Yantrakaal

What is Formula One ? It is a superb combination of man and machine, style and speed, glitz and glory, power and precision that sends a tremor through the heart and shiver up your spine. For the past 40 years, I have been watching this incredible spectacle on television, as these crazy drivers and their fantastic cars raced against each other on circuits at exotic locations like Monaco and Monza. But finally they are here in India and who can resist the siren call of those screaming engines ? So here we are, the whole family, on a Formula One vacation at Noida, the home of the latest Formula One circuit, the Budh International Circuit : and who could ask for anything more ? The qualifying sessions Narain Karthikeyan lead the drivers parade before the start And then the race begins ... But the sound and fury can only be captured in a movie ! ... ... ...   .............................. And then we...

I had stumbled across Devajyoti Ray when I was looking for images that could be converted into stereograms -- apparently jumbled images that contain within them, other hidden images that get revealed "suddenly" when one stares at for some time. Usually these hidden images are common household objects but I was trying to use, and conceal, realistic photographs of human beings and the difficulty was that the complexity of these images was too high for the stereogram to be effective. I thought that images with sharp edges and flat colours would be easier to handle but the trouble was that most images that met this requirement were rather cartoonish and not realistic enough. My search ended when I came across Devajyoti Ray's wonderful paintings and even though the stereograms never worked out the way I had thought they would, I was delighted to discover that in my serendipity I had discovered a something that was truly wonderful. In an earlier post , I had expressed my ad...

Zoho Corporation has recognised our usage of their Cloud Computing products in their corporate blog post . 

  All these applications were built using Zoho Creator , the amazing environment for building your own Applications in the Cloud.

Saleem Shahzad's book ("Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban", Pluto Press, 260 pages, available at Flipkart ) is a must read for anyone who is concerned about Islamist terrorism and an eye opener for the student of the murky politics beyond our western border. Going beyond the wealth of information that it presents, what is most remarkable about the book is the frank, no-holds-barred candour with which he presents his point of view from a near first person perspective and had he not been killed after the publication it may have been difficult to believe all that he has said. But his unfortunate murder – in the hands of those whom he had talked about – puts a seal of authenticity on the events, dates and characters that are described in the text. Most of us in India believe that Islamist terrorism – from Kashmir to Mumbai and elsewhere – is the handiwork of  the all powerful Inter Services Intelligence unit, the ISI, of Pakistan and is nurtured in and unleashed from terror...

The new minister for  higher education in West Bengal is exploring new ways in which this sector could be improved. Here are some ideas. image of Class XII girls borrowed from Indian Patrika There could be many ways to improve the quality of higher education in Bengal. Curriculum can be redesigned, faculty can be trained or the administrative structure of universities and colleges can be changed. But without ignoring these traditional approaches, can we look for some radical, out-of-the-box ideas that could catapult Bengal to an eminent position of thought leadership ? To do so, let us begin by admitting that there is no dearth of colleges in Bengal but students do not perceive them to be very useful. This is because of (a) the poor quality of faculty and the educational services that they deliver that in turn leads to (b) the meagre job opportunities that that await students who pass out. This note explores low-cost, technology enabled approaches that can help mitiga...