When Napoleon was asked if he preferred courageous generals or brilliant generals, he replied neither. He preferred lucky generals. So, how do you get lucky? Here are 7 Ways to Make Your Own Good Luck [http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/7-ways-to-make-your-own-good-luck/]…
So I’ve been unwell for the past 3-4 days, and it feels like I’m under house arrest. There’s the Twenty20 Cricket [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20] World Cup (which btw is becoming more like baseball in terms of ambience) on TV, but besides that I’ve…
It’s no surprise that women like men who make them laugh, and men like women who think they are funny. Wait a minute. Isn’t that the same thing. Well, not exactly. See, most women aren’t [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701?printable=true&…
The dictionary defines mythology [http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=mythology] as “the science which treats of myths.” But what happens when science collides with mythology? In a classic example, a national project in India is amidst controversy due to its defiance of the…
Gian-Carlo Rota shares 10 Lessons of an MIT Education [http://www.math.tamu.edu/~cyan/Rota/mitless.html]. A must read, even if you don’t know what MIT [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology] is! My favorite of the lot: By and large, “knowing how” matters…
The other day my dad was raving about a certain piece of instrumental fusion (based on classical Indian music) that was performed on the Indian Idol [http://indianidol.sify.com/] show as an exclusive feature. The fusion (jugalbandhi) was performed by Adnan Sami [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Sami]…
Automated email-based password reestablishment (EBPR) is an efficient, cost-effective means to deal with forgotten passwords. Simple Authentication for the Web (SAW) [http://isrl.cs.byu.edu/pubs/pp1001.pdf] [pdf] improves upon this basic approach to user authentication to create an alternative to password-based logins.…
Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has continued to for some 10,000 years. However, for the first time since then, farming is not the dominating industry. Peter Magnusson ponders [http://petersmagnusson.com/2007/09/04/for-the-first-time-in-10000-years-farming-is-not-the-dominating-industry/] ……