Birth Anniversary of a Great Man….. 12 January 2008

He was born this day in 1863 at Calcutta.

He inspired Jamshedji Tata to set up the Indian Institute of Science.

His name is Narendranath Dutta, but is popularly known as Swami Vivekananda.

He was a born leader and was good at studies, theatre, music, and sports. He questioned the validity of God, superstitious customs, and discrimination based on caste and religion. He studied at the Presidency College and Scottish Church College at Calcutta. He was interested in logic, philosophy, and history.

The turning point in his life came when he met his Guru, Ramakrishna for the first time in November 1881.

When the Raja of Ramnad in the state of Tamil Nadu was invited to address the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 at Chicago, USA, he felt that Vivekananda was the right person to represent the views of Hinduism in that conference.

Vivekananda began his address with his famous words, “Sisters and brothers of America.” That marked the beginning of western interest in Hinduism as a vital religious and philosophical tradition.

S .Gopal
…Keying in is better than idling

Belgium and Bombay…… 9 January 2008

A recent newspaper article about Belgium forced me to compare that country with Bombay (the world still knows Mumbai as Bombay). An advanced, modern, clean country vs. a decaying, filthy metropolis? Please read on to find out the contrasts and decide; I have used B for Belgium and M for Mumbai.

· B is a country, M is just the capital of one state in India.

· Population: B – 10.5 million; M – approximately 14 milllion (may be even more)

· M – a melting pot of multiculturalism; people from all parts of India representing all religions and speaking many languages have been living together for years and generally peacefully (leaving alone a few aberrations) with an elected government.

· B – majority population is Dutch-speaking living in the Flanders region; minority French-speaking living in the poorer southern part. These two groups are finding it difficult to co-exist. Because of this, the results of the election held in June last year 2007 were indecisive; there is no proper elected government and some have speculated that the country may even breakup.

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Eco-friendly technology….the Indian connection 17 November 2007

Veena Sahajwalla was born in Mumbai and educated in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. She is an award-winning material scientist working now at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

She has developed a `green’ steel technology that substitutes about 30 percent of coke and coal (required in producing steel using Electric Arc Furnace) with polyethylene waste plastic.

Plastic is simply another form of carbon. In making steel there is essentially no difference between the polyethylene plastic in shopping bags and a natural resource like coal.

Advantages:

• Millions of tonnes of waste plastic will be recycled into steel.
• Less space will be required for plastic landfill.
• Reduction in demand for coke and coal .
• Less power-on time and total power use.
• Drop in green house gas emissions

Commercial production using this technology is underway at the Sydney furnaces of OneSteel. There are 300 EAF steel makers in the world accounting for 40 percent of the world’s steel production. If all these use this new technology, the benefits will be immense.

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Where is this state? And who is going to govern it? 4 November 2007

It is the nation’s chaotic, poorest, most uneducated, and most unhealthy state. This state is worse than a third world country where crime is rampant and police brutality is a way of life.

Here the elected representatives are known to be corrupt. One politician here was caught recently with huge cash stocked in his refrigerator. Economy is non-existent and political system is decaying in this state. This state could not handle itself when mother nature’s fury struck it. Thousands from this state are still staying as refugees in a neighbouring state.

Well, if you thought this state was in India, you are mistaken. The state in question is Louisiana in the United States.

The person who has now been elected as governor of this state is a person of Indian origin. He is Bobby Jindal, born to Raj and Amar Jindal, who went from India to the US as students. He won the election in spite of racist slur against him. Best wishes to him!

S. .Gopal
…keying in is better than idling

India’s foreign connection….. 16 October 2007

US Dollars are pouring into the country. In just a week (which ended on 28 September 2007), India’s foreign exchange reserves grew up by approxinately US Dollar 12 billion. Compare it to just US Dollar 10 billion that came into India during the entire year from April 2005 and March 2006.

While US Dollars are pouring in into India, Indians are pouring into the US. During the last year more than 400 000 Indians visited the US. 50 000 Indians applied to go to the US last year for studies.

Indians are also creating waves abroad. Four Indian Americans – acoustics pioneer Amar Bose, Google founder director Kavitark Shriram, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Bharat Desai, CEO of an info-tech outsourcing firm – have made it to the Forbes List of richest Americans this year.

On the flip side, three famous wealthy Indians in the UK are in the news for the wrong reasons. A London-based report in The Times of India newspaper dated 11 October 2007 has called Laksmi Mittal, Gulam Noon, and Swraj Paul as tax-dodgers.

S. .Gopal …keying in is better than idling