Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.                                                                                                                                                            --  Robert A. Heinlein

Max Muller on Vedanta's Boldness

"It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta should have been slowly elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us  feel giddy, as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of an ancient Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightening. Stone follows on stone in regular succession after once the first step has been  made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman."    ---- Max Muller (Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, p.182)

The Importance of Play-Time

The lack of free-play time in children's lives is negatively affecting their holistic growth and in-turn also is being detrimental for our society as a whole. This implication might not been visibly outright and its quite probable that someone might say that they don't see the effect of the 'play deficit'. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find lobbyists supporting the growing play deficit. I would suggest everyone to please have a look at this interesting article,  'The Play Deficit'  (courtesy: http://aeon.co)

Its so true, especially in India since the last decade. The importance of unsupervised play for children are being ignored and children are undemocratically and continuosuly  involved in adult-directed activities.  

Yes, it is also because of the rat race we have put ourselves in. And the unfortunate fact is that, it is very confounding to realise the true state of this affair, since we ourselves are part of this race, the elusive carrot dangling infront of us all through our life and we have seldom (if not never) exercised 'independent thinking' without any apriori bias (which is a result of most modern educational paradigms).

“People don't believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.”
― Seth Godin

Linux World Map

(courtesy: http://www.dedoimedo.com)

Someone told me that Unix is configurable to the point of collapse.   (source: http://goo.gl/KoRpJg)  

“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”     -- Isaac Asimov

Global Gender Gap Index 2013

http://widgets.weforum.org/gender-gap-heat-map/

courtesy:  world economic forum

"Most [people] have the ridiculous notion that anything they do which produces an income is work — and that anything they do outside ‘working’ hours is play. There is no logic to that."
                                                                                       -- Lewis Hyde (Author, Poet and Scholar)

"The great thing about growing up with science fiction is that you have an interest in everything."
                                                                                  -- Ray Bradbury

"Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination."  
                                                                                                ---- Vin Scully

If one must know only about one contemporary Indian,
one must know about 'M.K. Gandhi' a.k.a. Mahatma Gandhi ('Mahatma' meaning 'Great Souled').

"Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth."
   --Albert Einstein, published in Out of My Later Years (1950).

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
                                -- Emerson Pugh, 1938, in an assessment of brain research.

Infinite space, Infinite meaning, Infinite dimension

" Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living."   -- Anais Nin (1903-1977), Writer

“But in a purely data-driven approach, I can’t explain my decisions. People are so enamored with the data-driven approach that they believe correlation is sufficient.”
     --- Dr. David Ferrucci, I.B.M. researcher who led the development of Watson, an artificial intelligence engine.