Friday 21 August 2015

Faith doesn't support Logic



 One of the most famous temples in Ujjain, this temple adds to the similarity of Ujjain and Kashi. As at Kashi, Kal Bhairav is the Kshetrapal, or the guardian deity of the city, and it is the custom to leave the keys with the deity when the temple is closed at night, in the belief that he takes care of the temple and its properties. However, this temple is famous, not for its origins or its importance in the scheme of temples, but for its deity who guzzles wine by the gallons. Yes, the main offering to the deity is wine, and this is also the only Prasad given to the devotees. People flock to this temple, all carrying bottles of wine as an offering. Liquor is available 365 days a year outside the temple
Our driver had an interesting tale to tell regarding this custom. According to him (let me make it very clear to anyone wishing to argue about the veracity of this tale, that this is completely his version of the story!!!!), when Indira Gandhi was the PM, some doubts were raised about the use of the wine which was offered to the deity. There were some who believed that the liquor offered to the deity was later sold by the pujaris. The priests took offence at such an allegation and wrote to the PM, offering to submit to further investigation if they were assured of availability of wine all through the year, if they were proven innocent. Apparently, or so the tale goes, the offer was accepted and investigations carried out over a period of almost a year, but nothing was ever proved against the priests, and they had their demand met. Today, no matter whether it is a festival or a dry day, liquor is available all through the year at the temple, but only as an offering. An interesting story, wouldn’t you say?


Thursday 20 August 2015

Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

                                    Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen “A. P. J.” Abdul Kalam was a scientist and engineer, who served as the President of India from 2002 to 2007. Already a highly accomplished and much respected individual when elected to be the president, Kalam had spent four decades as a scientist and science administrator at several prestigious organizations like the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Born into a family of humble means in Tamil Nadu, Kalam went on to study aerospace engineering in Madras Institute of Technology.
Childhood & Early Life
                         Abdul Kalam was born as the youngest of five children of a Muslim boat owner named Jainulabudeen and his wife Ashiamma, in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. His ancestors had once been wealthy traders though his family lost much of its fortunes by the early 20th century. Kalam grew up in humble surroundings and had to take up a job while he was still in school in order to augment his family’s meager income—he distributed newspapers to help his father in providing for the family. He was a bright young boy, blessed with a thirst for knowledge and was always eager to learn new things. He completed his schooling from Ramanathapuram Schwartz Matriculation School and proceeded to study physics at the Saint Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, from where he graduated in 1954. Then he studied aerospace engineering in Madras Institute of Technology, graduating in 1960. His childhood ambition was to become a fighter pilot but he narrowly missed achieving his dream. 
Career at DRDO
                            After completing his studies he joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as a scientist. One of the first projects he worked on was to design a small helicopter for the Indian Army. He also got the opportunity to work with the renowned space scientist, Vikram Sarabhai as a part of the INCOSPAR committee. However, Kalam was not much satisfied with his career at the DRDO.

Career at ISRO 
               Kalam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1969 as the project director of India's first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III). An expandable rocket project on which he had started working independently in 1965 got the government’s approval for expansion in 1969. Over the next several years he developed the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and SLV-III projects, both of which proved to be successful. In the 1970s he also worked on the development of ballistic missiles from the technology of the successful SLV program and directed the projects Project Devil and Project Valiant which were aimed at producing a short-range surface-to-air missile. Even though the projects were discontinued in 1980 without achieving full success, they earned Kalam great respect and admiration from the scientific fraternity.
Death
                                    He remained active until the last day of his life. He was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong on 27 July 2015. Only five minutes into his lecture, he collapsed and was rushed to the Bethany Hospital where he was confirmed dead of a sudden cardiac arrest. His last rites were performed in his hometown, Rameswaram.

Pythagoras

Life Style:                          
             Pythagoras first coined the word 'philosopher', as 'philo-sophos' (friend of wisdom). He was practicing daily meditation in complete isolation in an underground refuge, to better elaborate his ideas and reforms. He chose Crotone for his main school as it was in an environment with a younger population, more receptive to adapt to the type of change he had in mind from a personal and social point of view. The area was called ironically, by some modern writers, the "Hellenic America" of that time, that is a new world with people offering more ethical plasticity (like in 'EthoPlasìn') to receive new ideas.
Powers Over External Nature:  
                                                    Pythagoras also had special talents that made him look like he was doing miracles. In Olympia, in front of a huge crowd, he was able to call down a wild eagle to stand calmly on his hand while trying to explain the dignity of the human being, meant by God to command nature but also to respect and love the beings of the other kingdoms. He once commanded gently a wild and aggressive bear to obey him and return to the forest. He is claimed to have had the gifts of ubiquity and remote viewing, with powers to stop pestilence, calm tempests, predict important events like earthquakes and to cure sick people with exceptionally fast, sometimes practically instant, recovery. He was thus considered a powerful "Demiurge" ('Demiurgos') capable of what other normal people would consider miracles. This is certainly the way the great philosopher Porphyrios described him in his writings on Pythagoras around 300 A.D. He said that Pythagoras was still famous in his days, some 800 years after is death, for "having been so far, more than any other person on Earth, the author of such an amount of incredible accomplishments, in all fields of human activity, worthy only of a divine nature". Many other historians, like Jamblicus, Justine, Dione, Chrysostom and many others, had similar words regarding Pythagoras.

Powers Over Human Nature:
                                          The fully formed Pythagorean disciples however, having developed their Human Tetractys with a spirit capable of attaining and expressing wisdom, had similar powers, even more important, to command not to external elements or wild animals, but to their internal inferior components, body and soul. They could talk to their organs for example, and gently command health. They could talk to their soul and command their passions. One of their objectives, and accomplishments in most cases, waDelphic Tripods to live a long harmonious life and die in good health, not because they were old or ill, but simply because time had come to make a step forward in another dimension. Pythagoras himself has been the best example of this. He died when he was close to 100 years old, still in perfect physical and mental health, and only because he was assassinated. A angry student, who had been rejected from his school, set fire to the house where he was living and Pythagoras died together with some of his closest collaborators. Otherwise he would probably have lived a few more years in good health as he probably felt his earthly mission had not been yet quite completed at that point. The Pythagorean Man was intended to become a demiurge with special powers to dominate himself and the nature, but spiritually, not mechanically, to handle nature from the inside, not from the outside, using his 'word' to co-create, like God, for the benefit of all living beings.

ગુજરાતી સામાન્યજ્ઞાન 

Comming soon....!

G.K.

Tuesday 18 August 2015

Knoledge is Light

                 In his 84 years, Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1,093 patents (singly or jointly) and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. He also created the world’s first industrial research laboratory. Known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” for the New Jersey town where he did some of his best-known work, Edison had become one of the most famous men in the world by the time he was in his 30s. 
In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer and businessman who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions–and himself–to the public.

Knowledge is Power

                                                                                                                                                                                       At the age of 26, the patent clerk Albert Einstein emerged with a couple of scientific papers that soon would be considered products of an extraordinary creative mind. How does that match the image of the young Albert labeled dull, dyslexic, even autistic or schizophrenic, by a considerable number of today's experts and interested parties?
 In order to find a reliable answer, we should abstain from repeating, and perpetuating, all the dubious conjectures spread decades after Einstein's death, and rely, first of all, on the contemporaneous, original sources to determine whether any of these labels actually apply to the real Einstein. In that context, a widely held belief regarding Einstein’s handedness can immediately be rebutted. As photos show him holding a pen in his right hand, seizing a paper with the right hand and playing the violin like a right-hander, and as no evidence was found of him being or originally having been left-handed, one may take for granted that he was a right-hander. All this being said, little, though, is known about Albert Einstein’s early years. In the recollections of the family recorded by Einstein’s younger sister, Maja, in 1924, Albert appears as a calm, dreamy, slow, but self-assured and determined child. Another three decades later, Einstein himself told his biographer, Carl Seelig, that “my parents were worried because I started to talk comparatively late, and they consulted a doctor because of it.” The grandparents, visiting two-year-old Albert, did not observe any developmental particularities and, in a letter to other family members, expressed enthusiasm about the grandson's good behavior and “drollige Einfälle” (funny or droll ideas or vagaries). Yet the reputed handicap of late talking became part of the family legend and is confirmed by Maja. The same family legend, though, reports that, at the age of 2 ½ years, when his newborn sister (a Mädle) was shown to the boy, Albert, obviously expecting a toy to play with, could already verbalize his disappointment: “But where are its wheels (Rädle)?” Might one assume that the “comparatively late” talking reflects the anxiety of an overambitious mother rather than the child actually having an identifiable problem? As a matter of fact, the boy was, and remained, a reluctant talker for quite some years, and, until the age of about seven, used to repeat his sentences to himself softly, a habit which contributed to the impression he might be somewhat dull. After one year of homeschooling, Albert was sent to primary school, entering second grade already at age 6 ½. He may not easily have accommodated himself to the school’s expected mindless obedience and discipline aimed at instilling authoritarian civic virtues. Unable – or unwilling - to provide quick automatic responses, the boy was considered only moderately talented by his teachers. Yet at the end of his first school year his mother could proudly relate that Albert's report card was splendid and his second term marks again put him at the top of his class. If the stigma of the "bright under-achiever" - "The Einstein Factor" - had been justified at any time, now it was no more the case. The fact that, at the age of 9 ½, Albert was accepted to the competitive Luitpold-Gymnasium, disproves any observable learning disabilities. Had his grades in primary school not been above average, his entrance into the Gymnasium would not have been possible. While the social milieu of his Gymnasium class, as well as the subject matter, were significantly more sophisticated and challenging than at the primary school, the teaching style continued to resemble the style Albert had despised already during his first school years. Learning facts and texts by rote was highly prized, while independent and creative thinking was perceived as undermining the teacher's respect. As it is the case with most pupils, Albert did not take the same interest in all subjects, but did advance well in general; in particular he advanced in subjects he favored even doing so far beyond his age. In his later years, Einstein repeatedly pointed out that memorizing words, texts, and names caused him considerable difficulties. Yet, if one regards the pupil’s alleged “learning disability” in the context of his distaste for the teaching style which he experienced as military drill, and of his own mental preoccupations, then a psychological block seems a much more plausible explanation than medical “dyslexia”. Moreover, not only did Albert advance from grade to grade without having to repeat a grade, even in the subject of Greek – with which an unsympathetic teacher predicted that he would never get anywhere - Albert received final marks of 2 out of 4, with 1 as the highest mark. But, yes, he flunked the entrance exam at the Zurich Polytechnic. Albert left his Munich Gymnasium in the middle of the seventh of nine obligatory high-school years, at the age of 15. When, with special permission, he presented himself for the entrance exam at the Zurich Polytechnic in the following autumn, he was still one and a half years short of the required age to enter that college. Also, as German and Swiss school curricula differ substantially, his knowledge, for instance, of French and of some general subjects definitely did not meet Swiss high-school diploma standards. So it was the circumstances that ‘handicapped’ Einstein, rather than his own personal inabilities. More noteworthy than the fact that he failed the exam is that his knowledge in mathematics and physics impressed his examiner in such a way that he invited the boy to his college lectures even before Albert was accepted as a regular student. To provide evidence of a “learning disability” it has been argued that Einstein's special talents in particular subjects were linked to an exceptionally strong deficiency in other areas. Einstein’s own words, too, appear to substantiate his impediment in languages, and as early, seemingly impartial evidence of his weakness in languages the above-cited exam is often mentioned. An attempt to learn Hebrew, Einstein is quoted in 1923 as saying, would be unproductive work for him. And from numerous reports of his American years we know that until the end of his life German was the only language he felt comfortable with. But in the entrance exam to the Polytechnic, that he took after only half a year of French lessons at the Gymnasium, Albert had to compete with Swiss graduates who had at least six years of French study. And the statement with respect to the Hebrew language was the realistic evaluation of a 43-year-old scientist who had no use for that particular language and, therefore, no motivation to learn it. Ten years later, the American immigrant was well able to acquire the necessary knowledge to communicate with his new compatriots. Would anyone be surprised that at the age of fifty-five he did not reach the same high level in English as he did in his mother tongue, and had, another decade later, to admit that he “cannot write in English, because of the treacherous spelling?” If dyslexia is defined as a neurological condition which causes problems translating language to thought or thought to language and therefore presents difficulties with reading, writing and spelling, speaking or listening, Einstein can certainly not be diagnosed with this defect. The strongest argument that Einstein was not dyslexic is that he mastered the German language perfectly and his ability to express himself in writing and speech showed high skills of comprehension, discrimination and precision. A different aspect may be Einstein’s social behavior. It prompted some specialists to place him among those afflicted with autism, or its milder form, a developmental disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome. Children suffering from AS are characterized as aloof and emotionally detached; their socially inappropriate behavior and their extreme egocentricity prevent them from interacting successfully with their peers. They appear to have little empathy for others and to lack social or emotional reciprocity. Other symptoms include motor clumsiness, non-verbal communication problems, repetitive routines and stereotyped mannerisms and the idiosyncrasy for loud or sudden noises. One of the most interesting aspects of their personality is the "perseveration," an obsessive interest in a single object or topic to the exclusion of any other. Some of the characterizations of AS described in the paragraph above actually apply well to the young Albert as we know him from Maja’s and Max Talmey’s recollections. Both Maja and Talmey describe a boy who took little interest in boisterous games and, in general, in his peers, a boy who would concentrate patiently on elaborate constructions with building blocks or playing cards, delve into books and tricky arithmetic problems or play the violin. A sort of glass pane, as he called it many years later, separated him from his fellow human beings. Had such "social phobia" then been classified as a personality disorder, and had his parents and doctors felt the need to ‘heal’ the boy by making him conform to some norm, Albert might not have become Einstein. Self-sufficiency, autonomy, a certain shyness and an extraordinary power of concentration, are traits that still characterized the adult scientist. He never felt comfortable with the obligation to deliver addresses and speeches and to mingle with people. The man who attracted women "like a magnet attracts filings", who was not afraid of having more than one love affair alongside his marriage and who stuck by his friends and lovers "in his way", this man nevertheless considered himself a lone wolf: "I never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart." Music was the portal into the place where Einstein sealed his emotions in order to avoid dealing with interpersonal relationships. Although he did not expressly refer to himself when once he suggested that young scientists assume the function, for instance, of a lighthouse guard, we know from many similar statements that the adult Einstein relished solitude, be it in his study, be it on a sailing boat or elsewhere. Yet, he had adjusted himself, to a certain degree, to the requirements of society. It is this “certain degree” that today’s experts are focussing on. While the mature Einstein was obviously a high-functioning member of his society, he nevertheless displayed some peculiarities that did not really fit in. Such peculiarities, however, were tolerated by his fellow men, even considered irrelevant, and not abnormal, thus not pathological, thus not in need of a cure. His temporary states of absent-mindedness and forgetfulness were amusedly looked at as the flip-side of his concentration on problems with which he was preoccupied. No one would have insinuated that forgetting his keys or not remembering the names of persons with whom he had little connection, constituted symptoms of a disease. His autonomy, fostered by his mother from an early age, was considered paradoxically both as a sign of maturity and as the fortunate retention of childlike curiosity and playfulness. Since such independence obviously constituted one of the prerequisites of his exceptional creativity, its unconventional or inconvenient aspects served as a target only for those who pursued political aims. These advocates of a different political philosophy, fascists and partisans of "German Physics" would have been jubilant to learn from today’s experts that the creation of the theory of relativity could have only come from a schizophrenic mind capable of viewing things from the outside. The boundary between socially tolerated "deviant" behavior on the one hand and pathological conduct on the other hand is re-defined by each society and in each era. Behavioral disorders exist only in relation to a concrete historical situation; developmental anomalies are deviations from a norm set at a given time by a distinct social group. Moreover, the same evidence can be construed in very different ways by different experts. Einstein was no doubt an exceptional person. He was highly gifted and acquired early in his life the ability to exploit his talents. The stimulating milieu of his childhood, an ambitious mother who supported the son's self-reliance, and a counterbalancing and comforting father provided the environment where the child could develop his own personality. The “Creator and Rebel” eventually found a way of reaching self-actualization in the framework of his society. Who dares to determine ex post facto, whether Einstein's genius is a result of autistic traits or of schizophrenic features? As long as the experts base their judgments on outright erroneous assertions about his childhood deficiencies, on misunderstandings regarding his performance at school, or on trivia of the kind of "He let his hair grow long and did not comb it. He wore old clothes and did not care about style", those judgments can hardly pass for reliable scientific expertise. As long as the same symptom is cited as an evidence of schizoid traits by one and as proof of being an autism spectrum disorder by another expert, one ought rather trust a third expert who frankly admits that while a pre-mortem diagnosis of a disorder with no known biologic markers would seem difficult enough, definitive post-mortem diagnoses are clearly impossible.
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