Sahaj Marg

Sahaj Marg Meditation : A very simple idea and so effective. I never felt convinced to join any of those 10 day crash courses on meditation. I wanted to start with something simple involving not more than an hour daily. So that I can gradually sink in those thoughts. This group in TAMU is a very good match for me. I wish I had known about it before as I am leaving soon. But the good thing is they have many branches in Bay area too :).

Tuesdays with Morrie

I have been reading a lot of literature lately on life, happiness, love etc. Tuesdays with Morrie is one of those and simply amazing. It is based on the true story of Morrie Schwartz who is dying from ALS , but lives his life to the fullest till the end and also inspires millions others.
Some of the touching lines from this book :
1." What we take, we must replenish."
2. "Sometimes you cannot believe what you saw, you have to believe what you feel."
3. "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let it come in."

I will recommend this book to all of you. A soft copy is available here.

Spiritual Path

I just happened to read some very inspiring links today. The story of Mrs.Sudha Murthy and the charity work by Nipun Mehta.They put me to a lot of thought. I have been trying to meditate from quite some time now with no success [Err: only recently I got to know there is no success or failure in meditation.. Interesting :)..]
So I want to do a course of Vipassana some time soon.
Anybody done this course ? No form of communication with anybody for 10 days sounds kinda scary to me and well also challenging :).

Killer Application of Robotics in the next 10 years?

Robot are successfully being used in many applications like military, household work and many industrial jobs. In the next 10 years, I think that robots can bring revolution in the field of medicine and human lifestyle. The killer applications can be as follows:

Medicine:
I think one interesting application of robotics is nano-robots . These are tiny robots which can be injected into the blood stream and which can swim in the human circulatory system. The idea is that the robot detects the cause of disease, travels to the appropriate area and provides a dose of medication directly to the infected area.
Pros: This can give you new directions of research for treating cancers. There is still no cure for many types of cancer. Nano-robots could be the way to go. A December '07 article gives simulations of virtual 3D nano-robots which would help in the research of treating Alzheimer's disease and avoiding the side effects of chemotherapy.

Cons: The major limitation I see of nano-robots is side-effects and risk. Some mal-functioning of the robot inside the blood stream could lead to lethal effects.

Improve LifeStyle:
Another direction is building robots which would do the regular chores of our life like cleaning, laundry, cooking and related activities. An IEEE spectrum article talks about building robots which could be remotely controlled over internet. This would lead to "outsourcing" the robot monitoring work and effectively allow rich countries to import labor -- without the laborer.

Pros: This will help make servants affordable in rich countries and provide more job options in poor countries.

Cons: I think such a robot could make us more lazy instead of improving our quality of life.

Humor@ Google

I love Google's sense of humor. This years April fool plan by Google is trip to Mars.
Imagine the amount of funny statistics google will collect today with this questionnaire.
I remember last year on the April fool day they offered to send hard copies of the email and photos by post for free :D.

Oh, is this Gmail custom time a joke too ?.. It better be.. I was wondering how can google provide such un-ethical services. Though, they did try to make it realistic by only allowing 10 time shifts per year :D.

Well done, Google !! :)

Staind-Zoe Jane

One of my recent favorites - Staind-Zoe Jane. Good guitar music and very beautiful lyrics. The thing I liked most about this song is that it is dedicated by a father to his daughter. I could not recollect any more songs of this type. [Comments Welcome :)]
Here are the lyrics :

well i want you to notice
to notice when i'm not around
and i know that your eyes see straight through me
and speak to me without a sound

i want to hold you
protect you from all of the things I've already endured
and I wanna show you
show you all the things that this life has in store for you
i'll always love you
the way that a father should love his daughter

when i walked out this morning
i cried as i walked to the door
i cried about how long i'd be away for
i cried about leaving you all alone

sweet zoe jane [x2]

so i wanted to say this
cuz i wouldn't know where to begin
to explain to you what i have been through
to explain where your daddy has been

sweet zoe jane [x2]

Challenges Facing Humanity

An interesting news article mentions this list of important challenges for the human race.

1. Make solar energy affordable
2. Provide energy from fusion
3. Develop carbon sequestration
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle
5. Provide access to clean water
6. Reverse engineer the brain
7. Prevent nuclear terror
8. Secure cyberspace
9. Enhance virtual reality
10. Improve urban infrastructure
11. Advance health informatics
12. Engineer better medicines
13. Advance personalised learning
14. Explore natural frontiers

It would be so cool even if some of these are accomplished.. like reverse engineering the brain. The blue brain project is one of the significant efforts in this direction.
But some of the points are evergreen(never-ending ) research issues like securing cyberspace. Can we ever develop a bullet proof kinda 100% security technique that cannot be breached.
Also I dont get the significance of virtual reality ? I know it is a hot research area with a lot of money pouring into it. But how does it contribute to society ?