Quick notes: Anonymous sources, Refugee ban...

• "Anonymous IAF sources": Who is trying to sabotage LCA-Tejas? Groups who would like  to see Indian innovation and manufacturing fail.




• Rafale puzzle: Why did Modi bypass the Cabinet before he committed India to the Rafale deal?



• Smog free: Chennai firm to tackle stubble burning menace in Punjab



• Dated news: Indian firm makes carbon capture breakthrough. The inventors of the new process are two young chemists from IIT Kharagpur. They failed to find Indian finance and were welcomed instead by the UK govt, which offered grants and the special entrepreneur status that whisks them through the British border. 



• Some German Cities Ban New Refugees: Most mainstream parties want to limit more from entering Germany.... Peace vs Love: Islamists target Christian converts in German refugee centers... Pew Research: The growth of Germany’s Muslim population.... Liberal spin: European Muslims will be instrumental in saving the continent’s aging population



• 100 KM on a single charge: Iconic Vespa Scooter gets brand-new electric powertrain 



• BMW wants to build a “hyperloop” for electric bicycles: An elevated network of covered bicycle highways that would wind their way through congested Chinese cities.



• Cycleway in Air:




• CS-Playground-React: An app that makes learning algorithms and data structures way more fun



• For some, Hindutva is all about history debates:

Dear @RSSorg -if you lose the present, you cant win the past. Engage with #core people. Dont come to us in state of utter panic.

— Reality Check India (@realitycheckind) November 9, 2017

Quick notes: Nepal vote, Loss of night...

• Nepal vote set to favor China over India: The communist alliance has prioritized rail and road networks with China and has already vowed to revive the Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project if they gain power. Harder stance against India, softer towards China.



• Naxals using kids as shields: "I was in Class 5 at an ashram in Sameep village. Once, I had to stay home because of fever. The local militia commander Ramlal took me away,"



• ‘Loss of Night’: Serious effects on the Earth’s ecology as artificial light is depriving the planet of its nights.



• Parking fees  and congestion charges: Chandigarh looks for radical solutions to fix traffic woes.



• Semi-high speed project: Delhi-Chandigarh 200-kmph rail corridor to cost Rs 11,000 crore. Total travel time will be 2 hours



• Tesla’s Newest Promises Break the Laws of Batteries:  Elon Musk touted ranges and charging times that don’t compute with the current physics and economics of batteries. 



• Nirvana Shatakam:



• Good old stories: Chandamama available online in Telugu, Hindi and English. More languages coming.



• Words of Wisdom: The best "Make in India" product is our people; we export these aplenty.

The best "make in India" product is our people; we export these aplenty? https://t.co/JNGgaQGhj2

— Makarand R Paranjape (@MakrandParanspe) November 23, 2017




• Extreme Heat: Los Angeles is painting its streets white. To lower the temperature by 3 degrees over the next 20 years. Black pavement absorbs heat from the sun.

Quick notes: Selective globalization, Loss making route...

• Swadeshi startups: The market value of internet sector in Europe is $50 billion. China's is 20 times bigger. This is because while China banned companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook, Europe did not. “What we need to do is what China did and tell the world that we need your capital, but we don’t need your companies”. Indiatech.org advocates ‘selective globalization’, saying it is something that the US and China already follow.



• India’s growing trade imbalance with China: Questions emerge about how Chinese producers undersell Indian manufacturers, considering transportation and a tariff of 10 percent. Some of the merchandise made in China, including locks or jewelry, is made with raw materials supplied by India.



• Bullet Train route is currently loss-making: 32 Mail and Express trains between Mumbai to Ahmedabad have been incurring a loss of 14 crore and 31 trains from Mumbai to Ahmedabad have made losses of 15 crore.



• Funds for education: Re 1 spent on school inspectors can save India Rs 10



• Gita Supersite: The texts are in Sanskrit and can be viewed in any of 11 language scripts: Assamese, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Roman, Tamil and Telugu.



• The insanity of big mountain freeriding:




• Discontent among nationalists:
  



• If not for its cloud business, Amazon would be posting big losses. The $1.2 billion operating profit posted by AWS wiped out the $936 million operating loss recorded by Amazon's international e-commerce business.

Quick notes: GST pain, Faraday Future...

• Can our artisans survive GST? 'I don't know how long the small-scale handmade sector can survive'.



• Are Tatas so naive?  Rumor has it that Tatas are paying $900 million for a 10% stake in Faraday Future, thus valuing the electric car startup at $9 billion.. Ridiculously overpriced, if true.



• Nirvana ShaTkam performed by school children in Dublin, Ireland:

मनोबुद्ध्यहङ्कार चित्तानि नाहं
न च श्रोत्रजिह्वे न च घ्राणनेत्रे ।
न च व्योम भूमिर्न तेजो न वायुः
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥१॥

न च प्राणसंज्ञो न वै पञ्चवायुः
न वा सप्तधातुः न वा पञ्चकोशः ।
न वाक्पाणिपादं न चोपस्थपायु
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥२॥

न मे द्वेषरागौ न मे लोभमोहौ
मदो नैव मे नैव मात्सर्यभावः ।
न धर्मो न चार्थो न कामो न मोक्षः
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥३॥

न पुण्यं न पापं न सौख्यं न दुःखं
न मन्त्रो न तीर्थं न वेदा न यज्ञाः ।
अहं भोजनं नैव भोज्यं न भोक्ता
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥४॥

न मृत्युर्न शङ्का न मे जातिभेदः
पिता नैव मे नैव माता न जन्मः ।
न बन्धुर्न मित्रं गुरुर्नैव शिष्यं
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥५॥

अहं निर्विकल्पो निराकाररूपो
विभुत्वाच्च सर्वत्र सर्वेन्द्रियाणाम् ।
न चासङ्गतं नैव मुक्तिर्न मेयः
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥६॥


• 'What can India teach us' by Max Müller: I remember one of our masters (Dr. Klee) telling us, that there was a language spoken in India, which was much the same as Greek and Latin, nay, as German and Russian. At first we thought it was a joke, but when one saw the parallel columns of numerals, pronouns, and verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin written on the blackboard, one felt in the presence of facts, before which one had to bow. The concept of the European man has been changed and widely extended by our acquaintance with India, and we know now that we are something different from what we thought we were. The study of Sanskrit has not only widened our views of man, and taught us to embrace millions of strangers and barbarians as members of one family, but it has imparted to the whole ancient history of man a reality which it never possessed before.



• Consciously quantum: Perhaps the most renowned of Quantum mechanics' mysteries is the "observer effect" -- the fact that the outcome of a quantum experiment can change depending on whether or not we choose to measure some property of the particles involved. This deeply troubled the early pioneers of quantum theory. It seemed to undermine the basic assumption behind all science: that there is an objective world out there, irrespective of us. If the way the world behaves depends on how – or if – we look at it, what can "reality" really mean?



• A bitter harvest: Low prices leave farmers seething. “The farm crisis is worsening by the year”.



• Something In The Air: Why does India lead the world in deaths from TB? The rise of TB infections has coincided with the dismal air quality index in many Indian cities.



• Smog shortening lives. Patient numbers have more than tripled in Delhi hospitals since pollution levels spiked.

Quick notes: Rafale decision, Slaughter bots...

• Rafale decision: When Parrikar reached the PMO, the Prime Minister sprang a bombshell. Parrikar was told that, on Modi’s forthcoming trip to Paris, he and French President would announce an agreement for India to buy 36 Rafale fighters. Taken aback, Parrikar still caught his flight to Goa. Over the next week, he batted loyally on behalf of his PM, publicly defending a decision he neither understood nor agreed with, that was taken over his head. Parrikar told PTI in Goa that all 36 Rafale fighters would join IAF service within two years; in fact more than six years will elapse before the final delivery is made. India needs some 200-300 fighters to replace the MiG-21 and MiG-27 fleet that is being phased out of service. Just 36 Rafales provides little cover.... About the deal.



• Spike Anti-Tank Guided Missile: India scraps $500 million Israeli missile deal, wants DRDO to make in India. Advantage Pak, worries Army



• Slaughterbots: And drone swarms




• Long tail-pipe: Electric vehicles charged in China (and India) produce two to five times as much particulate matter and chemicals that contribute to smog versus petrol-engine cars. The hidden cost of electric cars!



• Skill and Scale: Why Suzuki-Toyota alliance is a huge deal for India’s EV dream



• Birds changing their path: Not just people, smog affecting flight of migratory birds 



• An ARM killer from IIT, Madras? Meet the brains behind India’s ambitious processor project... RISC-V 101



• Han Prowess: China challenges Nvidia's hold on AI chips. "Draw level with the US in AI within 3 years, and become the world leader by 2030".



• Make India a higher education hub:

I've been saying for years that instead of exporting (& paying for) our students abroad, we should make India a higher education hub. But how will that happen if all we do is play politics with quotas, entitlements & institutionalized incompetence?@PrakashJavdekar https://t.co/VvZLDJdmkG

— Makarand R Paranjape (@MakrandParanspe) November 15, 2017




• Our Living Planet From Space: NASA satellites watch earth 'Breathe'

Quick notes: Missile story, Cycle sharing...

• India's Missile Story: In autumn 1982, Kalam presented his findings to the defence minister at that time, R Venkataraman. If Kalam was a hard-driving visionary, so too was Venkataraman. Dismissing all talk of a "phased programme", he ordered all programmes to be taken up simultaneously. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was formally sanctioned in July 1983, and funds were pre-allocated for a 12-year period up to 1995.
  
  Those were heady days for the DRDO's idealistic young scientists, buoyed by the 1971 victory over Pakistan and the "peaceful nuclear experiment" of 1974. In 1972, two young IIT graduates, VK Saraswat and Avinash Chander joined the DRDO just ten days apart. They were amongst more than a hundred young scientists who joined the DRDO's missile complex after graduating from premier institutions like the IITs, and Jadhavpur University. Within three years, Saraswat was heading propulsion development, while Chander spearheaded the development of navigation and guidance systems.
  
  "Wherever we have worked without the option of import - be it on strategic missiles, nuclear weapons, atomic energy or the space programme - we have achieved self-reliance. In the super-secret world of electronic warfare, where import is not an option, we have built world-class systems. We should ourselves ban imports, and we will indigenise. Necessity is the mother of invention."



• Debájit Sarkar explains: How good is LCA Tejas compared with other fighter jets in its category?



• Urban mobility: Zoomcar launches PEDL, India's first technology enabled cycle sharing service 



• Hydrogen is right choice as fuel for automobiles: G Madhavan Nair, former chairman of ISRO: "Lithium, you cannot throw it around. That becomes the most polluting thing. There has to be an adequate mechanism for collection and reprocessing. The availability of lithium is scarce and that's why the cost of LiBs is high. That's why I say for the long-run, one should look for (Hydrogen) fuel cell "



• Nerdy and proud of it: The smartest Americans are heading west



• Foreign languages not to be part of 3-language formula: Students who are keen on learning foreign languages should opt for the subject as fourth or fifth language 



• Better to learn to code than learn English as a second language: Programming encourages students of all disciplines to be inventive and experimental: “It’s not just for the computer scientists. Creativity is in the front seat; technology is in the backseat.”