30 Aug 2009
· cycling
Day one is always hard. But staying the night at Raju bharti’s guest house in Gushani more than made up for it. Lovely family to stay with and an absolutely gorgeous place too.
On day two rode through rain and climbed 1,234m over 17 kms, (that’s pretty darn steep, eh!) see elevation profile. The downhill after the pass was endless – the break shoes were totally worn out, and our wrists were hurting by the time we reached down. And to top it all we narrowly missed a landslide, by minutes…
Continue reading →06 Apr 2009
· comment
Can anything possibily change in the Indian education system. A comparison between a survey done in 1996 and another done in 2006 seems to suggest that nothing much has changed in our education system. Read this brilliant report from Frontline here.
Continue reading →30 Mar 2009
· community-radio
So early on in the process of starting a community radio station, it is evident to me the transformation it is capable of bringing into communities and individuals. Here’s a story from “Media For Freedom” that is testimony to the power of CR.
Lucknow: 32 years old Kanshiram undergoes a complete transformation as he goes behind the microphone talking to his listeners on the Community Radio (CR). Formerly a bus conductor who used to ferry passengers to and fro from the remote village of Lalitpur, today he works as a radio jockey (RJ) at the newly set up community radio station here. “I can’t believe I am now a RJ broadcasting and anchoring radio programmes. It gives me an immense sense of satisfaction that I am doing something for the society. What makes it even more meaningful is the fact that I get to see the real issues through my work and and also provide solutions for it.”
Continue reading →18 Mar 2009
· comment
Here is some news for the academic minded parents and schools: “…brain activity and brain development are enhanced by physical exercise. It now appears that exercise can help kids learn at school.” Listen to the NPR story…
According to study presented to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) “students benefit both physically and academically from time devoted during the school day to physical activity”. Read this story…
Need more evidence? See this video by Stuart Brown at TED. His research shows that “play is not just joyful and energizing – it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence”.
Continue reading →06 Mar 2009
· media
This started out as a personal project to document all the wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in India. The idea was to collate and provide unbiased information about parks and what to do, where to stay…
Over the years it has grown. There is now information about national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across most of Asia. It continues to grow and evolve…
Go to World-Wildlife-Adventures.com
Continue reading →05 Mar 2009
· comment
A study in the US has found that “TV ratings don’t accurately reflect the aggressive content found in shows popular among children – even cartoons”.
And what do you say to parents who take their 10-year-olds, 3-year-olds and even 9-month-olds to adult cinema? Not so long ago I left a late-night movie half-way because I found it disturbing/horrific… perhaps a little scary. But mothers with babies stuck to their bosoms stayed on…
Continue reading →03 Mar 2009
· photography
The LIFE magazine photo archive (millions of photos), most never published before, is now available online, for free.
A teat for some of us (I still have old copies of LIFE magazine!). And we have Google to thank for it. I wish the images had better captions, and were better organized… but then I am glad that they are available at all.
So you can see gems like this or or this(must enlarge and see).
Continue reading →26 Feb 2009
· media
Will the new Kindle read bed-time stories to our kids? Can it? Will it? Should it?
TV has proven its worth as a baby-sitter, across cultures! Social networking has effectively come to represent what we do using a browser and not what we do in our living rooms or parks and sports fields… This is a logical next step. Right?
The only loud objection one can hear is coming from the Author’s Guild of America. They don’t have a problem with the product… actually they suspect it may be very good. What they want is that the authors be sufficiently compensated for the audio rights being bundled into the Kindle 2.
Continue reading →12 Feb 2009
· comment
Professor Dan Fleisch set a new standard in after-sales service when he flew 600 miles on Christmas Day to hand-deliver his book to a buyer who had posted a comment on the Amazon web site that his copy of the book had missing pages.
Read the Telegraph article
Continue reading →12 Feb 2009
· media
Has it really? Is content being devalued because of the current economic conditions or is there a larger trend here? Have the accountant got it all wrong?
Read the Time article “Content, Once King, Becomes A Pauper”
Continue reading →