blog@Yantrajaal

Bitcoin is a new "currency" that has caught the imagination of the world and I thought it may be worthwhile to step in and see what it looks like. But before that what is Bitcoin ? A Google search on the topic will lead to lots of fairly detailed explanations but let me summarize what I have understood so far. It is more like a commodity, like gold or guar seeds, that are being traded at a price dictated by the demand and supply in the market. Since it is a digital artifact, it is being "mined" or "created", by running a computer program -- that consumes time, power and CPU cycles -- and seeing if the result meets certain requirements. Think of it as if you are asked to locate the next prime number. These requirements are defined "collaboratively" by a federation of computer servers located on the internet. So unlike a Central Bank there is no single body that controls the supply Bitcoins. Anyone can join this federation by installin...

Gangani is an unusually picturesque place on the banks of the Shilabati River, near Garhbeta, West Midnapur, West Bengal. Here erosion by water has created strange earth and rock formations on the banks of the river and the red colour of the soil gives the place an eerie look. The following slide show will help explain what we are talking about. Some people refer to this place as the Grand Canyon of Bengal but of course in terms of size, the place is miniscule compared to the original in the US. This is what the place looks like in Wikimapia

Students today are trapped in a strange dilemma precipitated by disturbing trends. One hand we have the devaluation of the college degree as more and more employers are demanding college degrees for jobs that essentially call for high schools ( see New York Times ) and on the other we have colleges rising exponentially and leading to a second debt crisis. ( See Time ) This may be a new phenomenon affecting the United States but has been a well known problem in the dismal economic scenario in poorer parts of the world. In India we have had the tragedy of graduate and even post graduate students fighting over janitorial opportunities in the arid job market while thousands of students never have the wherewithal to continue their studies beyond high school ( Class XII) or even middle school (Class X) In the gloom that is gathering over the global economy it is the student and the education system that is finding itself trapped in a cul-de-sac that seems to be leading nowhere in general ...

Followers of the Sanatan Dharma, or "Hindus", in general and those who believe in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, as propounded by Sankaracharya, see the world as illusion ("Maya") that hides an underlying unity of universal consciousness or Brahman. This concept has been explored in greater detail in The Road to pSingularity but one of the key ideas is that there exists a central consciousness and all individual sentient entities ( or people) are a part of this central consciousness. The linkage between the central ("Brahman") and the individual ("Atman") is something that gets lost because of the illusion of "Maya" and only the true adept, after significant effort, realises the existence of the link and in doing so, succeeds in uniting his individual Atman with the universal Brahman through the process of Yoga or union. This post is not about trying to establish the authenticity of this point of view. Instead we explore how t...

India celebrates Saraswati on Basant Panchami through the worship and adoration of the Goddess of Learning and the Patron of the Creative arts but few care to remember the river, the so-called mythical river, that serves as a critical bridge of between the India of today and the ancient civilisation that serves as the foundation of the modern nation. This link is very clearly established in Michel Danino's seminal book, The Lost River - On the Trail of the Saraswati , and also explained quite well in his lecture delivered to the students of IIT Madras in 1999. Many more scholarly references to the existence of this river are given in the book but unfortunately the politics of contemporary historical studies continues to deny this important link to India's past. If you think for a minute about a very serious problem in the popular, and politically correct, narrative of Indian history, then the acceptability of the solution offered by the presence of the Saraswati River is ...

A Doll's House is a play by the famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen that talks of women's empowerment.  The Durga Puja, that is celebrated with extreme enthusiasm in Bengal and Calcutta, is also a grand tribute to the Mother Goddess that is rooted in the cult of Shakti worship in India. Traditionally, the Durga idols that are built every year during the festival are immersed in the Ganges, or the nearest waterbody, to symbolise the transience of the material world. However, environmental concerns have prompted many puja organisers to avoid this immersion and cut down on riverine pollution. This year, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation has preserved the ten best idols in a makeshift museum that has been set up in a disused warehouse in the city. You can now see the idols without having to fight through the massive crowds that throng the pandals , or temporary temples that are created to house these idols, during the celebrations. Question is with more than 1000 id...

The singing of the national anthem along with the hoisting of the national flag is principal activity in any Republic Day event. On the occasion of the 64th Republic Day, I have tried to track down some unusual renditions of this very interesting song. The anthem as we know it today, in the words and tunes of Rabindranath Tagore is not the first official version of the anthem even though it was unveiled for the first time at the 1911 convention of the Indian National Congress. Many of us recognise the  Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind or the Provisional Government of Free India, set up by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in Singapore on October 21, 1943 as the first post-colonial Indian government with its own currency, courts of law and civil code. Subhas Bose recognized Tagore's song as the anthem but because he wanted to give it a national flavour he had the sanskritized Bengali transcreated by  Col Abid Hassan as "Sabh Sukh Chain" and set to tune by Capt Ram Mohan. This was p...

Moyna Garh is a very unusual tourist spot that we discovered near Tamluk in East Midnapur. It was a fort with two moats surrounding it and it looks like an island inside an island. The fort has now been swallowed up by time but there are two ancient and very beautiful temples that are still there. These are some of the pictures that we took there the few boats that are available to ferry people had stopped plying by the time we reached around noon. However we managed to motivate on boatman to allow us the use of this rickety boat to reach the inner island This is a very ancient Radha Krishna temple. It comes alive during the Ras Festival in October-November This is the deity that is taken out in a beautiful, illuminated boat on the occasion of the Ras Festival This is the Noukeshwar Shiva temple. The Noukeshwar ( Lord of the Boats ) shivalinga is deep underground and the place gets flooded during the monsoon floods In celebration of Lord ...

Navigating through a government office is a nightmare in India and it is doubly so when you are student and you are looking for your first passport. I went through this wringer twenty eight years ago and I was disappointed to see that even today, my son -- and many other students like him, whom we met at the passport office -- have to go through the same inordinate difficulty to get something that should come to them, literally, as a birthright. In fact, had it not been for a friendly senior police officer who introduced us to senior officers in the passport office, my son and I would still be running from pillar to post. The number of hours waiting in the passport office gave me ample time to understand the process and I am sure that there is a better way to address the matter. That will be the subject of a different post. Here, let me suggest a simple mechanism that will benefit hundreds of students who are applying for passport for the first time. The crux of the matter lies...

New year excursion to this little known Shakti temple near Kharagpur. A rustic temple where you might experience presence.

While hanging the rapist or castrating him may cause smug justification to society at large, it is of little value to the victim and the immense anguish that she has to suffer. Here is an idea that uses the technology that almost every woman has in her hands to help prevent rapes in the first place. It is based on a mobile app that can be used with a phone equipped with GPS, a data connection and camera -- things that are not too difficult to find on modern smart phones. The app -- Save Your Sister (SYS) -- has three major functions, namely (a) to identify the users current position, (b) to alert others  of where she if she is in danger and (c) to take and transmit photographs of the attacker should an assault actually happen -- and it could work like this. In the "dormant" state when the woman is under no apparent threat, the SYSapp simply keeps a record of the current position of the phone ( and the woman carrying it) and makes sure that both GPS and data transfer is...

The current national outrage about the absolutely heinous and brutal rape in a Delhi bus is understandable but in our anger and frustration we are missing the wood for the trees. Well meaning ( and good looking ) participants in TV channels are asking for anything ranging from castration to capital punishment and criticising everyone from the police to the judiciary  ... but hardly anyone is interested in identifying that elusive "deeper" cause ! image from GovernanceInnovation Because if one were to pause and think, it will become clear that this rape is a symptom and not the disease. When you get a high fever, the fever is not the disease -- it is merely a symptom of malaria or dengue or something worse. Trying to cure the fever by throwing ice water would not work -- you need to drugs to kill the bacteria. And for that you need to find the cause. In fact, that cause is quite well known. From the personal rape to the nationwide CWG / 2G / Coalgate scam to localis...

Distance learning is a very seductive idea. If we go back to the era of the Mahabharata, we learn about Ekalavya, the tribal boy, who on being denied access to Dronacharya's classes on warfare on account of his caste, taught himself archery simply by observing the teacher from a distance ! The tragic consequences of his effort are well known and should perhaps serve as a warning to societies in general and teachers in particular. In a more realistic timeframe, approximately a hundred  years ago, correspondence courses appeared and over a period of time these courses became an integral part of various Open Universities. Unfortunately degree granting programs based on correspondence courses never acquired the popularity or employer acceptability of their classroom counterparts for a variety of reasons. With the advent of computing technology, computer based training (CBT) programs appeared and while these never quite made it to the level of university courses, a lot of voc...

Here the pictures of our visit to Khajuraho.

scanned from Anandabazar Patrika

Renu Villa, 51 Jatin Das Road, built by my grandfather Prabhat Nath Mukerjee in 1929 and lived in by the whole family till 2010.

I need holidays and so does everyone else but do organisations need holidays ? Do the railways shut down for the holidays ? Do electricity companies, hospitals or essential services shut down for the holidays ? Do steel plants shut down for holidays ? Do BPO companies shut down for holidays ? Of course not. Very basic planning and scheduling processes -- in use for ages across all these businesses -- ensure that employees get their full quota of leave and vacations and yet the businesses and organisations run 365 days a year. Nobody thinks that this is very strange ! Image Credit So why can the same principle not be extended to other service organisations like courts and government offices ? Agreed that government employees do not wish to view themselves as a part of a service organisation -- a government job is meant to be a passport to luxurious idleness -- but if anybody in any position of authority has even an iota of interest in improving, however slightly, the work eth...

Subhrendu Mukerjee "Never Born, Never Died. Stopped by the World between 1927 and 1992" The dark fortnight before Durga Puja, ending on the new moon of Mahalaya is when people in India formally remember their ancestors and acknowledge their presence with offerings of food, water and black sesame seeds ("teel"). From now till the day of Mahalaya, we are expected to perform the tarpan ritual every morning. In this digital age, I thought of creating this simple scrolling mechanism that will spell out what I would be saying in memory of my ancestors. ভরদ্বাজ গোত্রস্য পিতা শ্রীশুভ্রেন্দু দেবশর্মা ত্রিপ্যতামেতত সতিলোদকং তস্মৈ স্বধা। ভরদ্বাজ গোত্রস্য পিতা শ্রীশুভ্রেন্দু দেবশর্মা ত্রিপ্যতামেতত সতিলোদকং তস্মৈ স্বধা। ভরদ্বাজ গোত্রস্য পিতা শ্রীশুভ্রেন্দু দেবশর্মা ত্রিপ্যতামেতত সতিলোদকং তস্মৈ স্বধা। ................................................... ভরদ্বাজ গোত্রস্য পিতামহ শ্রী প্রভাতনাথ দেবশর্মা ত্রিপ্যতামেতত সতিলোদকং তস্মৈ স্বধা। ভরদ্বাজ গোত্রস্য পি...