My Resolution this Diwali.

Every Diwali Jnana Prabodhini, a reputed Poona school sends out it's students to sell crackers to mostly other kids, and these kids pan out across the localities and collectively sell a lot of crackers. They get a commision and thereby a large number of enthusiastic kids go out every year selling their stuff.This is in stark contrast to efforts by other schools, notably DPS, who make efforts to reduce the mindless cracker-bursting that goes on. No doubt this contributes to their entrepreneurship skills, but aren't their other ways to achieve the same objectives. Selling lanterns or diyas for example.

Not only is it contributing to air, noise and water pollution but also leads to a large amount of garbage being deposited on the roads. Also most of these crackers are made using child labour,at least in some places and buying such crackers would amount to supporting such heinous activites. Also a country already ravaged by endless monsoons, pot-holed roads, terrorist blasts and railway accidents can ill-afford small/large mishaps causing additional strain on public resources.

As a kid, I've always despised bursting crackers and I feel I've contributed somewhat to the 'say-no-to-crackers' movement. This year I felt that more needs to be done, so I've decided to convince one kid every year, not to burst crackers. I did that today, with a cousin of mine. If any of you could also so the same, then we would be contributing in a small way to saving the country from all the things I talked about.

Here's wishing all the readers of crossStyx a Happy, Safe and Cracker-Free Diwali! Go out and have a blast, figuratively that is!

Cheers,

What is it with Genius ?

The BBC reports that George Best is fighting for his life. The Manchester United legend and Northern Ireland star who has already had a liver transplant, is currently critical in a hospital in West London. The genius that he was on the pitch, never quite could cope with life outside the limelight and has had a long history of bad behaviour and health problems.

'Great One' no more :

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to record the Addick's stunning win over Chelsea yesterday in the Carling Cup. Charlton continued their great start to the season with a win over Chelsea (2-1) via penalties. The Great One was quick to blame the heavens.

Also Liverpool were knocked out by freshly relegated Crystal Palace. So both of last year's finalists are out and should make the road a bit easier for Arsenal and Manchester United.

Quote for the day

" Q. Which famous sports person's middle name is Farookh ?
Ans. Michael Shumacher " - Parnab Mukherjee.

Find out more about Rolf Schumacher here.

Let's talk about life !

Not often in Marathi do you have new faces breaking the barrier to give you a fresh sound and a fresh style. Marathi music/theatre has always been the domain of established poets and music director-singer combos. This formula gave us years of amazing music, but with PuLa's passing away and the ending of the Yashawant Dev, Madgulkar, Kusumagraj era the most that the Marathi creative scene can boast of are a few decent actors most notably Atul Kulkarni and Shreyas Talpade, who might be better known to Hindi audiences.

However a new duo of Salil Kulkarni and Sandip Khare has emerged on the music scene. Both are quite young, come from a predominantly science background (with Sandip being an engineer from COEP) and most importantly they bring a fresh new youthful face to Marathi arts. Sandip is the lyricist/music director while Salil mostly sings the songs. Their first show Aayushyawar Boolu Kaahi . . .(Lets talk about life) is a smash hit and is running to packed houses in an art-famished city. Their second programme/album 'Namanjoor' (Not acceptable) is also an amazing collection of songs and should do extremely well.

They sing about the various facets of life, about the common man accepting life's restrictions, about our two minds, about the rebellious youth breaking society's restrictions and they strike a chord in the heart. The words are definitely the plus point and hopefully with some experience the duo should be able to realize the nuances of the trade and become a bit more professional with the technical aspects of recording/singing/composing.

So here's wishing Salil/Sandip a long career giving us fresh soulful songs. Till then to both of them, bon chance!

MICA Update :

Won't go into excruciating detail. My able friend has already done the needful here. Perhaps a few reminences, however twisted, but later. And yes, I second Kunal's observations about the fairer sex at MICA. Oops, sorry, Mathew Sir, for the faux pas.

I, The Unofficial COEP Chronicler.

(my sincerest apologies to those not interested in updates from COEP, Pune)

News first. The hostel's got broaband which seems to be working in places, and is yet to become operational in others . Those who have computers and are lucky enough to have it operational in their block can plug in. Heard some reports about downloading fees/annual fees. Need to keep an eye on that one. Most reports regarding the speed seem positive.

The badminton court has got a grant to be completely redone. Work is expected to start soon, and hopefully one of the bright spots in college would become a bit better. However they need to change the draconian law wrt the timings. Needs to be open between 10 and 5 too. As for the TT courts don't know what's the take on that one, but hopefully that should be done as well.

College cultural activites were officially inaugurated with a usual dance, music programme. I've always envied people who could draw/paint well. Lots of such people at college. They had amazing sketches being drawn in the bg while the acts went on. Was totally absorbed watching that, through the ruckus in the fore. What was apalling in one sense, and exciting in another was the fact that senior teachers adressing the gathering were hooted at, and there was a general sense of an audience uprising. Mob-psychology anyone ?

Promises, Promises . . .
The college's alumni association is trying to go the extra mile to assure the students about it's grandoise plans for the college. These include :

1. Totally online processing of fee payment, admission etc.
2. Complete lease-line connectivity with an increased speed and a wider network.
3. Alumni data collection project.
4. A seemingly 'activite extraordinaire' - giving laptops to FEs which they pay off after a few years of graduation and
wi-fi hotspots across college.
5. International tie-ups with renowned foreign schools etc.

My advice, complete the subway first.

Remember, David won.

For all those who don't know already, this is what happened :

Gaurav and Rashmi wrote on their respective blogs about how IIPM, the management school perpetrate their lies (about facilities, foreign trips, placements, faculty etc.) through various fora. This involved a point-to-point critique of IIPM's fraudulent practices and their flouting of advertising norms, by luring gullible students into their institutes. This really pissed off the guys at IIPM (note the growing power of blogging) and caused them to serve a legal notice on Gaurav and JAMMag(the magazine for which Rashmi writes). This was fine - as this was a personal battle amongst Gaurav/Rashmi and IIPM. All this while some really crazy IIPM students went about plastering the blogworld, with really absurd, extremely shocking and downright gross comments on rashmi's commentbox and on newly created blogs.

Sample this :

' At 2:08 PM, IIPMstudent9 said...
... So here's my advice - take your ridiculous allegations and shove it. I'm glad my institute has issued notices against Gaurav Sabnis (a fake name, probably you masquerading as a man again!)...Here's wishing your tiny, yellow magazine a quick death. And us students will do all we can to hasten it...'

This is only a sample of the extent these seemingly out-of-mind students are going to malign Gaurav and Rashmi. I've been to a lot of websites, but not one of them contains a point-to-point rebuttal of the allegations leveled at IIPM. This only goes to prove the veracity of the allegations and IIPM's attempts to divert from the truth will not be tolerated by the blogging community.

What was shocking, was IIPM's attempts to involve Gaurav's employers IBM, by threatening to burn IBM laptops. This finally lead to Gaurav standing by his principles and resigning from the company. This decision cannot be praised enough.

All that remains is for the blogging community to prove in either the courts or to the advertising regulators about IIPM's long practice of throwing dust into people's eyes. I realize finding ways to overcome the money power of IIPM won't be that easy,but a concerted and united effort from all of the blogging community would go a long way in helping Gaurav and Rashmi prove their point.

Till then, please visit these sites and pick up more links from here for a full-rounded view of the happenings :
Gaurav clarifies
Amit
Sambar Mafia
Technorati:IIPM

Didn't We Know That ?

Voilà, the Pigeonhole Principle.


Statement : If there are n pigeons and (n-1) holes then there must be atleast one hole which has more than one pigeon.

Why should you know it? par exemple you can find out with how many people you are likely to share your birthday with and that you have the same amount of hair as atleast one person in your town. Go here, here and here for more.