My Indomitable Thoughts

In today's newspaper, I came across a photo of the current Japanese Prime Minister Mr Junichiro Koizumi, who is presently on a visit to India for strengthening the ties between Japan and India. In the photo Mr Koizumi holds a banner reading " Seven Social Sins " as compiled by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi a.k.a M.K.Gandhi popularly known as Mahathma Gandhi - the father of our nation. I reproduce them below : Seven Social Sins Politics without Principle Wealth without Work Pleasure without Conscience Knowledge without Character Commerce without Morality Science without Humanity Worship without Sacrifice

G oogle has been hogging the news for some time because they have been the first to provide a whooping 1 GB storage space for its free email service called GMail - Now being upgraded to 2 GB space - which they have promised to go on increasing in a time based manner. It created ripples in the email arena so much that it forced Yahoo - one of the oldest and most popular email providers to upgrade its free email service from just a measly 6 MB storage space to 250 MB space. And they have also promised to provide 1 GB storage space in the future for all its email users - though that hasn't happened yet. That set me thinking; Is GMail the only service which provides over 1 GB storage space to its users or are there others? A quick search in google and yahoo search spit out a few surprises. Obviously there are a lot of email providers which are giving over 1 GB space to their users. For starters, there is a very popular email service (popular at least in India) called Rediffm...

H ave you considered what impact your daily decisions have on the health of the world's environment? What difference would it make if you didn't use a car, or if you used less water or owned fewer clothes ? Ecological Footprint model helps estimate how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard. Is our lifestyle sustainable? With the environment slowly deteriorating because of the simple decisions that you and I make, it is necessary to look at our consumption of resources. The more resources we consume, the more pressure it puts on the planet to supply those resources. Ecological Footprinting is a way of determining relative consumption. Ecological Footprints have been used to argue that current lifestyles are not sustainable. If everyone consumed as many resources as the average person in the North America, we would need five earths to meet the demand. In contrast, India (which has 5 times more population than America) has an ecol...

I still remember during my days as a kid, we used to store pottable drinking water in brass pots - infact most of the households used to store drinking water in metal pots; specifically made of brass or copper. Also pots made of these metal alloys were cheap. At that time nobody analysed why we used vessels made of these metal alloys and most took it as common practice. But over the years, the brass and copper utensils were replaced with more economical steel and plastic utensils as these materials became widely prevalent. Now an international study has suggested that the use of brass vessels to store drinking water could help combat diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, jaundice and dysentery. A report published in the Nature said, the vessels could prove specially useful in the developing countries where people view plastic containers as better and cheaper options to store drinking water. The scientists found that the bacteria were less likely to thrive in brass water pots than i...

1. Quit smoking - now Did you know that roughly one out of five men keeps making the killing choice by continuing to smoke? If you smoke, or spend a lot of time around someone who does, sooner or later it can kill you. According to leading health specialists, cigerette smoke contains carbon monoxide as well as radioactive particles. The main way smoking may kill is by heart disease,lung disease or cancer - three of the top five killers in men. But first, smoking will make your life miserable. You'll suffer the mood swings associated with nicotine addiction; you will break into embarrassing coughing and retching fits in front of family, friends and colleagues; food will loose its taste. Meanwhile, the smoke will damage your lungs and pollute your blood with carbon monoxide ultimately starting a reaction in your body that causes cancer cells to grow. On the other hand, you can kick this bad habit. The incentive is that you will live longer, no matter how long you have been smoking...

S earching has become one of the most used function by anybody using the Internet - maybe second to the popularity of Email. This is because apart from Email, what makes Internet really very useful for the average user is, the search engines that allow him to search for and find the information he needs. Just think of what the state of the Internet would have been if we didn't have the capability of searching for what we want. Realizing the uniqueness of search in the internet, there has been an explosion of search engines on the web brought out by different companies. The most popular being Google , Yahoo and MSN (owned by Microsoft ) in decreasing order of popularity (though that may change in the future). Google claims to have indexed and ranked a couple of billion web pages more than its nearest competitors and is in the forefront in the race for supremacy in the web search arena followed closely by Yahoo. Both these companies have been acquiring other value based companies w...

In the part I of this article , I had stated that to fully understand yourself, to tap into your career potential, you have to analyse five areas. I had explained the first area - Attitudes towards and motivation for work. Environment in which you wish to work is the second key to realising your career potential. Deciding where you belong Deciding where you belong holds great interest for some people and little interest for others. A HR professional stated that she would only be happy working at a hotel or resort. On the other hand, a computer professional stated that it did not matter whether he worked for an aerospace corporation or a flower shop as long as he was able to work with what he loved - namely computers. A work environment is both a tangible set of physical assets and an intangible way of behaving. The tangible set includes such items as arena, industry and size. The intangible way of behaving refers to organizational culture. Here I will give a set of exercise to help y...

M any people find themselves locked in careers that have little, or nothing, to do with their attitudes, skills and desires. They happened upon their careers by chance; were led into them by their parents, friends or social pressure; or they thought specific careers were good matches until they tried them. Suppose someone walked up to you and asked, " Are you happy doing what you are doing? " How would you answer ? Could you actually specify what would make you happy? Few people can . Only you can truly tell what interests you, how developed your skills are, and which of your needs must be fullfilled. You alone can find the keys to unlocking your career potential. Analysing yourself will provide you with a career checklist, much like a checklist you have when you buy a house, or a car, when you date, or when you choose a college. It lists your priorities and simultaneously keeps you grounded in reality. Now how do you go about knowing yourself in order to unlock your career p...

I recently discovered a site called Del.icio.us which is a social bookmarking website. Now what is social bookmarking ? WikiPedia - the free encyclopedia defines it in the following words: An online service genre that allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks. Distinct in that others may see the bookmarks that have been saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others. There are numerous social bookmarking sites on the net. But what drew me to this particular site was the simple easy to use design of the site. This site from its inception has quickly moved up the popularity rating. To post into this site, you have to first register and create an account - which is a very quick 1 minute process. After registering on the site, you use a simple bookmarklet (A javascript code embedded in your browser toolbar) to add sites you come across which you find interesting to your list of bookmarks. But the sit...

B logs are increasing in popularity day-by-day. More and more people are creating blogs to express their thoughts and feelings to others. Blogs have become a perfect tool for sharing your favorite recipes with friends--or to highlight and bring to the public's eye the corruptness in your locality. If you blog, there are no guarantees you'll attract a readership of thousands. But at least a few readers will find your blog, and they may be the people you'd least want or expect. These include potential or current employers, coworkers, and professional colleagues; your neighbors; your spouse or partner; your family; and anyone else curious enough to type your name, email address or screen name into Google or Feedster and click a few links. The point is that anyone can eventually find your blog if your real identity is tied to it in some way. And there may be consequences. Family members may be shocked or upset when they read your uncensored thoughts. A potential boss may thi...

M any people think that going Vegetarian means missing out not only on the taste of their favourate butter-chicken and meat kebabs, but also on some essential nutrients. And until recently, deficiency was the theme of most nutrition research into vegetarianism. But now the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. Scientists have researched and found health benefits in meat free diets. Studies have linked a vegetarian diet to increased life expectancy and a lower risk for heart disease and diabetes. And high intake of beans like rajma, soy and Channa - which often replace meat as a source of protein in a vegetarian diet - may strengthen bones and prevent osteoporosis. An increasing number of studies are finding health benefits from a low or no-meat diet. Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , the top journal in the field, published a special supplement on vegetarian diets. Here are some of the Benefits of Vegetarianism as highlighted by the journal: Longer Life ...

P rocrastination is the bane of any society. If you need to do a specific thing, you have a tendency to find numerous excuses to put the thing off. Most of the goals that a person sets for himself remain unrealized because he tackles those goals in an unrealistic manner. Here I will list Top Ten Motivators which might help a person to work consistently towards realizing his/her chosen goal. BREAK YOUR GOALS DOWN Most goals are abandoned because they are too big and vague. Break your goal down into smaller tasks. Choose a concrete and measurable action. Have a solid idea of what successful completion looks like. COMMIT 15 MINUTES A DAY You don't have to commit hours at a time to accomplish a goal. The greatest advances are the sum total of a series of small efforts. Commit to spending just 15 minutes a day. Do something that moves you closer to accomplishing your goal DEVELOP A MANTRA Repetition is the mother of success. Remind yourself of your...