The Strugglers From The South Or The Deccan Mujahideen – Did The Government Ignore Previous Warnings

The sequence of events that has unfolded since 2100 hours on Wednesday, 26^th has left the nation shocked and stunned. Conferences, Academic Events, Cricket Matches have all been canceled and there is a heightened sense of fear among people in the major cities of the country. More than 120 people have been killed and more than 350 have been wounded. Tragic stories are gradually coming out, with some people having lost their entire families in these senseless attacks. There is fear and anger in the minds of the people and 26/27^th November, 2008 is being termed as India’s 9/11. The NSG, Army, Navy and Police have played an amazing role in bringing things under control in a manner similar to heroic efforts of the firefighters during September 11, 2001.

While these government agencies have done an amazing job, the country’s establishment and leadership is being seriously questioned. Was this a case of a severe Intelligence failure ? DelhiPlanet quotes a report that was published in the India Today about two and a half months back, “The Indian Mujahideen, which has claimed the responsibility for the serial terror blasts in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Jaipur, which killed at least 130 people in a span of four months, has now threatened to carry out attacks in India’s financial capital – Mumbai. Accusing Mumbai Police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad of harassing Muslims, the Indian Mujahideen, believed to be a front strike unit of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India , said in its email that it was closely watching the ATS. You should know that your acts are not at all left unnoticed; rather we are closely keeping an eye on you and just waiting for the proper time to execute your bloodshed. We are aware of your recent night raids at Ansarnagar, Mograpada in Andheri and the harassment and trouble you created there for the Muslims,” the group said in the email (Source).

The email was sent to various media houses when five synchronised explosions at popular markets and business hubs in New Delhi claimed 26 lives. Whether or not there is a group called Deccan Mujahideen or Indian Mujahideen, the fact is that if this India Today report is true than there was a serious Intelligence failure on the part of the agencies and the government was just caught napping. The voices of Educated India are slowly coming out and everyone hopes that this would be a defining moment for the country and that new and strict regulations would be put in place to prevent such acts of terror from happening again. It is astonishing to see that a group of 20-25 terrorists have been able to barge into a city as big and busy as Mumbai and bring it down on it’s knees in what was an extremely well planned attack.

Out thoughts and prayers go out to the people who have been affected in this tragic event. We do hope that the Indian Government along with assistance from other world powers would be able to deliver justice and create an initiative to weed out terrorism once and for all.

Tags: mumbai, india, intelligence, authorities, failure, taj, trident, hotels, nariman, battle, guns

With The Ability To Identify Brain States Making Mistakes Could Be A Thing Of The Past

Imagine yourself in anyone of the following scenarios:

1. After a long and hard day at work, you step into your car with a splitting headache. You think that you would be able to make it back to your house which is about 20 kilometers away and press the ignition switch to power on. As soon as you do so a biofeedback system present on the dashboard of your vehicle springs to life and starts scanning your brain signals to identify your brain state. Eager to move on, you move the gear into drive, but the car doesn’t allow you to move. It has sensed your reduced mind capacity and displays a warning that you’re not in a safe state to drive.
2. If you work hard then you must party harder, so now imagine yourself in a similar state as the above with the only difference being that you’re too drunk to drive and the car won’t allow itself to be driven.

All this sounds like a work of fiction and the car seems to be a commercial version of the new Knight Rider 2008, however all of this could very much be a part of our lives in another decade. Researchers have shown in a study that many seemingly mindless mistakes result from a cascade of neurological shifts. In the half-minute preceding an error, activity increases in the brain’s at-rest areas (red) and decreases in the brain’s focus-maintaining regions (blue, checkout this image). “People could be made aware that they’re not in the best condition to be working. Or people might learn to identify their ‘bad’ brain state,” said study co-author Tom Eichele, a neuroscientist at the University of Bergen in Norway. Up to 30 seconds before Eichele’s test subjects carelessly said that an arrow pointing in one direction was pointing in another, blood flow decreased in their posterior medial frontal cortex, a brain region associated with sustaining effort and focus.

At the same time, activity increased in the so-called default mode network — a region of the brain spanning the precuneus, retrosplenial cortex and anterior medial frontal cortex. The default mode network is associated with maintaining baseline routines, and tends to be most active during sleep and sedation. In short, the conscious brain started to shut down while the system usually responsible for preventing that failed.

“This matches with our subjective perception of making mistakes on a boring task,” said Michael Fox, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the study. “As time goes on, you get more and more bored, and that builds up until you screw up. This study shows that scientifically” (Source). Well, such a technology would certainly have a huge range of applications in daily life and would certainly signal the arrival of an advanced age, where machines would have the ability to pre-determine human actions based on one’s thoughts and mind state.

ReEnergize And Give Yourself A Boost With Some Action Packed Yoga Moves

A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini Kristin McGee.

Sometimes the pace of work and life can become so much that it just becomes “too hot to handle“. As hard as we may try to keep everything balanced sometimes the energy just isn’t there. All that one can wish for in such situations is for some kind of magic medicine to lift up our spirits and give us that doze of energy. Now, one could try and seek a bunch of over the counter products and medications to achieve the desired result or one could just save all that money and try doing some energizing exercises.

Yoga is a a great way to re-energize yourself and give yourself a boost, cause eventually the power is yours. In today’s edition of DP Health And Wellness, the queen yogini illustrates some power packed yoga moves that will energize you in a flash and won’t cost you a dime.

Experience The Power Of Facebook At The Facebook Developer Garage

This organization was founded by a 23 year old Harvard Sophomore and membership was initially limited to only Harvard students. This online social networking platform has over 120 million users worldwide today and is slowly becoming a replacement for one’s visiting card. This website has also been banned in some countries like Syria and Iran as it was used to criticize government authorities.

If you aren’t reading the above facts for the first time then you’re surely a devoted user of the Social Networking Platform Facebook. Facebook was launched on the 4^th of February, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while attending Harvard University as a sophomore. The site was originally called “The FaceBook” and was hosted at thefacebook.com. Mark later on changed it to facebook.com after purchasing the domain name for $200,000.

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard were registered on the service. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

Over these past few years and especially in the last year, facebook has triggered a Social Networking revolution given it’s amazing design and the power of it’s platform. If you’re a keen traveler and often meet a number of people at various social events then you would have definitely noticed that all conversations normally end with the line, “It was nice meeting you, Are you On Facebook“. In most cases one ends up getting a friend request within a few days and sometimes even instantly if the person you met had a facebook application on his mobile phone. Zuckerberg, the face behind Facebook who’s made it to the cover of Newsweek some time back and is reportedly worth $3 billion however has not been fazed by the success of his website, he still sits at a desk like the other software engineers, writing computer code. (Check here for more).

Needless to say that the Facebook platform has the ability to create custom facebook applications provides it with a tremendous revenue potential that Facebook is keen on exploiting. The Facebook Developer Garage is one such initiative which provides an opportunity to people to dive deep into the Facebook Platform: it is a forum to share ideas with local developers, look for partners on your latest project, see and participate in Facebook App demonstrations, seek technical support, or just network and socialize with other developers interested in the Facebook Platform.

In general, these garages comprise of ad hoc presentations, brainstorming sessions with other developers, and social interaction time. Some Garages also offer Q&A time with Facebook Platform Engineers, either via video conference or in person. This month the Facebook Developer Garage comes to Delhi on the 29^th of November at Tekriti Software, Gurgaon. Check here for more details on the venue. So whether you’re a Facebook Enthusiast, a Technology Professional or a Socialite attend the Garage and learn the inner secrets and future plans of your favorite social networking site.

The Desire To Be Superhuman – Understanding The Superman Syndrome

The picture above gives a classic representation of what our lives have become today as we strive to do more and more every day in our desire to become superior and more “super” than the rest. As we progress into the information age and technology becomes more widespread, people tend to be with their work for a major part of the day on weekdays and in some cases even on weekends. “For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign“, says noted reporter Jeff Zeleny while writing for the New York Times (Check here). This just goes to show the kind of pressure today’s high-ranking professionals have to face and the rise of a little known mindset called the “The Superman Syndrome“.

“the Superman Syndrome is a dangerous workplace success formula that forces men and women to leap tall buildings and outrun speeding bullets — at the expense of personal lives, families, children and even business productivity. This represents a major hypocrisy implicit in nearly every boardroom in a lot of countries: The belief that we should be accountable to work but not to our families“. Superman Syndrome can exist in various forms, a person could work days and nights sacrificing his health and family commitments so that he can get the promotion that he desires or to get a better annual review on his performance so that he gets a better salary hike. Another form of the Superman Syndrome is one where a person tries to flash his wealth and take care of the needs of everyone around him. Take the case of Trent, who writes at The Simple Dollar.

“When I was freshly out of college with my first high-paying job, I would constantly insist on paying for everything. Meals out with friends, lattes at the coffee shop, even sometimes shopping purchases – I felt this deep need to step in, bust out my plastic, and say, “I’ll take care of it!”. It took many years, but I finally realized that I don’t need to be the financial hero all of the time – or even much of the time at all. Being the credit card-bearing Superman, like in that video below, doesn’t lead to being a hero – it leads to overspending, a sense of guilt, and a false image presented to others that you must keep up .

The Learning Fountain carries an interesting read of the Superman Syndrome here. It ends with a thought provoking line “Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.”

Probably it doesn’t pay to be Superman everytime.

More Power To Your Email With GMail Video Chats

About a decade back when the Internet was still in it’s early period and no one had even thought of terms like Web 2.0 or Social Networking, people used to consider communicating by e-mail as a privilege and having an e-mail address was considered to be a status symbol. At that point and even for many years after that, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail were the only major e-mail providers. Their e-mail services provided only basic word-processor utilities and a meager space of just 1-2 Mb. These companies never developed a strategy around their e-mail service and never looked to improvise it in any way for many years.

All that changed however after the arrival of Google and it’s e-mail service Gmail. The arrival of Gmail and it’s 1Gb of storage space was a revolution as no one else provided that much space back then. Even now Gmail’s ever growing account space (over 7 Gb as of today) is far more than that of Hotmail and Yahoo. And while it may still lag behind Microsoft and Yahoo in terms numbers (Gmail is only the third-largest email service worldwide, with 113 million users, while Microsoft Live mail is on top with 283 million users, closely followed by Yahoo Mail with 274 million) it is still one of the most innovative in spite of the fact that it has been in beta for 4 years and has a number of other problems and flaws associated with it.

Google has a completely different division called Gmail Labs (you can see this as the rightmost option in the settings page of your Gmail) and offers a range of amazing features like Forgotten Attachment Detector, Google Calender Gadget, Google Docs Gadget and much more. Needless to say the most amazing feature of Gmail is the Gmail chat which is boon for all employees across the world as many organizations do not permit the use of Instant messengers during office hours.

A couple of days back Gmail integrated Video chat into it’s Gmail chat service thereby allowing gmail users to have a video conference with each other. Gmail Video and Voice requires a browser plug-in and either a microphone (for straight audio chatting) or a Webcam (for video and audio chatting) to function. The plug-in — a proprietary, non-Flash-based system — runs about 2MB and supports Chrome, Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0. As of now, the video chat service will not be made available within the standalone Google Talk application. Once the plug-in is installed, all you do is click on a contact within your Gmail Chat list. If they also have the required software, a camera icon will pop up next to their name and let you initiate a two-way multimedia session. If they don’t have the hardware, you can still start a one-way session in which they’ll be able to see and hear you, even if you can’t see and hear them. The service is expected to be fully rolled out to all Gmail users by the end of Tuesday.

The technology, by the way, comes from Google’s acquisition of video conferencing software by Marratech last year. Google hired the engineers involved in the software, at the time declining to reveal its ultimate plans (Source). Gmail’s new video and audio calling feature definitely sets aside Google’s email service from competition. Now a one-stop communications hub, Gmail will certainly become ever more popular among both email and avid chat users. While other upcoming (or delayed) features such as SMS Chat in Gmail will again raise the bar against competition (Source).

DP Health And Wellness: Wrench Out Your Body Toxins With These Yoga Moves

A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini Kristin McGee.

In today’s fast paced world staying healthy and fit is certainly a big challenge. Most of the well-developed cities of the world today are heavily industrialized and owning a car is a necessity for most, this eliminates the need for even simple exercises like walking to work or to the market etc. Thus unless one makes a sincere effort to establish a regular exercise regime it is most likely that your body won’t be able to keep up with your lifestyle. This results in a variety of ailments and problems that causes a lot of distress and discomfort later in life.

In the last article of DP Health And Wellness we had discussed how one can de-stress and stay fresh at work by doing some really simple Yoga Stretching exercises (Read here). In today’s article we would discuss how certain yoga postures can help to de-tox the body and provide one with calm and relief especially in the stomach and abdominal areas.

Not only is yoga good for your outside body, it’s good for your insides, too. If you’ve been feeling the buildup of french fries, veggie burgers and stifling air, then doing the three moves shown by Kristin in the video below would do wonders to you by helping your body clean itself up.

Yes They Did – Stories From An Election Where Every Vote Counted

It’s Obama, so screamed the headlines of many a newspaper in the United States Of America after it was announced that Barack Hussein Obama had won the 2008 US Elections and would be the 44^th President of USA. People waited till the dawn of midnight for the African-American President of the US to make his acceptance and victory speech and a crowd of more than 150,000 gathered at Chicago’s Grant Park to welcome their new President.

Obama’s victory speech was the finest that one could ever get to hear and it’s amazing to see that the Democrats always have in their ranks some excellent orators who exude tremendous confidence and leadership ability. This election will certainly go down in the history books as one of many firsts and also for it’s high voter turnout. As per UsaToday the percentage of Americans who voted in this year’s historic presidential campaign appeared to reach the highest level in four decades.

“About 133.3 million people cast ballots — or about 62.5% of the electorate“, said Michael McDonald, a leading voter-turnout expert at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. That percentage, an estimate based on results tallied across the USA and projected absentee ballots, would equal the turnout rate in 1968, when the nation was torn by the Vietnam War. It could go higher, once all the ballots are counted and officially certified, McDonald said. He said turnout could equal or surpass 1964 when Americans elected Democrat Lyndon Johnson in a landslide less than a year after John F. Kennedy’s assassination (Source).

Amongst the millions of voters who voted in these elections 2 voters stood out, namely Susan Scott-Ker and Ann Nixon Cooper who was referred to by Obama himself. Let’s take a closer look at the stories of these two individuals who made sure that there vote counted.

She Traveled 9,300 Miles To Vote

Susan Scott-Ker and her husband are both US citizens who are both currently based in Bangalore, India since the Summer of 2008. They have been following the trends of the American election and had even requested for their absentee ballots to be sent to them well before election day. However, during the third week of October when they still didn’t receive the absentee ballot they realized that even if they received it anytime in the next few days, it would never be able to reach back on time so as to be counted.

They had saved up their money for a nice vacation but now they had to choose. In Susan’s own words “We had a long talk about it. We could go on holiday to a beach somewhere. Or we could come back here and vote. It was a long talk. We decided it was important to stand up and be counted. We bought the tickets that Friday, the 24th. ”

On Tuesday evening, she and her husband caught a flight from Bangalore to New Delhi, about 1,100 miles. The next leg of the journey, 7,500 miles, took them to Chicago. By 5:30 on Wednesday morning, they had cleared immigration and customs at O’Hare International Airport, and flew the last 700 miles to La Guardia. Their journey of 9,300 miles had taken 22 hours.

All of this so that they could cast their vote for a man whom they believed was the answer to the problems of the US. (Read more on this story here)

One Of The Oldest Voters In The Election

If Obama’s victory speech would be remembered for long then it is certain that people would always be eager to know about Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106 year old former socialite, mentioned by Obama in his speech. Cooper — who was born during a time when women and black people couldn’t vote — fully understands the significance of Obama’s victory.

“Things are changing, changing, changing, and I look for more change now that it’s the first black president in victory of faith over fear,” she says. “Don’t you know, that’s quite something to be proud of“. What would she tell Obama if she ever meets him? “I wouldn’t have anything special to say about Obama. I enjoyed listening to him, but that’s all,” she says. “I would be proud to meet him as anyone else” (Source).

If you were too busy working on the day that history was made in America, then checkout a portion of the Obama speech where he refers to Ms. Cooper, below.

Tags: obama, midnight, grant, park, president, barack, old, ann, nixon, susan, history, election, 2008

Reasons To Smile During Recession Time

They say that “excess of anything is harmful” and that “whatever goes up must come down“. So, if you apply these wise sayings to the economic boom that the world witnessed for the past few years it would seem that the current economic recession is just a correction and would prove to be good for the economy in the long run. As per this article on TIME, the recession has taught many a U.S. company one important fact: the boom had larded corporate muscle with fat. Now, in working off the fat, businessmen are finding some of the benefits of adversity. These go far beyond merely trimming payrolls and such obvious economies as light, telephone and office-supply bills.

As per the Economist, “central banks must stop recessions from turning into deep depressions. But it may be wrong to prevent them altogether”. Wrong to prevent a recession? Why? Because recessions are a natural and necessary part of the business cycle. So you might as well consider yourself to be lucky to be alive in this era which has witnessed both the ends of a business cycle, super-boom and super-bust. While it’s very easy to be happy during boom times, let’s see how one can feel the same during recession times as well:

On The Business Front

1. Undervalued stocks and bonds: It’s a bad to time for the market and it’s possible stocks in general will go down more this year. So don’t panic but smile because times like these are perfect opportunities for long-term investors to pick some good values company by company.
2. Lower interest rates: It seems likely that if the Reserve Banks of many countries lower the federal funds target interest rate, opportunities are available for those with good credit ratings to borrow cash as needed.
3. Falling house prices: Well, at the moment, there are more people trying to sell homes then there are buyers. This inequity between supply and demand means that in order to sell houses, prices must fall.
4. A more down to earth US of A: America has been living way beyond its means for years: A recession will cut back revenues at all levels of government and cutbacks will encourage balanced budgeting.
5. A wake up call to short-time investors: A recession will wake up short-term investors playing the market. In bull markets traders ride the rising tide, gaining false confidence that they’re financial geniuses. Downturns bruise egos but encourage rational long-term strategies.
6. Correction in CEO Salaries: It is believed that CEO compensation today is about five hundred times the salaries of workers, compared with about 40 times a generation ago. The recession would help to correct this wide disparity.

On The Personal Front

1. Global warming will slow down or even stop: Since people would have less money than before they would drive and fly less thus bringing down the level of global warming.
2. World population will drop: Raising a child involves a lot of expenditure so couples would think harder before deciding to have a child. Thus may lead to temporary decline in World population.
3. People will finally lose weight and pay attention to their health: Since consumerism would decrease and people would pay more attention to their savings, they would eat healthier foods and take to various forms of exercise that don’t cost much, thus becoming healthier.
4. Roads will be less congested: With high unemployment and no money for vacations, roads will be clearer, with fewer traffic jams.
5. More educated population: During recession time, people tend to go to school. Maybe just community college, distance learning, or freebie classes, but people will learn all sorts of new stuff.
6. More time to invest in yourself: When the economy is down and the growth opportunities are less people invest a lot of time in themselves. As Six Apart CEO Chris Alden says “When you don’t know where else to invest, you invest in yourself.” . During recession time people blog more and try to learn stuff that they’ve been yearning to learn for a long time.

Sources: 8 Benefits to a Recession or Down Market, 17 reasons America needs a recession, Top 10 Benefits of Global Recession

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