Resonance in thoughts - a medium to propagate inspiration.

Sachin Tendulkar makes a point to Dinesh Karthik after wrapping up the match Posted using ShareThis

Yesterdays incident at Cuttack when Dinesh Kartik hit a stupid six and denied tendulkar a chance to score his 89th century brought many thoughts to mind  - Did tendulkar advice Kartik to play freely ?  Did Kartik feel pressurised to score at a slow rate to allow tendular a century ? How must tendulkar be feeling ? I think to me the answer is clear - Tendulkar, is not only a brilliant cricketer, he is also a role-model for cricket itself. He is upholding the standards of the game by rating an indian victory much higher than individual records. In summary, I think he advised a budding cricketer call Mr. Dinesh Kartik to play each ball on its merit - a loose ball with 6 written over it - dispatch it to where it belongs. And in the process Mr. Tendulkar has given us a lesson on what is 'cricket' !

The BBC Website on the Copenhagen Summit 2009 ( United Nations Climate Change Conference ) provides links to lot of interesting data and news videos: Where countries stand on Copenhagen An animated journey through the Earth's climate history Impact of climate change - including a report on the receding himalayan glaciers The key effects of climate change For a more rigorous analysis of whats going on with our climate, check the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change) website and their assessment reports .

25 Nov. (venue: Seminar room, ISVR, Southampton) a) Dr Ben Thornber : Ben was here to present his work on large-eddy simulations of shock-induced turbulent mixing. Ben is an exciting young guy. His enthusiasm seeemed to rub off on the audience. He focussed more on fundamental numerical techniques in his talk - especially relating the numerical dissipation in finite difference simulations to entropy generation in some sense. what attracted me is the feasibility of using accurate finite difference methods for magneto hydrodynamic simulations of supernovae. Ben is  very jovial person too and I spoke to him at length about Cranfield university, where he is based as a Research Fellow in the Fluid Mechanics and Computational Science group. Cranfield is a post-graduate university for science, technology, engineering and management. Ben is based in the Department of Aerospace sciences, which is composed of a few hand-picked PhD and post-docs. Cranfield emerged out of the College of Aeronautic

Last couple of weeks have seen life being breathed into two major research facilities - one computational (supposed to make sense of experimental data) - other experimental (supposed to make sense of theoretical data). Put together, they demonstrate the scintillating synergy between theory, experiments and computations - the three corner-stones of modern research. Firstly, We at University of Southampton are now proud owners of the 74th fastest  supercomputer in the world and the fastest university-owned supercomputer in England . The new facility nicknamed ' IRIDIS-3 ' on campus will help researchers at Southampton to perform calculations that they ever dreamed of. Hopefully, researchers on campus would now dare to dream even more and push the frontiers of research at Southampton. Secondly, For a small matter, the world is now in possesion of its' highest energy particle accelerator  - the Large Hadron Collider  (LHC). The first physics at the LHC is expected in 201

Its been nearly a month since the verbalisation of the Welsh Diwali , and in the meantime I have been fortunate to meet a few more inspiring people at few inspiring talks I attended - (27th Oct. venue: Turner sims concert hall) a) Ben Fogle :  Ben is a truly inspirational character - in every sense of the word. Fortunately I had a reminder pop-up in outlook just 10 minutes before his talk - advertised on the university events website. Among other (crazy) things he has done in life, which you can check from his website, he has participated and completed the MDS, supposedly the toughest footrace on the planet. He has raced across antarctica to the beautiful south pole only to find that bang on the south pole is a block-shaped american research station - complete with McD's and basketball courts.  He has crossed the atlantic in a row boat. And if that was not enough to raise money (for charity), he has penned down memoirs of the last two adevntures in "The Race to the P

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake - Where the Mind is Without Fear , Rabindranath Tagore. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach for another is to risk involvement. To expose your ideas, your dreams,before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To believe is to risk despair. To try is to risk failure. But

The idea of applying for host had germinated even while I was in Imperial in 2006/7. It took more than two years to take root. The idea of soaking in british culture and getting to know more about english people has always been high on my agenda. And host provides just that. So with a glimmer of light visible at the end of the phd tunnel, and effectively an end to the bliss state of life called 'student-life' in sight, I decided to apply for host in September this year. The application moved swiftly and I was intimated that my 'host' family would be somewhere in Wales. After a lull in communication for a while, I finally learnt (towards the end of september) that I would be hosted by the Nocks. Now the Nocks are a joint family - Roland and Margaret in their 40s, 18-yr old son michael, 16-year old Rachel, a dog, 6 ducks, 3 ducklings, 3 rats. or so I was told in the introductory mail. I was immidiately excited. On calling up Roland, I realised that Roland and Rachel had

जसं politics चे महत्व कळायला ’ रंग दे बसंती ’ बघायची गरज नव्हती, तसं आयुष्या वर नेहमी हसायच असतं हे उमगायला England मधे यायची गरज नव्ह्ती. A teachers work, at any rate, is not to put a lid on a pupils' imagination. School is a place where both teachers and students learn - teachers through students questions, students through teachers answers. जसा समाजाचा बदल घरातून सुरु होतो, माणसाचा बदल मनातून सुरु होतो.

"It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry: for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. It is a great mistake to think that a sense of duty and compulsion can be conducive to finding joy in seeking and learning. A healthy carnivore animal would have refused food if by cracks of a whip he were continually compelled to eat meat, particularly if the compulsively offered food were not chosen by him" *source: "On A.N. Kolmogorov", V.I. ARNOL'D, Golden Years of Moscow Mathematics, History of Mathematics Vol 6., American Mathematical Society.

I came up with this thought when going through photos posted by a friend of mine on facebook. My friend, Nia, is a britisher and has recently been to Bangladesh. she has posted not only the photos, but a meticulous narrative of the different places she has been to - Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet etc. Just going through her descriptions, gave a wonderful feeling .. A feeling of stepping into a new world .. A world where everything was tangible and yet surreal at the same time .. One could feel the sense of adventure in her and I couldnt help but feel inspired .. so my thoughts drifted .. how could Nia gather the courage and motivation to undertake this journey .. is this just a stroke of luck or good fortune .. I guess not .. This is not the first time I heard of Nia's adventures - In the past she has told me about visiting Kolkata, enjoying views of ganges from Howrah bridge, how crowded the station was .. how good the chai was .. and so on .. and therein lies the answer .. It all star

A message for all fellow travellers caught in the pursuit of that elusive 'phd' : http://www.dhingana.com/play/yeh-safar/MjA4MA%3D%3D/pop/1?beta=0

Recently I have come across this useful website for keeping up to date with news stories. www.newsmap.jp newsmap pulls data from several news websites and uses the power of google to sort the news. In one glance, you can get an idea of whats in the news currently. Clicking on the news box takes you to the source of that story. This saves the hassle of going to different sites (bbc, timesofindia, expressindia, ndtv etc.) One can choose to customise the type of news you wish to see (World, health, sports, technology etc.) and also for a particular nation. I have noticed that the search feature is very useful too. Eg. searching 'infosys' retrieves all recent news related to infosys.