RESEARCH

Lesson learnt well in The Pioneer I n my new office the other day, after I finished preparing company literature on products like power interface unit, phase change material, nano-cooled green shelters, filter-less air conditioner, compressor-less AC, etc, our department needed a French translation of the product descriptions for the overseas market. As I volunteered to translate the matter, my boss looked amused. Immediately I remembered what a curse my versatility had proven in The Pioneer . I laughed and consciously changed the topic of discussion. Eventually, our company had to pay a translator at the Alliance Française de Delhi an exorbitant Rs 6 per word for more than 30,000 words in the company literature, a task I could have done for free — my job profile does not include translation; therefore, no part of my salary can be considered to be the fee for the task — without compromising on quality. That night I asked my wife to interpret the look on my boss's face when I had of...

आ ज की युवा पीढ़ी एक तरफ़ तो अल्हड़ लगती है और दूसरी तरफ़ संजीदा भी । यदि उन में राजनीति की समझ या उसके प्रति रुझान कम है तो विभिन्न तकनीकी विषयों में उन का ज्ञान हमें अक्सर मंत्रमुग्ध भी कर देता है । अतः उन पर कोई अन्तिम टिप्पणी करने से पहले उन के जीवन के अन्य पहलुओं की जांच कर लेनी चाहिए । यदि युवा वर्ग राजनैतिक विचार-विमर्ष में अपरिपक्व है तो इसके लिए न सिर्फ़ युगों तक की मलिन राजनीति ज़िम्मेदार है , बल्कि पिछले दशक में हुए पत्रकारिता के स्तर में पतन का भी दोष कुछ कम नहीं । पर पत्रकारों की ज़िम्मेदारी कहाँ तक है ? क्या प्रसार माध्यम बाज़ार के नियमों से परे काम कर सकता है ? बाज़ार तो यही कहेगा कि जो बिकता है वही बेचो । पिछले दो सालों में कंप्यूटर पर सामाजिक मेल-मिलाप के लिए बने वेबसाइट orkut पर राजनैतिक चर्चा करते हुए मैंने पाया कि अधिकतर युवक व युवतियाँ विशेषतः टीवी पर पत्रकारिता के नाम पर होते हुए तमाशे से काफ़ी नाराज़ हैं । पूछने पर पता चला कि जहाँ राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ के अनुयायी NDTV और CNN-IBN से असंतुष्ट हैं क्योंकि उनके अनुसार ये चैनल नक़ली धर्म-निरपेक्षता के प्रसार वाहक हैं ...

T here are people who believe in God. Some believe in gods. Some believe in neither. Some say it is beyond human beings to be able to conclude ever whether God exists or not. This simple monotheist-polytheist-atheist-agnostic classification is as simple as Western philosophy (after the end of the era of Greek thinkers) generally tends to be. The differentiation becomes complicated in India whose philosophy says that to be an atheist is akin to not believing in oneself -- God or no God. Leave aside theology, in simple English, what do you mean when you say, "My spirit is high"? There is another school of thought that says whether God exists or not is a secondary question. There is no harm in trying to be one! Now, this should not be construed as super-ego. The philosophy simply means that when you consider yourself of yesterday, yourself of today and yourself of tomorrow, you see a tremendous process of evolution -- mental evolution especially. For one, you know and can do a ...

People were happy when it became the most popular search engine. When it offered virtually unlimited space in email accounts, only the competitors cribbed. Then it scared Governments with GoogleEarth and mobile phone operators with Rs 4,000 web-surfable cellphones. Here are two of its latest ‘Googlies’ G oogle is coming up with Google Health, its latest service — this time of personal health records management. This is how the service will appear on your computer monitors. You first have to be a ‘user’; in web service’s parlance this means registering at the site with personal details — in this case, your medical history as your physician has diagnosed. On the right section of the screen, the user’s health profile will appear in a sidebar containing the medical conditions he has experienced, the medications he has used for treatment, allergies (if any) and procedures adopted for cure. On the left hand side will appear another sidebar with URLs to the subscriber's profile data, medi...

The US claims that destroying one of its defunct satellites with a missile was necessary for the hazard its toxic fuel posed to life on Earth. It's an understatement that the world isn't convinced; neither are American experts. Here is an exposition of a six-week (perhaps more) long drama K eep aside the game of American and international politics surrounding the recent shooting down of a defunct spy satellite by the US; the logistics and science involved in the exercise was simply fascinating. Once, not giving two hoots to international concern, the US Administration gave the order to demolish with a missile the 'dead' National Reconnaissance Office satellite, the Department of Defence needed to re-programme the weapons -- outfit three Navy cruisers, the USS Lake Erie, USS Decatur and USS Russell, with remodelled Aegis anti-missile defence systems and a total of three SM-3 missiles -- within a few weeks. The confusion: Too many cooks spoil the broth, they say. Much bef...

While our educationists’ endeavour to increase the content of reasoning in school curricula is welcome, an examination hall is the last place students would like to be taken by surprise. CBSE must wait for a year to let students develop Higher Order Thinking Skills before testing them A ll those who had been lamenting for decades that academic education in the country is all about devouring bookish matter and regurgitating it in the examination hall must welcome the new format for AISSE and AISSCE question papers, especially those of physics, chemistry and biology. But a basic doubt remains: Shouldn't such a scheme have been announced last year in April so that the students could practise analytical questions the whole year and, if announced now, shouldn't it be implemented not before the session 2008-09? It's good that 'reason' has finally prevailed, though only up to 20 per cent! Well, that's the weightage for questions of reasoning. What can be philosophicall...

Are book fairs serving their purpose? W e are told that books are important, and they indeed are. However, what comes across from the sight of authors and poets -- some singers and actors too, if you consider the Kolkata Book Fair -- chatting in circles inside and outside the stalls, taking themselves for Socrates, is the fact that intellectuals are perhaps more important. Indians who have lived in the eastern parts of the country will recall that once upon a time parents used to exhort their children to read The Statesman to improve their English, if nothing else. Trying to please the parents thus was quite tasking for the li'l ones though. If allowed to celebrate the naïveté of this nincompoop a little, I'd recollect how painful it was those days to sit with both the newspaper and a voluminous dictionary, underline the most unusual of words -- curse the self-indulgent reporters/sub-editors who had a fascination for them -- in order to enhance one's vocabulary instead of ...