American Families

Interesting way in which the American family has undergone a change over the last 50 years.

1) More than 34% of children below the age of 18 are staying with single parents. In 1960 this was 9%.
2) Almost 41% of children today are born outside of marriage - in 1960 this was less than 5%.

You can read more at pewresearch.

Fascinating Plants

Some of the oldest Plants

The Judean date palm (previously extinct) at Kibbutz Ketura, Israel was grown from a 2000 year old seed and is the oldest verified human-assisted germination of a seed.  The seeds were found in a jar during excavations in Israel around 1965. Of the 3 seeds which were planted in 2005, one grew into a healthy plant. More details can be found here.

However, the oldest plant ever to be regenerated is from a 32,000 year old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost. It is a flowering plant - Silene stenophylla- that was successfully regenerated by Russian scientists in 2012. Read more here.

The oldest living tree is around 5000 years old - a bristle cone pine - found in the White mountains, California, US. Its exact location is kept a secret to avoid damage from enthusiastic tourists!! More here. 

The Maha Bodhi Tree at Anuradhapura, Srilanka is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world, with a definitive planting date – 288 BC! The sapling was brought to Srilanka by Sanghamitra the daughter of the Indian King Ashoka and is a branch of the original tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. 

Finally, from Wikipedia, a list of the oldest tree.

A Lamb Chop in Space

Spectacular View from the Camera with the Lamb Chop

How do you promote your new book? Send a Lamb Chop in to space!! That’s exactly what the Author of the book Meatspace did. According to the Urban Dictionary, Meatspace refers to the real (that is, not virtual) world, the world of flesh and blood. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the opposite of cyberspace.

The author and his friend stuck a GoPro camera on a helium filled balloon with the lamb chop on a fork and let it fly.  Here is the original account by the author on how and why he did it. Interesting to read. You can directly jump to the video of the flying lamb chop here.

On a similar note, here is a good Sci-fi story by Terry Bisson on - MEAT!! 

Mangalyan – An Indian Space Odyssey

Indian scientists at ISRO created history on 24th September 2014 by becoming the first in the world to successfully deploy a satellite around Mars on their very first attempt at the lowest cost. However, the New York Times published a cartoon that drew a lot of criticism for depicting stereotypes. Indian cartoonist gave one back a month later when a NASA rocket exploded!!

It is interesting to look back at the tremendous progress made by ISRO since its inception in 1969, when even as late as 1980’s, they used bullock carts for transporting their equipment.

Photos by ISRO 

ISRO was not without its share of scandals when 2 of its scientists were falsely implicated in a spy scandal in 1994, what many believe to be the handiwork of the US spy agency the CIA and its many moles in the Indian bureaucracy. It is a sordid tale of how the powerful - police, bureaucrats, the media and the politicians will go to any lengths to satisfy their egos and settle scores against one another; and get away with it - even if it means sacrificing the innocent and selling your country. The sad part, none of those guilty of cooking up this tale have been punished to this day.

More on it at the following links,

An account of the ISRO spy scandal by Madhu Kishwar.

An Interview with Mr. Nambi Narayanan, one of the scientists accused of espionage.

A book written by Mr. Rajasekharan Nair on the spy scandal. Makes a great read.

A reference to the ISRO spy scandal is made in this post.

Wanted: A Computer

Image courtesy Wikipedia

It feels weird today that the word “Computer” was used to describe humans who performed computing tasks!

From Wikipedia:

The first use of the word “computer” was recorded in 1613 in a book called “The yong mans gleanings” by English writer Richard Braithwait –

I haue read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number. 

It referred to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations.

BTW, that US $1000 of 1892 would be worth about US $25540 in 2013 as per this calculator.

The Google Doodle

Google does a wonderful job with its doodles. They have evolved it into an art form and have been successful in capturing the imagination of the kids worldwide. The above doodles are from India for children’s day. All the entries are beautiful and the judges must really have had a tough time selecting the winner.

You can see all the entries here.

Kudos to Google for this great initiative. The only other organization that successfully gets the school kids to participate is NASA. One celebrates Art and the other Science!!

Who is a Hindu?

Image from NASA

Came across this very nice video answering the above question. I thought the written word is more powerful. So took the liberty of copying the text from the video. All words belong to the original author,

***
You’ve heard the phrase the “Hindu way of Life.”

What is the Hindu way of life?

Which begs the question, who is a Hindu?

As luck would have it, there are exactly 4 types of Hindus. Said no one :)

But let’s pretend that to be the case,

The first is the VIRAT Hindu. The PROUD Hindu. So proud that he is lost in the grandeur of Hinduism, without always grasping that the essential nature of Hinduism is HUMILITY. The PROUD Hindu takes it upon himself to carry the heavy cross of ensuring the longevity of Hinduism without always grasping its TIMELESSNESS. 

The second is the DEVOUT Hindu who can recite mantras forwards and backwards. They are the keepers of tradition. They are our storytellers who don’t always grasp that the greatest tales are those which allow us to question them so we can see for ourselves. That, at its heart, Hinduism is about INQUIRY.

The third is the NON-PRACTICING Hindu who remains impervious to its charms and allures. Except on festive occasions. Let’s let them be. 

Finally, you have the SEEKERS. The ones in search of the Golden Snitch in a cosmic game of Quidditch. The seeker will tell you that Hinduism is neither monotheistic nor is it poly-theistic. And that it is as close to Godless Atheism as any religion has ever come. The Hindu way of life, if there is such a thing, starts with an admission of IGNORANCE. 

“From whence this Creation arose?
The One who watches,
Perhaps He knows?
Or perhaps He knows not.”

That is a hymn from the Rig Veda. 

The Hindu Way of Life, leads to inquiry into the nature of things in the hope that someday we will transcend the desire to define ourselves in the narrow confines created from being obsessed with ourselves. That someday, we will free ourselves of the burden of believing that we are the sole custodians of Truth. A Hindu celebrates the ambiguity that lies embedded in man-made morals. A Hindu worships the beauty that lies in the delicate balance of things. A Hindu celebrates the Spirit which connects us all. 

The purpose of religion is NOT to provide us with an identity. The purpose of religion is to be a parent. To forgive us when we rebel. To pick us up when we stumble. To guide us when we ask. To shape us in a manner that someday it can set us FREE so we can live without it. 
***

An Interesting Perspective On Media Reporting – India vs US

Recently The Hindu carried a story about a boy who ran away from his home and how he survived by selling chips on railway station before he was found and reunited with his family. 

Here is the link to the original story from The Hindu.

Interestingly, the same story was picked up by Business Insider, a US based Digital only Media Company and they reported it very differently.

Here is the link to the Business Insider story.

See the difference in viewpoints ....... starting with the headlines!!

Central Government Employees, India – Part 2

How has the Central Government employee strength changed over a period of time? The graphic above shows the data for the period 1971-2009. The blanks indicate that the data for those years is not available (or the census was not done). Some observations,

• The bureaucracy grew by 48% in 24 years. From 27 Lakhs in 1971 to a peak of 40 Lakhs in 1995. The heydays of the babus.
• The steepest decline of 18% was seen during the NDA regime of AB Vajpayee. From 39 Lakhs in 2001 to 32 Lakhs in 2004.
• The census report was regularly published whenever there was a strong government that had a check on the babus. During the UPA-I regime, 2004-2009, the report was published regularly. There is no census data in the public domain beyond 2009 – the second term of UPA-II. Even the 2009 report was only published in 2012!!

Central Government Employees, India – Part 1

 

How many employees does the Central Government in India have?
Getting data on any government function is almost impossible in India. Luckily a report on CENSUS OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES up to 31^st March 2009 and published in 2012 was available. Unfortunately, such is the state of affairs of our government that they themselves do not have the exact number of employees. The authors of the report lament that only about 45% of the 7,000+ departments submitted the information in the correct format, the data on the other departments was sourced from their annual reports and other sources.

Some interesting nuggets,

• There are appx. 31 Lakh employees of which Railways has the highest share at 45% (13.86 L)
• Women comprise roughly 10% of the work force - 3.11 Lakh
• 88.45% (27.41 L) of the regular Central Government employees were permanent whereas 11.55% (3.58 L) were temporary.
• 5% (1.55 L) were Gazetted employees and 95% (29.44 L) were non-Gazetted employees.
• 95.38% (29.55 L) of employees were in a pay grade of Rs.5400 or below.

The First Website Ever Made - A Brief History

First web page went live on August 6, 1991 at CERN

Tim Berners-Lee created the first web page (above) while working for CERN - The European Organization for Nuclear Research. It was originally developed to solve the problem of information-sharing (documents) between scientists.

You can see the first proposal put up by Tim in March 1989 here. A more formal proposal was submitted by Tim along with Robert Cailliau on November 12, 1990.

The first web server was hosted on a NeXT computer (developed by the company founded by Steve Jobs after he was shunted out of Apple Computers) that belonged to Berners-Lee. He had to build all the software tools necessary for a working Web - the first web browser, the first web server, and the first web pages which described the project itself.

On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the net.