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Monday, August 03, 2015
Brainier than Einstein? 12-yr-old gets highest IQ score of 162
A 12-year-old girl in the UK has achieved the highest possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test, which could make her brainier than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Nicole Barr, of Harlow, Essex, got a perfect 162 on the Mensa test. The score puts the tween in the top 1% of brightest people in the world and means she is more intelligent than physicist Hawking, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Einstein, who are all thought to have an IQ of 160.
“She’s a hard working child. She stays after school for homework club and never misses a day,” said her mother Dolly Buckland, 34.
“From a young age she’s been picking out mistakes in books and magazines. She’s a happy, fun-loving girl who is always asking for extra homework,” she was quoted as saying by ‘mirror.co.uk’.
“When I found out I got such a high score, it was so unexpected. I was shocked,” said Nicole who received her IQ test results last week. “Nicole’s IQ puts her comfortably within the top 1% of the population,” said Mensa spokesman Ann Clarkson.
The girl, who is a Year 7 student in Burnt Mill Academy, enjoys reading, singing and drama. At primary school, Nicole was several years ahead of her peers and could tackle complex algebra before the age of 10.
the speaking tree - When The Mind Is In The Present Moment
Swami Chinmayananda
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When the mind drops its perceptions of sense objects and stops identification with its thought dances, at that stage in meditation, the mind is no-mind. When thoughts rush out in their mad fury to hug objects of pleasure, they are called extrovert thoughts, and to quiet these is the sacred function of the path of meditation. When these outgoing thoughts are eliminated, the resulting condition of the mind is known as the no-thought state of highest mediation.Thoughts gush in to flood the mind with angry bursts of self-riotous compulsions mainly from two sources: the past and the future. Some thoughts stem from the past, dragging along with them memories of the good and bad done in the days gone by . These confuse the individual with regrets and sorrows, joys and pleasures raised by his memory from the stinking tombs of the past, forcing him to relive the dead past in the fragrant moments of the present.
The future is the other source of our thoughts. We are often flown upon the wings of our mind's fancy and imagination to a world of dreams where we are made to shudder at the future possibilities of failure, tremble in hopes of successes, and swoon in the expectation of total losses or large profits.
The past is made up of dead moments and to unearth the buried moments is to live with the dead. We do so when we waste our energies in unproductive and wasteful regrets over things we have already committed. The more we remember them those very vasanas are getting more deeply fixed into our personality structure. When we are not engaging ourselves with the negative preoccupation of entertaining the regrets of the past, we are wandering in the fairy castles of our fancied future, peopled with ugly fears, horrid dreams, unnerving hopes, and perhaps a thousand impossible expectations.
In short, when our minds are not rattled by the perception of objects, let us not thereby conclude that we have quieted our thoughts. Often, it is not so. The mind, when it is not engaged in the worldly objects that are right in front of it, can choose its own private fields of agitation by dragging up the buried corpses of a diseased past or by bringing up vivid pictures of a tragic hopelessness as the sure possibility of the immediate future! In either case the mind of the individual at meditation can get sadly disturbed.
Therefore, the rishis advise us: “Moment to moment engage the outgoing mind to live in the present. Completely reject the past. Renounce the future totally . Then, in such a bosom, the agitated mind shall reach the state of mindlessness.“ This state of mind is called no-mind.
The content of the present moment, divorced from all relationships with the past and future, is the absolute fullness of the Infinite. Eternity is experienced at the sacred depth of the present moment. To live in the present, independent of the past and the future, is to experience samadhi, the revealing culmination of meditation. Seek it yourself. Nobody can give it to anyone else. Each will have to reach there all by himself, in himself, with no other vehicle than himself. (August 3 is Sadhana Day . Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission, took mahasamadhi on this day in 1993.)
The future is the other source of our thoughts. We are often flown upon the wings of our mind's fancy and imagination to a world of dreams where we are made to shudder at the future possibilities of failure, tremble in hopes of successes, and swoon in the expectation of total losses or large profits.
The past is made up of dead moments and to unearth the buried moments is to live with the dead. We do so when we waste our energies in unproductive and wasteful regrets over things we have already committed. The more we remember them those very vasanas are getting more deeply fixed into our personality structure. When we are not engaging ourselves with the negative preoccupation of entertaining the regrets of the past, we are wandering in the fairy castles of our fancied future, peopled with ugly fears, horrid dreams, unnerving hopes, and perhaps a thousand impossible expectations.
In short, when our minds are not rattled by the perception of objects, let us not thereby conclude that we have quieted our thoughts. Often, it is not so. The mind, when it is not engaged in the worldly objects that are right in front of it, can choose its own private fields of agitation by dragging up the buried corpses of a diseased past or by bringing up vivid pictures of a tragic hopelessness as the sure possibility of the immediate future! In either case the mind of the individual at meditation can get sadly disturbed.
Therefore, the rishis advise us: “Moment to moment engage the outgoing mind to live in the present. Completely reject the past. Renounce the future totally . Then, in such a bosom, the agitated mind shall reach the state of mindlessness.“ This state of mind is called no-mind.
The content of the present moment, divorced from all relationships with the past and future, is the absolute fullness of the Infinite. Eternity is experienced at the sacred depth of the present moment. To live in the present, independent of the past and the future, is to experience samadhi, the revealing culmination of meditation. Seek it yourself. Nobody can give it to anyone else. Each will have to reach there all by himself, in himself, with no other vehicle than himself. (August 3 is Sadhana Day . Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission, took mahasamadhi on this day in 1993.)
Friday, July 31, 2015
What made Kalam great: In the words of his classmate Sujatha
APJ Abdul Kalam was my classmate in the BSc course at Trichy’s St Joseph’s College. During lunch breaks in the big assembly hall, we used to banter until the bell rang for the lectures. I remember him from those times. He would not talk much then, and if someone poked fun, he would gently laugh it off. And he would not come with the rest of us to watch movies.
After our BSc,, when I joined the Madras Institute of Technology to study electronics, I saw him join the aeronautics course in the same year. We both shared a common passion for Tamil and I recall our frequent meetings on that count. I recall his interest in the songs of Subramania Bharathi (nationalist poet) and Tirukkural (Tirvalluvar’s omnibus of couplets). Right at that stage, it was clear that he wanted to accomplish something practical in the field of aeronautics or rocket science. Our professors (one German, one Indian) showed the way – and I think it was the first time in India. They made an engineless-glider and took it to the Meenambakkam airport – part by part – and put it all together again. Then they used a winch to pull it and hoisted it like a kite in the sky. It caught the hot winds and soared. And so did our feelings in the college. Kalam played a role in that.
Professor Raghavachari, who taught us physics, was passionate about Tamil. He held a competition that invited essays in Tamil on science. Kalam and I took part, of course. Kalam’s essay was titled “We will build a plane”. Mine was on Infinity Mathematics, titled “Anantham.” He got the prize.
Kalam did not stop with his writing. Forget the plane. He built a rocket!
I lost touch with him for a few years after our MIT days. In the interval, he grew up under the supervision of figures such as Vikram Sarabhai, training in NASA. After I joined Bharat Electronics Ltd, I found opportunity to meet him on many counts for official work. He was a part of ISRO’s SLV rocket project. I could now see strong signs of hard work. There were people saying right then that he was destined to climb the ladder in the government hierarchy. Later, he moved to become the head of the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) at Hyderabad in the Department of Space. He successfully accomplished a series of missile projects: Prithvi, Agni, Akash, Nag et al. Then he became advisor to the prime minister and played a significant role in the stalled light commercial aircraft (LCA) project, pulling it finally out of the hangar and actually making it fly.
If I were to look back and compare ourselves with our batch mate, Kalam’s rise is manifold. None of us quite rose to become a Bharat Ratna. The main reason for his success was his dedication towards work, tireless labour and self-confidence.
When he was in the DRDO, I have taken part in his review meetings – and they were brief. He would ask a project head if a certain task was done. If it was delayed he never got upset. No shouting – but somehow he would make the person responsible for missing the deadline squirm in discomfort. When he was working 24/7/365, others were compelled to match up. He led by example.
His personal needs were few. He was a bachelor and a vegetarian with no “bad” habits. To top this he had a devout Muslim’s sense of good conduct. These kept him away from the temptations of a big office. In all of Tehelka’s tapes that exposed doings inside the government, he came out as a figure who stood in the way of corruption in high places.
I particularly recall one incident. When I went to Hyderabad for a meeting with him, some Russian technicians were visiting and there was a dinner at the Taj Banjara. I was invited as well. The Russians were gloating in the joy of having signed an agreement and forced a glass of vodka on Kalam, who avoided any intoxicant. He approached me quickly and asked in an embarrassed tone, “What’s that in your hand?”.
“Water. Ice water, Kalam,” I replied.
“Give it to me,” he said.
In a flash he had taken my glass and thrust the vodka glass into my unsuspecting hands.
“Those guys simply don’t understand that I don’t drink,” he said.
In a while I heard them say “Cheers” – and a glass of ice water went up with the vodkas!
Kalam and I plan to write a book together. He said we could do one on India’s rocket science since the times of Tipu Sultan. “I am ready, Kalam. Are you?” I would ask him. “I am almost ready. Let us start next month,” he would say – everytime.
Now that he has retired, I expect him to write it – if only the Indian government, US universities, colleges, Lions and Rotary clubs, schools and social organizations would leave him alone!
Open up the debate
On farm policy, there is an urgent need to listen to farmers, not just economists and academics.
For over two decades, the conversation on farmer issues had languished. Realising the stupor a few years ago, agricultural issues were sought to be made a central topic of discussion in India. Even as the momentum of the debate increased, and understanding was created on the fact that perpetual farm distress had become the horrifying new normal, there was a failure to protect the farmer’s turf from academics. This must be acknowledged. Every policymaker has focused on, including in the columns of this paper, policies that tackle food inflation, while we farmers fear and have long argued about ways to counter deflation. This is just one among the many reasons that farmers are at odds with agriculture academicians. Last year, fearful of inflation, the new government restricted potato exports. I argued against the restrictions (‘Making a hash of it’, The Indian Express, July 5, 2014) to no avail. This season, potatoes have sold for as low as Rs 2 per kg. When prices fall, the government does a disappearing act. Now, the government has banned the export of onions. Onions, which farmers sold for Rs 6 per kg three months ago, are now retailing for Rs 40 per kg. Food inflation has more to do with issues of hoarding, governance, lack of enforcement of regulation and marketing bottlenecks than production constraints. The future looks bleak for farmers, though achhe din seem to be here for traders. There is absolutely no reason for the government to interfere with the potato and onion markets, where it gives no support price to farmers. Our problem is not too little of the right food but too few policies of the right kind. Policymakers first aggravated food inflation and are now conveniently propagating the import of food as a way to keep it in check. Economists have pessimistically built their arguments on the assumption that domestic food inflation is here to stay, that it cannot be solved at home. But farmers are optimistic that they can produce enough to feed the nation and are, in fact, threatened by deflation. Different objectives require different approaches. Economists continuously justify and advocate the abolition of farm subsidies in India to save resources, even as we are encouraged to import. In contrast, we farmers suggest reducing subsidies per quintal of production. If one listened to farmers, one would know that they advocate improving the quality of produce, increasing the production of most crops by 20 per cent and, subsequently, increasing farmer profit by simply making available the best farm machinery. These gains can be realised without any extra seeds, fertiliser, pesticide or water. The small size of holdings don’t justify the costs of ownership. Availability of machinery does not mean individual farmers should actually own the machinery, which leads to indebtedness. The Indian government must incentivise leasing as well as permit duty-free imports of better, cheaper farm machinery. There are many more such simple interventions that could have a powerful effect. Like the UPA, if the NDA remains convinced that only academicians possess knowledge and that the opinion of farmers is a burden, we will permanently remain a developing country. The artificially high international commodity prices fell partly because, in 2013, China banned banks from accepting agriculture commodities as collateral for raising funds. Supply will continue to outpace demand for years to come. This month, the Food and Agriculture Organisation validated our deflation forecast. Presently, many multinational commodity firms are setting up shop in India to purchase grains. But their long-term objective is to use their network for distribution of imported food. Many countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and even African nations that grow surplus food have already deduced that India as well as China will be their biggest markets in the future and are positioning themselves to take advantage of this. Their strategies are premised on the conviction that our policymakers will repeatedly fail and that water scarcity will create opportunities they could exploit. To believe that imports are the solution to food shortages and inflation is naive. In order to reduce water usage, economists suggest reducing the import duty on rice from 70 to 5 per cent. This is far-fetched. They further suggest incentivising farmers to shift from rice to pulses production with a paltry sum of Rs 3,000 per acre. Farmers won’t shift to pulses for even three times that sum. For the record, farmers won’t shift from paddy to pulses even if the electricity subsidy is withdrawn — though withdrawing this subsidy will definitely result in reduced water usage, if that’s the objective. It is common practice for industry associations and international corporate-funded institutions to commission studies, projects and reports to influence policy. But allowing only them to frame farm policy is similar to asking GM seed manufacturers to frame food-labelling guidelines. The writer is chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj -
Over 38 lakh urban poor imparted employment oriented skills; Madhya Pradesh tops the list
o enable gainful employment, 38.32 lakh urban poor have so far been provided with skill development training with assistance from the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation. This was informed by the Minister of State for Urban Development and HUPA Shri Babul Supriyo in a written reply to Rajya Sabha today.
Skill development of urban poor to enable either self-employment or salaried employment was undertaken under the ‘Skill Training for Employment Promotion Amongst Urban Poor (STEP-UP)’ of erstwhile Swarn Jayanti Shahari Rojgar Yojana launched in 1997 and the ‘Employment through Skill Training & Placement’ component of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) introduced in 2013. Under STEP-UP, 35.26 lakh urban poor were assisted to upgrade their skills while another 3.06 lakh were helped under NULM.
Madhya Pradesh led the list of performers having assisted 5.06 lakh urban poor followed by Maharashtra (4.86 lakh), Uttar Pradesh (4.51 lakh), Karnataka (4.08 lakh), Tamil Nadu (3.33 lakh), Andhra Pradesh (3.25 lakh), Gujarat (2.22), Bihar(2.11 lakh), West Bengal (1.98 lakh) and Rajasthan (1.07 lakh). Ministry of HUPA has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Skill Development Corporation for facilitating training of 2 lakh urban poor through States/UTs.
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