An academy that we need

I accidentally stumbled upon the work of Salman Khan and his team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Khan_%28educator%29

http://www.khanacademy.org/

What a fabulous work these guys are doing ! Be sure to check out. I am sure your reaction will be "had I got access to such education I would have been a genius by now !"

To improve the ever deteriorating education systems of countries like India, we have to ensure that good teachers reach the masses. Even the poorest should have access to quality education. Only then can we create equal opportunities, which a welfare state like ours, aims at.

The Khan academy is trying to tap the power of Internet and multimedia for making quality education available for everyone. Most of us would spend our lives criticizing and blaming the system and doing nothing to change it.

While throughout the day, through various forms of media we are bombarded with  artificial reality shows, saas-bahu's sinister plots,  sansani breaking news,  stupid wallpapers, ringtones SMSes , useless quizzes and tarot card readers and astrologers - all justified in the name of "this is what we want". But, I believe, that is not what we need. Along with other things, I believe, such academies is what we need, and that the societal forces controlling the media have to ensure that they are delivered.      

Republic Day

This republic day brought shame to the nation. What will this republic day be remembered for ? Firstly, an honest officer exposing corruption was burnt alive by the mafia. Secondly, the national flag is now no more a symbol of values and integrity it used to be -- hoisting it leads to hatred and violent outbursts in some communities and regions or atleast the liberal and secular intelligentsia believe so; perhaps, that is why they believe only in deploying more and more security forces to suppress rebellions and promising economic packages when stones are being pelted and situation goes out of control. :) The so called secular and saviours of the minorities cannot prevent them from getting alienated and influenced by separatists, then how can they allow the communal people to take the credit of national integration ? Samjha karo yaar! Thirdly, the nation which calls itself a rising superpower, that has leadership and governments that defy non-proliferation treaties, dares to be non-aligned, has independent foreign policy; is totally helpless in exposing the black money laundered in foreign banks ! (I heard someone say, now I don't care, I have Wikileaks )

Well, I might not be the only one, crores of Indians might have been disheartened by the dark picture. But we must remember that being disappointed by the events is only going to worsen this picture. What we really need is constructive action rather than laments. On this republic day, it looks like, we need a dose of Dr. J P Narayanan's optimism more than anything else. ( As usual, courtesy: YouTube )

Inspirational speech by an IPS officer

During the 26/11/2008 terror attacks in Mumbai a young IPS officer took the terrorists head on, at the Taj hotel, firing rounds at them, they were lucky to escape. The officer the wisely took charge of the operation, and led his team to engage the terrorists until the NSG arrived.

The same officer, who comes from a rural background, had earlier won accolades, fighting with the Naxals in Gadchiroli district, and also for his social welfare schemes.

The officer's name is Vishwas Nagre Patil.

I just stumbled across his lectures (circa 2006) which some kind person has shared on YouTube. He is surely an inspiration for most youngsters of this country ! I need not speak more, these videos will do the rest !!

Thesis homepage

M.Tech Thesis homepage:

Explorations on a neurologically plausible model of image object classification

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/vision/sourabhd/

A soulful ghazal

Jis taraf jayiye ... hain khokle lafzo ka jor... (2)
Kaun samjhe yahaan awaaz ki gehraai ko ? .... (2)

Shehar dar shaher liye phirta hoon tanhai ko ....

A excellent ghazal by Hariharan and Ustad Zakir Hussain .... what an apt description of life !!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkeM5hgMZk

Indic languages : is transliteration the simplest solution ?

NLP researchers at Google and other places have done a great job in transliteration from Roman script to Indic scripts. Now transliteration feature is available in GMail.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/email-in-indian-languages.html


However, there is a simpler solution available.




Just click on on the menubar (or some keyboard shortcut) and change you keyboard layout to India. Your keyboard then starts emitting Unicode (ISCII) symbols for Indian scripts (eg: Devanagari). These layouts have been standardised long back. Only thing missing in the present setup is that Indian characters are not printed on the keyboards. ( Of late, you can find Indian charecters printed on some cell phones though)


The Japanese,Russian, German, French and many other coutries have such keyboards. (Its not a difficult task anyways). Hindi, for example, is the 4th largest spoken language in the world. Yet, why there is no demand for such things ?

I personally believe Devanagri is a better script for Hindi (and Sanskrit and Marathi) as it is very precise. What is the point of writing these languages in the not-so-precise Roman script such that your transliterating software produces the correct Devanagari (or for every word you have to select from drop-down box) ? Why not write directly in Devanagari ? Would n't it be much simpler ?

Stopping by the woods

Cold winter in Kanpur brought memories of a beautiful poem by Robert Frost that I had studied in school.

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening
-- Robert Frost
========================================
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.