AI Scraping: Big Tech wants to "digest" copyrighted works. Google is training its bots on millions of copyrighted works without permission. The company wants to change copyright laws so that it can grab any content it wants from the Internet, use it as training data for its AI products, and argue “fair use” if anyone objects to its plagiarism.
The Economic Losers in the New World Order: Giant subsidies and rising protectionism are upending decades of free trade. The world’s biggest economies are offering huge subsidies in a cutthroat race to win the industries of the future. The losers: all the countries that can’t pay up. Smaller countries, from the U.K. to Singapore, are getting left behind
R Thyagarajan: Indian tycoon gave away $750 million. He doesn't even own a mobile phone. RT founded the Shriram group in Chennai in 1974
India is a rising force in Southeast Asia: India is taking major strides to expand its influence in Southeast Asia, a move that will allow countries to counter China’s dominance in the region. “Since China hasn’t budged on the border issue, India now feels there has been no real return for its cautious attitude towards Southeast Asia”.
For several states that most distrust China in the region — namely the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore, India is an additional partner to help counter Beijing.
Decouple: India bars makers of military drones from using Chinese parts. India relies on foreign manufacturers for both parts and entire systems as it lacks the know-how to make certain types of drones. "There has to be coherent national strategy to fill the technology gaps" to deliver commercially viable products.
Stop feeding your enemy: U.S. bans future investments in Chinese AI, Semiconductor, and Quantum Computing
Sunway supercomputer: China builds Exascale supercomputer with 19.2 Million cores. Despite sanctions, Chinese supercomputers continue to develop.
Toxic pharma exports from India: A cold medication made in India and sold in Iraq is tainted with toxic chemicals. The Cold Out label indicates it was made by Fourrts (India) Pvt. Ltd., a Chennai-based exporter of medicines.
It’s the fifth time in a year that testing has found an Indian exporter’s drugs to contain excessive levels of ethylene glycol. Cases of Indian-made tainted cold syrups have been reported in Indonesia, Gambia, Uzbekistan and Cameroon, and have killed about 300 children in the past year.
What alcohol does to a woman’s body: For a variety of reasons, women can’t metabolize alcohol as fast as men, meaning they have more of the toxic substance in their systems for longer. Women have lower amounts of the enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase, needed to break their drinks down, so they are left with higher levels of a substance that is toxic to organs like the liver. Moreover, women have less body water to dilute the alcohol they’ve consumed — the end result is that alcohol in their systems becomes more concentrated
India's Brand-free Economic Growth: While it is great that India is now making a lot of mobile phones for export, none of these carry an Indian brand name. The Chinese and Koreans, on the other hand, have spawned a half-dozen brands that dominate global markets.
The Modi government's manufacturing push is very good and necessary, but basically it is pushing Indian manufacturing in the same direction as our software (services) industry: Outsourcing -- India's fully (global) brand-free economic growth.
China challenging incumbent automakers: The legacy industry’s greatest assets are not worth as much as in the past... China’s car buyers have fallen out of love with foreign brands. Home teams are routing MNC competitors that had dominated China’s auto market.
China could dominate the next big advance in batteries. In two years, China will have nearly 95 percent of the world's capacity to make sodium batteries.
500 watt-hours per kilogram! CATL announces very energy-dense "condensed battery" for passenger aircraft. It’s likely a semi-solid state battery, an emerging technology with the potential to address issues that have held back the mass commercialization of solid state batteries.
How China plans to get in on US clean energy subsidies: Chinese companies are opening up manufacturing plants in the US and embedding themselves ever more deeply into the supply chains of major critical minerals. The influx of Chinese clean energy manufacturing projects raises the question of whether US industrial policy efforts to revitalize American manufacturing risk being hijacked by its chief rival.
The narrative "they" often sell is that these precious antiquities deserve to enjoy global attention while staying safe in secured museums. A recent New York Times article summed up the colonial thinking that continues around restitution, suggesting that "in America, critics of the surge in returns worry that museum collections built over time by scholars and imbued by a sense of context are being randomly depleted. Should US audiences, they ask, be deprived access to iconic objects that they suggest belong, not to individual nations, but to humankind?".
The fundamental flaw in this argument is that many of these artefacts are not art pieces to be "enjoyed" but sacred objects cherished and worshiped through generations before they are snatched away.
Unemployable: India's worthless degrees undercut world's fastest-growing major economy.
India's migrant millions: Caught between jobless villages and city hazards. This internal migration is bound to intensify as India becomes the world's most populous nation, throwing up enormous challenges for the government to absorb its army of young unemployed.
US Is Getting ‘Lonely’: Deepening links between the Middle East and Russia and China are a huge challenge for the United States. “If the Bretton Woods system is not delivering strongly around the world, there are going to be serious challenges.”
Petrodollar Dusk, Petroyuan Dawn: Iran, Venezuela, Russia and now Saudi Arabia shifting towards Petro-yuan. For nearly 50 years, the Saudis had insisted on payments with US dollars. But that all changed recently. “The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the US dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.”
India Pushes Trade in Local Currency : Malaysia will be a test case that other countries will watch to decide whether trading in the Indian currency is feasible. India has already established a rupee-ruble payment mechanism with Moscow, which experts say is serving as a template for other countries. Last July, banks from 18 countries set up rupee accounts in Indian banks. They include Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Germany, Oman and Singapore.
Italy introduces legislation to stop invasion of English language: Public officials could face fines of up to $110K for using foreign words in official communications.. France also has a language watchdog – the Académie Française — in which it catalogs and fight against foreign words, especially English ones, creeping into everyday language.
Countries oppose/ban the use of foreign language and even the foreign vocabulary in official communications to preserve their culture since language and culture are inseparable and go together. Invaders/colonisers impose their language for the same reason! https://t.co/YUabTzMdF3
— चमू कृष्णशास्त्री Chamu KrishnaShastry (@ChamuKShastry) April 2, 2023
Fragile Himalayan ecology: Respecting religious sentiments doesn't mean constructing 6-Lane highways. Let us not anger the deities that reside in the sacred mountains and protect us from harm. Tourism must take the form of homestead tourism, rather than the building of luxury eco-lodges.
Tiger culling: Kerala padres occupy tiger habitats, Marxists want them culled
Abrahamic mercilessness: "Shoot wild jumbos on forehead if they enter human habitations": Kerala Congress leader C P Mathew
Budget 2023: Centrally sponsored environment schemes have witnessed a cut in allocation in this budget.
Escalation: Russia and Ukraine have incentives to negotiate. The U.S. has other plans. It is replacing Ukraine as Russia’s main battlefield adversary.
Here's Why: Prediabetes and Diabetes are the same thing. It's just where you draw the line.
Capitalism does *not* work in healthcare. If a pharma co found a drug that cured chronic disease (rather than keeping ppl sick for a lifetime), it wouldn't make $billions.
US healthcare is a prime example of the limits of capitalism as a force for good.https://t.co/pAVzfqzfqj
TSMC’s 3nm Conundrum, Does It Even Make Sense? Density improvements are 56%, with a 40% cost increase. This results in an 11% cost per transistor improvement, the weakest ever scaling for a major process technology in 50+ years. Most chip designs will not achieve the 56% density improvement, but instead a much lower ~30%. This would imply a cost per transistor increase
Poisonous prescriptions: The dark side of Indian pharma comes out with Africa's cough syrup deaths.. . . . India's lax drug regulatory mechanism under spotlight after 69 killed in Gambia.
Drug regulation in India beggars the imagination. The black hole that exists is not a racket, it’s a crime against humanity. It directly affects you, your children, your loved ones.
The Chips Act Shows How to Invest in Education: The Chips Act makes large-scale federal investment in innovative research and manufacturing of microchips. It has already stimulated private-sector investment designed to take the microchip industry from decline in the U.S. to the forefront of economic development. Micron and IBM have announced investments of roughly $120 billion in New York State to build facilities to manufacture and develop microchips. Those announcements follow Intel’s decision to invest $100 billion in Ohio.
But what many don’t know about the Chips Act is that its significant federal spending goes beyond manufacturing, innovation, and incentives for research and development. The act provides $13.2 billion focused on R&D and workforce development with a specific investment in education and in science, technology, engineering, and math skills. It will offer a real pipeline from schools, to college, to career for many students.
The Universe Is Not Locally Real: And the Physics Nobel Prize winners proved it. One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings.
Digital Detox: Village in Maharashtra declares "independence" from two modern-day addictions - television and mobile internet. At least, for a couple of hours every day.
With 5G here, data is the new alcohol: The heady alcohol of the superspeed connectivity that the future generation of consumers will live in and take for granted in the future.
Hindi overlords: Amit Shah-headed panel wants Hindi replace English in IITs, courts in north India
Stop poking at us with Hindi rod: All four southern states carry the same message: Leave us alone, we are happy with our own culture and language. Imposing a new language and a new culture would be a farce.
India's Tibet policy: It is not that India did not have excellent strategic thinkers at the time, but Nehru decided not to use their competence. Tibet would never be discussed as a result. Today, one priority for Delhi is to have an in-depth discussion with Dharamsala as soon as possible.
Russian weaponry: This war has revealed a major design flaw, for instance, in the T-72 main battle tank -- the wrong placement of the ammo storage compartment under the crew cupola, which tends to blow up with the first guided anti-tank munition hit midship.
It is a matter of grave concern to the Indian armoured forces featuring the T-72. Maybe, this will finally convince the army headquarters to take ownership of the indigenous Arjun MBT (which handily beat the Russian T-90 and T-72 tanks in test trials). If the Ukraine crisis proves anything it is for the Indian military to 'Buy Indian'.
Farm machinery exacting heavy toll on soil: In soil that has been squashed by heavy weight of farm machinery, air is forced out and the soil becomes compacted, leading to flooding and poor harvests. "Compaction can happen within a few seconds when we drive on the soil, but it can take decades for that soil to recover".
Machine learning for farming applications: John Deere's autonomous tractor will usher in a new era of farming. Farmers are losing control of their machines and accuse John Deere of creating a monopoly in farm equipment manufacturing.
When Shiva appears, Chandala disappears: The disappearance of the Chandala therefore marks the disappearance of the whole ideas he represented. The ‘meaningful nonsense’ of the Chandala of the local myth is thus changed — while the former questions the caste system, the changed version makes such an illusion, but behind it, it in fact seeks to revitalise and legitimise caste.
Recipe for disaster: English-medium in rural primary = recipe for complete destruction of Indian talent.
Absolutely. And this policy is being pushed when the data clearly shows that Telugu medium students outperform English-medium students at primary level, *despite* Engish apartheid set against them.
English-medium in rural primary=recipe for complete destruction of Indian talent. https://t.co/cfaYxsg7pK
Cities are often markedly warmer than the countryside, and that's critical in a heat wave. This image, taken by @NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument on the @Space_Station, shows "heat islands" in and near Delhi, India, with nighttime temps up to 102° F (40° hotter than nearby fields). pic.twitter.com/yjzkdjDYev
But wait, there's a solution: Shade from street trees reduced surface temperatures by an average of 12°C. Concrete surfaces shaded permanently by a bank of trees were cooled by up to 20°C in the summer.
What if I told you there was a single intervention we could deliver in our cities that would cool them during heatwaves, reduce flooding, scrub pollutants from the air, boost biodiversity, improve public health, and even reduce crime? You wouldn't believe me. But it's true. pic.twitter.com/W1KWm6RHFk
Open Network for Digital Commerce: ONDC plans to level the playing field between small retailers and e-commerce behemoths such as Amazon and Flipkart.
Dr Jayan Thomas: Spearheading research on 'EV power suit'-- body shells with built-in super-capacitors for storing energy
Selling EVs without batteries:
The draft battery-swapping policy spoke about the Battery-as-a-Service
(BaaS) model that will allow users to buy EVs without batteries and then
sign up for battery subscription services. This will reduce EV costs as
batteries account for 40-50 per cent of their price tags.
Does time really exist? Investigations on 'time' yield lots of surprising and counterintuitive lessons. Time is relative, not absolute. Time always marches forward, not backward, but we still lack an explanation for the arrow of time.
Regional, official and national: There is a persistent push from the Centre to steer a pro-Hindi course in non-Hindi states. Karnataka is more prone to this problem than many other states, because it is -- and has been -- governed mostly by national parties.
Millets for global food security: Millets require little by way of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and can boost soil quality through intercropping with other plants. State intervention currently favors rice and wheat.
Subhashita 5: Factors behind the real prosperity of nations.
Brain drain to China: Taiwan cracks down on China poaching tech talent. Targets Chinese investing and hiring.
“There is a very big fear that if top engineers are being lured away to China, they will take some trade secrets with them and that could damage the competitiveness of the Taiwanese economy.”
Atmanirbhar China: China orders government, state firms to dump foreign PCs
‘30% tax on the Internet’: Elon Musk compares Apple's App Store tax to having a 30% fee for using the internet, 'definitely not ok'.
India feels the heat: Country reels from unusually early heatwave.... Heat wave scorches India’s wheat crop and hinders export plans
AI Colonialism: AI is impoverishing the communities and countries that don’t have a say in its development—the same communities and countries already impoverished by former colonial empires. The AI industry does not seek to capture land, but the same desire for profit drives it to expand its reach.
Micromobility: Over the past decade, the number of multinational research and development centers in Tel Aviv has tripled. With this growth has come a flood of highly educated, environmentally conscious young people who are increasingly opting for e-scooters and bicycles over cars. Tel Aviv intends to more than double its bike paths to cover 350 km by 2025.
Combination of racket and paddle sports: Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America with nearly 5 million Americans already playing the game. “The greatest thing I have found about pickleball is the socialization. Pickleball players seem to be... just really nice people. You meet the nicest people playing pickleball.”
Muddling history, language: Sheldon Pollock, a scholar of Sanskrit, noted that India was “well on its way to losing its memory”, thanks to perverted language politics and an education system that fails to value scholars. “If classical scholars in India or elsewhere cede control of memory, it will be left to the delusions and ravings of the anti-historians.”
"The problem is that unlike in Tamil Nadu, many politicians in Karnataka do not recognise the links between language, culture and identity. As a result, we do not see much work beyond sloganeering. At present, we don’t have much to show as achievement".
Funding the war: Germany paid Russia €9 Billion for energy since invasion. The largest importers in order were Germany (€9.1 billion), Italy (€6.9 billion), China (€6.7 billion), Netherlands (€5.6 billion), Turkey (€4.1 billion) and France (€3.8 billion).
Danish Kaneria: Pakistan team was unfair to this cricketer because he was a Hindu. . . who knew!!
"Tibet has never been part of China": "India's position is that India has to abide by the one China policy, then China also has to abide by one India policy regarding Kashmir" -- Penpa Tsering, president of the Tibetan govt in exile.
T cells induced by common cold protect against C-virus: Using such T-cells as the foundation for a vaccine could possibly be more effective than the current generation of vaccines, as the current crop focus on the spike protein, which sits on the outside of the cell, making it more prone to mutate within variants of the virus. “Such a vaccine would not need to be given as frequently because the memory T-cells last longer than the antibodies”.
Slow the Spread? Speeding It May Be Safer : Viruses care more about propagating themselves than about killing the host: Most viruses evolve to become more infectious and less virulent. Policies designed to slow the spread of Omicron may end up creating a supervariant that is more infectious, more virulent and more resistant to vaccines. That would be a man-made disaster.
To minimize that risk, policy makers must tolerate the rapid spread of milder variants. Will relaxing restrictions come at the cost of more hospitalizations and deaths as the next variant starts to spread? Perhaps, but it would reduce the risk of a worst-case scenario and greater loss of life in the long run.
I speak Kannada, and I’m no less Indian: I was a proud Hindi-speaking Indian then, though Kannada was my mother tongue! After all, we had to speak Hindi to be called Indian, in the Hindi nation, didn’t we? “Hindi hain hum?”
It was only after I got to understand India and the idea of India that I realised that I don’t need Hindi to prove my Indianness. It’s absolutely okay for a Kannadiga to not know Hindi. It doesn’t make him a lesser Indian. This needs to be echoed time and again. Only then can we build a plural India.
When I looked around, it dawned on me gradually that my mother tongue, Kannada, was being pushed to a corner in its own abode. It’s high time we implemented a two-language education policy in Karnataka to save our children from the excessive burden of learning Hindi. That would be the first right step in the right direction. Let’s hope no Kannada child in Karnataka, in the future, spends his childhood in a Hindi environment and starts looking down on his own language!
China increasingly rejects English: Education authorities in Shanghai forbade local elementary schools to hold final exams on the English language. . . . . . . So unlike Macaulayists here
EV range leader: Lucid Air 520-mile range ousts Tesla from top spot.
China leaping ahead in EVs: Xpeng P5 electric sedan starts around $25,000, leads in driver-assistance tech, aims for Europe
Fully autonomous orbital rocket launching drone: Launching things to space doesn’t have to mean firing a large rocket vertically using massive amounts of rocket-fuel-powered thrust — space startup Aevum breaks the mould in multiple ways, with an innovative launch vehicle design that combines uncrewed aircraft with horizontal take-off and landing capabilities, with a secondary stage that deploys at high altitude and can take small payloads the rest of the way to space.
Janan Ganesh in FT: What is woke culture if not the howl of a generation of underemployed humanities graduates? But the problem may be the raw numbers of students, not the precise flavour of their indoctrination. There are only so many jobs for them in publishing and the news media. There are only so many seats in Congress. If postmodern theories vanished from campus, would this surplus of frustrated graduates really just go about their lives as room-temperature liberals?
Quantum Supremacy? Chinese scientists claim to have built a quantum computer that is able
to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than
the world’s most advanced supercomputer, representing the first
milestone in the country’s efforts to develop the technology. China is building a $10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences as part of a big push in the field.
The World's Most Important Technology Race: Not only will quantum computing offer significant scientific advances,
but it will also alter warfighting. If China gains a substantial
military quantum advantage over the United States, it could
neutralize many of America's defensive and offensive technologies.
China is greatest threat to freedom: "China believes that a global order without it at the top is a
historical aberration. It aims to change that and reverse the
spread of liberty around the world."
Vinisha Umashankar: 14-year-old Tamil Nadu girl wins Children's Climate Prize for designing solar-powered ironing cart
To successfully compete with China, Europe & America, Indian education administrators must realize that language of learning need not be the same as the language of communication.
The current English-based system puts 95% of the population at a disadvantage.@sankrant
Why Indian SEZs failed: India's SEZ "reforms" largely centered around concessions to favored businesses--tax sops and
cheap real estate—rather than a fundamental reset of India’s convoluted
and restrictive rules for doing business. If low taxes were all that
mattered for attracting investment, any poor country could entice global
manufacturers by slashing taxes. Clearly, good governance and strong
rule of law matter a great deal more to such businesses.
Whereas the Shenzhen agglomeration alone sprawls across 2,000 square km,
all of India’s SEZs put together occupy less than 500 square km. Larger
zones benefit from several spillover effects: They
attract clusters of businesses, encourage knowledge transfers from
foreign to domestic companies, and spread employment, infrastructure and
development to neighboring regions. India’s zones are too small to do
the same.
Banned Chinese apps re-enter in new avatars: India is too lucrative a market to lose for
Chinese companies and they would make every effort to return. “If the
app ban doesn’t subside in a few months, banned apps in new avatars will
crop up.
Battlefront at minus 40 Celsius:
The Eastern Ladakh area witnesses the harshest winters where
temperatures normally dip to minus 35 degrees in the night during
winters coupled with high-speed freezing winds.
China's unmanned plateau helicopter makes maiden flight: The AR-500C drone will be used in missions including reconnaissance and
communication relay, with optional functions including electronic
disruption, target indication, fire strikes, cargo delivery, and nuclear
radiation and chemical contamination reconnaissance.
Make these in India: Bollinger plans to make new electric Deliver-E van with 200 miles of range
Sri Lanka returns hazardous waste to UK: Several other countries in the region have recently begun to return waste imported from foreign countries. In January, Malaysia returned 42 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the UK.
"Detox My Fashion": Textile dyeing is one of the most polluting aspects of the global fashion industry, devastating the environment and posing health hazards to humans. The discharge is often a cocktail of carcinogenic chemicals, dyes, salts
and heavy metals that not only hurt the environment, but pollute
essential drinking water sources.
@sankrant I have started teaching computer programming/coding in Gujarati via weekly facebook live sessions. Page: https://t.co/ogwz8FZQyN Thank you for re-igniting that flame in me :) 🙏
“We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook”:
Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent.
But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they
wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could
hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added
status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and
reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health
crisis. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount
of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed
more.
EU's China weak spot:
Germany had been particularly reluctant to speak out on Hong Kong
repression as it hoped to secure an investment deal with China by year's
end.
Indian TikTok copycats no match to the real deal: Indian
rip-offs of TikTok still have to get the basics right —a tough feat
considering the lack of expertise in short-video in the country... The interface and functionality of most of these apps
were so similar to TikTok that it was clear that none of them had a
truly distinct vision that would offer users something new and keep them
loyal in the long-run.
Devouring Nepal? China occupying land in 7 border districts, says Nepal Survey Department
1962 redux? Modi-Doval vying for Jawaharlal Nehru-award for Tibet strategy... "India is capable of giving a befitting response to Chinese aggression". That's about it.
One, PLA will not budge from its 1959-60 claim line in Ladakh as new LAC. Two, India cannot forcefully evict it from occupied territories. Three, PLA deployments in TAR are permanent. Four, PLA & PM interoperability has increased. Now look for own options? https://t.co/DM3Dydfxyl
Flying Gripen, Thailand Beat Down China's Air Force: Over the final three days of the war game, the Thais killed 22
Chinese jets and lost three of their own. The final tally for the
exercise favored the Thai air force. The Gripens shot down 42 J-11s
while the J-11s shot down just 34 Gripens.
The Israeli influences on the J-10’s design are unmistakable: A close-coupled, canard-delta
arrangement; a single-engine fighter featuring a ventral engine inlet;
twin ventral strakes; and an area-ruled fuselage. The J-10 remain an agile, versatile and inexpensive
multirole fighter designed from the outset to incorporate hi-tech
avionic systems and guided weapons. Though not a cutting-edge stealth aircraft, it marked an important milestone in China’s military modernization—achieved, most likely, with a little foreign assistance.
Impose local language on migrants: Hindi migrants to non-Hindi states should learn local language, not the other way round. Regional language should get primacy.
Unfortunately, a rich language of Rajasthani which traces its history from 800 AD has been reduced to a dialect of Hindi. Our cultural identity is being compromised through Hindi imposition. The Government should instill the value of respecting various lang.#StopHindiImposition
Cost of Bengaluru's traffic jams has a number: Bengaluru's notorious traffic congestion is taking a toll on health and productivity, with each of its residents losing an average Rs 52,264 per year on medication and for measures taken to avoid the congestion.
Karnataka mathematics teacher wins national award: Yakub made a whopping 300 videos on teaching maths in a simple way by demystifying its complex concepts and uploaded them on YouTube to make them accessible to the students.. . . Basavaraj Sungari: Karnataka teacher uses augmented reality tools to make online science lessons interactive
Our English Apartheid: Economic opportunity (in today's India) is almost exclusively for the English educated. Not knowing English is something the average Indian carries like a shame. There really is only one way to erase it: universal schooling in one's own mother tongue throughout India with a strong second language program.
5/ This issue is a silent social divide in India and the Indians on the "other side" silently endure their lingiuistic second class status and all too often blame themselves for their fate.
We have to address this in order to make broad based progress.
"We make do with whatever is available": Pahadis are not used to complaining. A heartwarming tale of how returning migrant used the time to beautify the schools where they are quarantined.
Narikutti Swami (Barry Long): By the 1960s Arunachala mountain had been almost completely denuded of all its original forests. Narikutti Swami was the first person to begin reforestation on the slopes of Arunachala. Many of the trees he planted are still there and nowadays the eastern slope of the hill has better forest coverage than at any time in the last 100 years. Narikutti Swami’s original name was Barry Long. He was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1930 and lived a fairly normal life there until, around 1957, he went to the cinema to see The Razor’s Edge, a film about a western seeker who goes to India and meets an Indian guru who transforms his outlook on life. Barry left the cinema with tears streaming down his face and a determination to go to India.
Imran Khan: Pak among the pioneers of smart lockdown. “A lockdown means collapse of the economy & in poorer countries a steep rise in poverty, crushing the poor as happened in Modi’s lockdown”.
EU-Vietnam FTA: The agreement is expected to enhance Vietnam's attractiveness for investors shifting factories out of China and will help Vietnam raise its skills and standards.
Challengeing the Paki Army openly: Pashtun Tahafuz Movement is turning into a thorn in Pakistan's flesh opposing its proxy war policy through jihadist groups.
Sadhguru welcomes paradigm shift in education: "Throwing information at children and thinking that we are educating should end... Schools will become less relevant... 2-days school, 5-days learning... Our idea of schooling comes from Machester mass production version of industry". . . . . . . Thoroughly insightful and entertaining conversation, do watch!
Tectonic shift: Now music schools take the e-learning route.
Growing fixation with Hindi: The Centre is obsessed with imposing Hindi on people who do not speak the language and who are not ready to work with it.
The surfaces that kill bacteria and viruses: Cicada wings are studded with tiny spikes on the surface that prevent bacterial cells from being able to settle and grow on the surface.
Sridhar Vembu's miracle: ZOHO: The most successful SaaS company you may have never heard of.
Temple scam: Rs 76 lakh has been misappropriated by Andhra Bank employees and Rs 66 lakh swindled by the SBI staff.
Higher education at inflection point: Many universities are witnessing erosion of their revenue sources -- tuition, research grants, clinical revenue.. Whatever emerges in the world of higher education, it won't look the same as it did when we all started the academic year last September.
Gambling addiction and Chinese investors: What can go wrong? Tencent, Alibaba investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian apps that use loopholes in anti-gambling laws.
Debt Trap Diplomacy: Belt and Road debts to China skyrocket after c-virus. 15 out of 68 BRI partner countries face significant debt distress. Developing countries’ hidden debts to China estimated at $380 billion.
Associated Press: China knew of pandemic danger in Wuhan even as officials downplayed it. Without the six-day delay, infections could have been cut by two-thirds.
How UV light may protect us: Ultraviolet light can penetrate the cells of pathogens and damage the DNA or RNA that contain their genetic code. “Sunlight is wonderful, but it takes a long time.”
UV LEDs can decontaminate surfaces: "UV-C light in the 260 - 285 nanometre wavelength range most relevant for current disinfection technologies is also harmful to human skin, so for now it is mostly used in applications where no one is present at the time of disinfection".
The Rules of Capitalism: The rules of capitalism are different when CEOs are looking for a bailout
Namaste Israel: Bibi proposes to ditch handshake for Hindu Namaste to check the spread of deadly coronavirus.
Afghan deal: Paki intelligence may end up the real winner in the Afghan peace deal. “You can’t succeed in Afghanistan independent of us, because we manage, if not actually control, the militant framework in that country.” . . . Pakistan does not want any role for India in Afghanistan
Peaceful Rise: Chinese firm copies Gilead's remdesivir, the most promising drug against the new coronavirus. . . . Chinese govt spin: "Coronavirus did not originate in China".
No one aspires for English. People aspire for jobs, economic opportunities. The State deprives people without English of opportunities—competitive exams, higher education, law, even tax filings.
Handing over keys to China: When Italy became the only G-7 nation to sign a Belt and Road accord last March, it drew criticism for choosing Beijing at the expense of its western allies. German Foreign Minister warned at the time that if you “think you can do clever deals with the Chinese, you will come down to earth with a bump.” Italy learned that lesson the hard way. Italian exports to China showed a 1% decline while Chinese imports grew. And then came the coronavirus...
Purging Huawei: US Congress gives small ISPs $1 billion to rip out Huawei, ZTE network gear
Allowing import of chicken legs, milk, apple, almond and walnut from America will hit Indian agriculture already reeling under a terrible agrarian distress. These imports will decimate India's poultry industry, hit dairy sector n hill farmers. @PiyushGoyalhttps://t.co/557V1kjP4H
Story of a Dalit Karsevak: In Bhanwar Meghwanshi’s village, low caste people joined the RSS in large numbers: “Of the fifty or so children who attended the shakha in my village, most were OBCs—Kumhar, Jat, Gurjar, Mali and so on. He was part of the first attempt at building the Ram temple, in the context of the Rath Yatra in October 1990. Then, he was “exhilarated”, chanting “To die for Ram-ji is such an honour…”. He and his Rajasthani comrades in arms were taught “how to evade the police” and were “told that implements to destroy the structure – hoes, spades, crowbars – would be provided by locals at Ayodhya”.
As the train started to slide out of the station, all the important functionaries slid out of the train.. I saw how one by one, the big folk, the industrialists, the sangh pracharaks, the leaders of VHP and BJP, all excused themselves. Having wished us well, they went back to their homes. Only people like me remained—impassioned Dalits, Adivasis, other young people from the lower castes, and a few sadhus and sants. To take charge of us, some lower-order functionaries tried to put us at ease, don’t worry, these people have other contingents to see off and then they’ll follow us directly to Ayodhya. They were never to come. They were sensible people and went back to their homes. I understood that sensible people always use us, we who are driven by passion; they push us into battle and return to their safe little coops.
However, Bhanwar Meghwanshi did not draw any conclusion from this episode but went to Ayodhya as a disciplined foot-soldier. He did not listen to his father, a Congress activist who had become sarpanch of his village and who explained to him that RSS needed Dalits primarily to fight against Muslims physically, something upper caste preferred not to do.
Soon after Bhanwar Meghwanshi fully realised the resilience of caste in the RSS on another occasion: while he had prepared food for Sangh parivar members who were touring his district, they refused to come to his home for eating; instead they took the food with them in order to save time and, they said, feed the village where they going next – but they threw it out on the road. Bhanwar Meghwanshi was shocked: How can the Sangh do this to me? They don’t believe in untouchability, in caste discrimination, they believe all Hindus to be one, they talk of a united Hindu society, and then this kind of hypocrisy?
“I resolved to tear the veil of fake harmony from the face of the Sangh and its family of institutions and expose their real face in public”.
