenerative hormones:
Cortisol and Adrenaline.

They spur you into action. They save your life. They put you in top performance. But, alas, they also create stress. These two hormones and the related stress they cause are believed to be the leading cause of the most serious diseases like cancer, shingles, heart ailments and many others.

If the release of these hormones was so good for your cavemen ancestors, then why is it not good for you now?

The reason is that the issues which cause you worry and stress today are no longer life-threatening. They may include someone angry at you, a very long red light, a nasty email, etc.

Though there is no danger involved in these incidents, the body still perceives these incidents as danger and triggers the fight-or-flight mechanisms. The unused hormones in your system are the cause of the degeneration.

These unused and mostly unneeded hormones accumulate in your system and are the beginnings of the degenerative diseases you fear.

The cure of the most common AND the most dreaded diseases can be traced back to curing the release of, and the consequential accumulation of, the Cortisol and Adrenaline hormones in your body (at least in many, if not most, cases).

And, how is that done? The ultimate answer
is: relax.

There are a variety of ways to do that…

… being calm

… playing contemplative music

… resting during the day

… getting sufficient sleep

… enjoying the occasional massage

… meditating or praying

… having peaceful retreats in your day

… smiling

… taking deep breaths when you feel stress

… soaking in hot baths and

… other such restful practices.

So how do you cure just about anything that’s making you sick?

The answer may be as simple as…

Chill out.

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Life in 5 bottles

January 22nd, 2010 by rk No comments »

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Your Mission

January 22nd, 2010 by rk No comments »

I believe I know what your mission is.

Does that seem like a big claim to make?

Follow me on this…

Imagine you are in a huge dark room.

Everyone in the room is holding a candle and so are you.

You are at the front of the room looking out at the others.

They are doing their best to look at you, but the room is so dark that they cannot see much.

There is only one difference between you and them.

Your candle is lit.

When you light the candles of everyone else in the room, their lives are brightened.

When you see their happiness, your life is enlightened too. And, here is the best news:

your candle is diminished in no way by sharing your flame with hundreds or millions of others.

Share your light. Teach what you know.

You may be hesitant fearing that you have nothing to teach. My experience is that you indeed do have valuable information to teach others.

If you have been at your job for at least one year, you know immeasurably more than you knew when the job started.

If you have children, you have learned giant life lessons.

If you are single, married, divorced, or remarried – in all those matrimonial states, you have learned huge lessons.

If you’ve recovered from a severe illness or a big accident or a huge business failure or an investment calamity, then for sure you have learned lessons.

Your candle is lit.

There are so many others standing hopefully in front of you wishing that they knew those lessons you have learned. They want you to light their candle.

Light their candles.

Teach them what you know.

Brighten the world.

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Personality Type (Jung on the Hudson Book Series) (Paperback)

January 16th, 2010 by rk No comments »

Personality Type (Jung on the Hudson Book Series)

Review

Lenore Thomson has written a book that includes the best descriptions of what the functions mean of any book I have read. — Myers-Briggs Personality Type on the Web, April 12, 1999The theory is made clear by great stories that catch the reader’s interest and imagination, and give a chuckle at the same time. — The Enneagram and the MBTI, November 1998Thomson’s type descriptions are unusually full and can be mined for information and suggestion even by seasoned practitione (more…)

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Google may pull out of China after Web attacks

January 16th, 2010 by rk 2 comments »

Google Inc said it may pull out of China because it is no longer willing to accept censorship of search results and after hackers coordinated a sophisticated attack on email accounts of human rights activists using its Gmail service.

Google’s surprise announcement on Tuesday came shortly after an adviser to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she will announce a technology policy next week to help citizens in other countries to gain access to an uncensored Internet.

More than 20 other companies were also attacked by the China-based hackers, Google said.

Google said the hackers had tried to access the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists but only managed to access two unidentified accounts, and then only headlines and other data such as when the account was created.

It did not say what information the hackers tried to access from the other corporations, nor which they were. Google said it was now notifying the other affected corporations, adding that it was working with the U.S. authorities.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with attempts over the past year to limit free speech on the Web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” Google said in a statement.

Google maintains a Chinese language website, Google.cn, which the company says complies with local laws. The company’s flagship, English-language site Google.com does not adhere to China’s rules.

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.”

“We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Human rights has been a frequent source of tension between the United States and China, which is the largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, with total holdings of $798.9 billion.

Last week Clinton dined with tech heavyweights such as Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Microsoft Corp research chief Craig Mundie, and Cisco Systems Inc Executive Vice President Sue Bostrom. It was not clear if that meeting was related to Google’s revelation.

Microsoft had no immediate comment.

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The 16 Personality Types, Descriptions for Self-Discovery (Paperback)

January 12th, 2010 by rk 2 comments »

The 16 Personality Types, Descriptions for Self-Discovery

Review

… the authors cut right to the core concerns: ways to describe personality and discovering your best-fit type. — Book Reader, Fall/Winter 2000/01After 10 Years of working with personality type, I have finally read a description of myself I could have written! — Karen Welcome, Staff OD Specialist, Adanced Micro DevicesBy far the best type descriptions written. Finally, a resource that makes the differences between EXXX and IXXX easy to understand! — Laurie D (more…)

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