It has some real meanings

One of my friend sent me this Email , it could be one of such numerous office jokes but somehow I was so amazed and laughed and looked around... you could well understand ... here is it...

A man wanted to buy his son a parrot as a birthday present..



The next day he went to the pet shop and saw three identical parrots in a cage.
He asked the clerk, "how much for the parrot on the right?
The owner said it was Rs. 2500.
"Rs. 2500.", the man said. "Well what does he do?
"He knows how to use all of the functions of Microsoft Office 2000, responds the clerk.
"He can do all of your spreadsheets and type all of your letters."

The man then asked what the second parrot cost.
The clerk replied, Rs. 5000, but he not only knows Office 2000, but is an expert computer programmer.

Finally, the man inquired about the cost of the last parrot.
The clerk replied, "Rs. 10,000."
Curious as to how a bird can cost Rs. 10,000, the man asked what this bird's specialty was.

The clerk replies, "Well to be honest I haven't seen him do anything. But the other two call him *"BOSS"!!

SHILLONG - SCOTLAND OF THE EAST

I was in Shillong last week ...

Shillong has been the Capital of Assam since 1874,with a temporary break from 1905 to 1912,when the Government Secretariats were functioning both from Dacca, now the Capital of Bangladesh, and Shillong.


It is named after the “Shillong Peak” overlooking the city. There are many legends about the name Shillong.One of the many legends run that the name Shillong was derived from U Shylong, a supernatural half-deity born of a virgin human mother. In another legend, it is told that the name Shillong originated from the name of Shillong Deity who lived in a cave known as Krem Marai near Shillong Peak.

The city was founded by Col. Henry Hopkinson, Commissioner of Assam in 1864.In that very year the headquaters of the District Officer of the khasi Hills were transferred from Cherrapunjee to Shillong.Shillong’s picturesque setting and salubrious climate were found very suitable for sanatoria and holiday home of the British civilians, who were tormented by heat in the plains. It was also considered an ideal situation for the establishment of a military cantonment to keep vigil on the entire North East.

Termed as “Scotland of the East”, Shillong is situated at a height of 5,000 feet on the plateau of gentle hills. Cool colonnades of tall pine trees clad with whispering green leaves glistening in the sun surround the city. On its bosom lie several lovely waterfalls – Spread Eagle falls, Elephant Falls, Beadon Falls etc. sprightly dancing down from their hilly heights.

Shillong with its veritable beauty spots like Ward’s Lake, the Lady Hydari Park with its mini zoo, and its 18-hole Golf Course, one of the oldest and best in the country, is a great tourist center, attracting people from far and near.

In the mini-zoo, various species of birds, such as, hornbills, pheasants, pelicans, and storks can be seen besides the animals like antelope, slow loris, clouded leopard, leopard cat, golden cat and golden langur.

It is a cosmopolitan city. Here one can find a mini-India with its population of 23,06,069 (2001 census) coming from different parts of the country and comprising every raciality, religion, custom and life style. From Shillong has spread the message of Christianity in the entire NorthEast, thus bringing the western culture and scientific thoughts to remote interiors. In educational institutions of Shillong, students from all over the region flock for admission. North east Hill University are situated here. The Shillong State Library and Museum offer plentiful scope for study and research of the ethnic culture in the region. The State Library has a good collection of books. The State Museum has varied and interesting exhibits relating to art, craft, culture and heritages of the different tribes of the Northeast. Recently a Forest Museum has been set up, where one finds exhibits of the interesting and unique flora and fauna of Meghalaya and the region. No wonder, Shillong is called the cultural Capital of the NorthEast.

Shillong is also the Head Quarters of the Eastern Air Command and 101 Communication zone of the Army.

There are two important monuments in Shillong – one a full three ‘faced martyrs’ column – a memorial to U Tirot Sing, U Kiang Nongbah and Pa Togan Sangma who fought valiantly against the superior might of the British, and the other, a statue of Indira Gandhi in bronze, under whose Prime-Ministership, Meghalaya became finally a full-fledged State. These monuments are a great attraction. War Memorials in Motphran – the oldest monument at bara bazaar and two other Monuments at All Saints Cathedral and at Shillong Club Compound are also great crowd pullers.

Besides, the milk white Secretariat Building with an inspiring statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, the erstwhile Assam Legislative Council which is now the seat of the Shillong Bench of Gauhati High Court, the massive State Central Library Complex, the Shillong Cathedral, the sprawling Robert Hospital Complex now known as the KJP Synod Hospital, the huge Church Buildings at Mawkhar, Jaiaw, Laitumkhrah present and awe-inspiring array of magnificent structure to a visitor to Shillong.

Most notable is Iewduh, the biggest traditional bazaar in the entire North East. Here the retail market is dominated by smiling and courteous Khasi women in this bazaar, practically everything is available – from fruits, vegetable and fish to typical medicinal herbs and plants found in Meghalaya.

Shillong’s architecture is unique in the country. It houses look like English Homes with well laid chimneys of beautiful designs emitting smokes from fire-places through the long wintry months. Its Churches and the Secretariat Buildings are also in the style of English architecture.

Meghalayas’ State language is English. Prevalance of English speech, dress and manners in Shillong gives reminiscence of the British who attempted to make it a little England in the East. It is still considered one of the most beautiful of all hill stations in India, which, with its English setting, is very unlike other cities of India. Shillong can be compared with Shillong only.

INFERTILITY IS NOW DUE TO EVOLUTION ?

This is another interesting recent article which has immense scientific implications .. If it's correct , some day we wouldn't have problems of over population rather the human civilization itself need to struggle to keep it moving...

About 10 percent of couples hoping for a baby have fertility problems.
Is pollution to blame? Stress? Eating habits?
Biologist Oren Hasson of Tel Aviv University thinks it’s evolution, baby.
In a new study published in Biological Reviews, Hasson writes that the reproductive organs of men and women are in an evolutionary arms race that’s far from over.
"The rate of human infertility is higher than we should expect it to be," Hasson said in a statement. "By now, evolution should have improved our reproductive success rate. Something else is going on."
Combining empirical evidence with a mathematical model developed with colleague Lewi Stone, the researchers suggest that the bodies of men and women have become reproductive antagonists, rather than partners.
They insist that women’s bodies, over thousands of years of evolution, have forced sperm to become more competitive by rewarding the strongest, fastest sperm cells with penetration of the egg — and thus fertilization.
In evolutionary response, men are overproducing "aggressive" sperm to increase chances of successful fertilization, the scientists say.
The problem? That aggression may be terminating the pregnancy before it starts.
It’s all about timing: the first sperm to enter and bind with the egg triggers a series of biochemical responses to block other sperm from entering — necessary because a second penetrating sperm would kill the egg.
But in the few minutes it takes for that blockade to complete, today’s aggressive sperm may manage to penetrate the egg — terminating fertilization just after it’s begun.
"It’s a delicate balance, and over time women’s and men’s bodies fine tune to each other. Sometimes, during the fine-tuning process, high rates of infertility can be seen. That’s probably the reason for the very high rates of unexplained infertility in the last decades."
To avoid the fatal consequences of this "polyspermy," the female reproductive path has evolved to become less hospitable to male sperm, by "ejecting, diluting, diverting and killing" spermatozoa before they ever reach the egg.
Thus, a male-female fertility arms race, fueled by evolution and merely aggravated by factors such as stress and pollution.

ARE WE ALREADY IN A SOLAR ERA?

In a recent article, the european consortium planning to install solar powered hyperbolic mirrors across middle east ( especially in Saudi Arabia , Morocco and other sub saharan countries which are close to Europe ) to generate a massive Solar energy , over a million mega watt electricity which could be exported through undersea cables। Infact the distance between Morocco and Spain may be only couple of hundred Kms which makes it a feasible alternative energy and . Fortunately these countries having 365 days uninterrupted sunlight which could makes them energy exporting nations even when fossil fuel era would be over.

The other interesting story about Japan.. who are in disadvantage in this area have something innovative plan..
Mitsubishi and IHI Corp. said they will join a $21 billion Japanese project to build a massive solar-powered generator in space within 30 years and beam electricity to earth.
Researchers representing 16 companies will spend four years developing technology to send electricity without cables in the form of microwaves, according to an official statement by the Japan’s trade ministry.
In space, the station will be able to generate power regardless of weather conditions.
The effort is to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and take advantage of the most reliable energy source in the solar system: the Sun.
Japan is developing technology for a 1-gigawatt solar station fitted with roughly 2.5 square miles of solar panels, enough to supply about 294,000 Tokyo homes.
The team hopes to have it running in three decades, according to the trade ministry.
The challenge for the team is to figure out how to transport panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers above the earth’s surface in a cost-efficient way. Otherwise, the station won’t be commercially viable.
Right now, the project is expected to cost 2 trillion yen, or about $21.5 billion USD. It costs approximately $107,000 USD just to launch a single rocket, according to a deputy director at the ministry quoted in the article.
In the U.S., NASA and the energy department have spent $80 million over three decades in an effort to study solar generation in space, according to a 2007 report by the U.S. National Security Space Office.
Japan’s plan is to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming the electricity from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the earth’s atmosphere, according to the trade ministry document.
　

BENGAL , ME ( TYPICAL BONG? ) AND DURGA..

As I am originally from Midnapore district which is adjacent to Orissa, my wife many time call me Oriya and that actually motivated me to understand the race- Bong and it’s origin.

AS PER BRITANICA: The Bengali are of diverse origin, having emerged from the confluence of various communities that entered the region over the course of many centuries। The earliest inhabitants of the region are believed to have been the Vedda from Sri Lanka. Later the Vedda were joined by Mediterranean peoples who spoke Indo-European languages. In the 8th century peoples of Arab, Turkish, and Persian descent began to enter the area। Eventually all these groups merged to become the people now known as Bengali।

Most of the Bengali in Bangladesh are practitioners of Sunni Islam, while the majority of the Bengali in West Bengal follow Hinduism. This religious difference traces largely to the 13th century, when Muslim forces invaded the region from the northwest. At the time, the population of Bengal comprised a mixture of Hindus and Buddhists। Following the arrival of the Muslims, most of the residents of eastern Bengal converted to Islam, while Hinduism became the predominant religion in the western region।

In the early 21st century the majority of the Bengali population remained rural, in both Bangladesh and West Bengal। Of the rural Bengali, a large portion are engaged in agriculture, their principal crops being rice and jute, followed by assorted pulses (legumes) and oilseeds। In the rural context, men are typically responsible for most of the work outside the home, while women manage domestic matters। Labour is less clearly divided in urban areas, however; there many middle- and upper-class women pursue careers in professions such as medicine and education.

Whether Hindu or Muslim, the Bengali people engage in a broad spectrum of artistic activity. Both Hindus and Muslims share the Hindustani classical music and dance tradition, while they also display a strong penchant for nonclassical popular forms. The Bengali of Bangladesh, for instance, created many unique popular music genres, such as baul and marfati, that have remained without true equivalents outside the country. Meanwhile, the Bengali of West Bengal produced internationally acclaimed films, most of which have a prominent musical component.
The historical prevalence of Islamic arts, especially in Bangladesh, is evident in the many mosques, mausoleums, forts, and gateways that have survived from the Mughal period (16th–18th century). Like Muslim architecture elsewhere in South Asia, these structures are characterized by the pointed arch, the dome, and the minaret. The best-preserved example is the 77-dome mosque at Bagerhat in southern Bangladesh. The ruins of Lalbagh Fort, an incomplete 17th-century Mughal palace at Dhaka, also provide some idea of the older Islamic architectural traditions in Bengal

Bengali literature dates to before the 12th century. The Chaitanya movement, an intensely emotional form of Hinduism inspired by the medieval saint Chaitanya (1485–1533), shaped the subsequent development of Bengali poetry until the early 19th century, when contact with the West sparked a vigorous creative synthesis. The modern period has produced, among others, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore

The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal (now divided between Bangladesh and India) in South Asia. They speak Bengali (বাংলা Bangla), which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী (pronounced Bangali). They are mostly Indo-Aryan people from the eastern Indian subcontinent. However, many are also descended from Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian peoples, and closely related to the Assamese, Biharis and other East Indians, as well as to Munda and Tibeto-Burman peoples. As such, Bengalis are a homogeneous but considerably diverse ethnic group with heterogeneous origins.
They are mostly concentrated in the states of West Bengal and Tripura in India and in Bangladesh. There are also a number of Bengali communities scattered in North-East India, New Delhi, and the Indian states of Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharastra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. In addition, there are significant Bengali communities beyond South Asia, the most well established Bengali communities are in the United Kingdom and United States. Large numbers of Bengalis (mainly from Sylhet) have settled in Britain, mainly living in the East boroughs of London, numbering from around 300,000, in the USA there are about 150,000 living across the country, mainly in New York. There are also millions living across the Gulf States, majority of whom are living as foreign workers. There also many Bengalis in Malaysia, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other countries.
ANCIENT HISTORY :
Remnants of civilisation in the greater Bengal region date back 4,000 years,[ when the region was settled by Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic peoples. The exact origin of the word Bangla or Bengal is unknown, though it is believed to be derived from the Dravidian-speaking tribe Bang that settled in the area around the year 1000 BCE.
After the arrival of Indo-Aryans, the kingdoms of Anga, Vanga and Magadha were formed in and around Bengal and were first described in the Atharvaveda around 1000 BCE. From the 6th century BCE, Magadha expanded to include most of the Bihar and Bengal regions. It was one of the four main kingdoms of India at the time of Buddha and was one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas. Under the Maurya Empire founded by Chandragupta Maurya, Magadha extended over nearly all of South Asia, including parts of Persia and Afghanistan, reaching its greatest extent under the Buddhist emperor Ashoka the Great in the 3rd century BCE. One of the earliest foreign references to Bengal is the mention of a land ruled by the king Xandrammes named Gangaridai by the Greeks around 100 BCE. The word is speculated to have come from Gangahrd (Land with the Ganges in its heart) in reference to an area in Bengal. Later from the 3rd to the 6th centuries CE, the kingdom of Magadha served as the seat of the Gupta Empire.
MIDDLE AGES:
One of the first recorded independent king of Bengal was Shashanka, reigning around the early 7th century. After a period of anarchy, Gopala came to power in 750 by democratic election. He founded the Bengali Buddhist Pala Empire which ruled the region for four hundred years, and expanded across much of Southern Asia, from Assam in the northeast, to Kabul in the west, to Andhra Pradesh in the south. Atisha was a renouned Bengali Buddhist teacher who was instrumental in revival of Buddhism in Tibet and also held the position of Abbot at the Vikramshila university. Tilopa was also from Bengal region.
The Pala dynasty was later followed by a shorter reign of the Hindu Sena Empire. Islam was introduced to Bengal in the twelfth century by Sufi missionaries. Subsequent Muslim conquests helped spread Islam throughout the region. Bakhtiar Khilji, an Afghan general of the Slave dynasty of Delhi Sultanate, defeated Lakshman Sen of the Sena dynasty and conquered large parts of Bengal. Consequently, the region was ruled by dynasties of sultans and feudal lords under the Delhi Sultanate for the next few hundred years. Islam was introduced to the Sylhet region by the Muslim saint Shah Jalal in the early 14th century. In the early 17th century, Mughal general Islam Khan conquered Bengal. However, administration by governors appointed by the court of the Mughal Empire gave way to semi-independence of the area under the Nawabs of Murshidabad, who nominally respected the sovereignty of the Mughals in Delhi. After the weakening of the Mughal Empire with the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, Bengal was ruled independently by the Nawabs until 1757, when the region was annexed by the East India Company after the Battle of Plassey।

Bengal Renaissance
The Bengal Renaissance refers to a social reform movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the region of Bengal in undivided India during the period of British rule. The Bengal renaissance can be said to have started with Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1775-1833) and ended with Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), although there have been many stalwarts thereafter embodying particular aspects of the unique intellectual and creative output. Nineteenth century Bengal was a unique blend of religious and social reformers, scholars, literary giants, journalists, patriotic orators and scientists, all merging to form the image of a renaissance, and marked the transition from the 'medieval' to the 'modern'
INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT
Bengal played a major role in the Indian independence movement, in which revolutionary groups such as Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar were dominant. Bengalis also played a notable role in the Indian independence movement. Many of the early proponents of the freedom struggle, and subsequent leaders in movement were Bengalis such as Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Banerjea, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chaki, Bagha Jatin, Khudiram Bose, Surya Sen, Binoy-Badal-Dinesh, Sarojini Naidu, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose and many more. Some of these leaders, such as Netaji, did not subscribe to the view that non-violent civil disobedience was the best way to achieve Indian Independence, and were instrumental in armed resistance against the British force. Netaji was the co-founder and leader of the Indian National Army (distinct from the army of British India) that challenged British forces in several parts of India. He was also the head of state of a parallel regime, the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, that was recognized and supported by the Axis powers. Bengal was also the fostering ground for several prominent revolutionary organisations, the most notable of which was Anushilan Samiti. A large number of Bengalis were martyred in the freedom struggle and many were exiled in Cellular Jail, the much dreaded prison located in Andaman.
RELIGION:
Two major religions practiced in Bengal are Islam and Hinduism. In Bangladesh 88.3% of the population follow Islam (US State Department est. 2007) while 9.2% follow Hinduism. In West Bengal, Hindus are the majority with 70% of the population while Muslims comprise 23%. Other religious groups include Buddhists and Christians.
CULTURE:
Noted Bengali saints, authors, scientists, researchers, thinkers, music composers, painters and film-makers have played a significant role in the development of bengali culture . The Bengal Renaissance of the 19th and early 20th centuries was brought about after the British introduced Western education and ideas. Among the various Indian cultures, the Bengalis were relatively quick to adapt to the British rule and actually use its principles (such as the judiciary and the legislature) in the subsequent political struggle for independence. The Bengal Renaissance contained the seeds of a nascent political Indian nationalism and was the precursor in many ways to modern Indian artistic and cultural expression.
The Bengali poet and novelist, Rabindranath Tagore, became the first Nobel laureate from Asia when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. Other Bengali Nobel laureates include Amartya Sen (1999 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) and Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize). Other famous figures in Bengali literature include Ram Mohan Roy, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Bangla science fiction writers such as Jagadananda Roy and Roquia Sakhawat Hussain (Begum Rokeya). Famous Bengali scientists include Jagadish Chandra Bose and Satyendra Nath Bose; famous Bengali engineers include Fazlur Khan and Amar Bose ; famous Bengali filmmakers include Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Aparna Sen and Tareque Masud; and famous Bengali entrepeneurs include Sake Dean Mahomed, Amar Bose and Jawed Karim
FESTIVALS:
Important Hindu Bengali holidays include the annual festivals devoted to various Hindu deities, most notably Shiva, Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, and Sarasvati. Holi, a spring festival, is celebrated by both Muslims and Hindus.

THE BIGGEST FESTIVAL : DURGAPUJA
We all celebrate Durga puja but hardly anyone knows the history or origin behind the celebration. As in case of most of the Indian festivals we have to refer to Hindu mythology to trace out the origin. The festival of Durga puja comes with its own retinue of mythological stories. There are various legends associated with its origin but the most important and prevalent among them is the legend of Lord Rama (the incarnation of Lord Vishnu). When lord Rama was fighting a battle with Ravana (the demon king) to rescue his wife Sita whom Ravana abducted and held as hostage in Lanka, his kingdom. That time a fierce battle ensued. In that battle Ravana could not be defeated. So Lord Ram decided to seek the blessings of Shakti (Goddess Durga) in order to defeat the demon. For that puja, which lord Ram was performing 108 blue lotus were needed for the worship of Goddess Durga but Rama could manage only 107. But without that one lotus his puja would be incomplete so he was on the verge of laying one of his eyes that was lotus-shaped and blue in color at the Goddess's feet when Goddess Durga appeared and satisfied with his devotion, granted her blessing and eventually he won the battle against Ravana. The time he worshipped was Spring season so from that time onwards Durga puja is celebrated.Another legend, which is associated with the celebration of Durga puja is the story of the defeat of the demon king, Mahishasura at the hands of Goddess Durga, the incarnation of Shakti (the power). This demon was almost invincible because of a boon granted by Lord Shiva whereby no male could defeat him. So to find a solution to this all the God amalgamated their power and gave birth to Shakti (the power) in the form of Goddess Durga. She defeated the demon king and killed him. That's why she is called Mahishasuramardini (the slayer of Mahishasura). The holy battle symbolizes the victory of Good over Evil. However, according to another legend about Durga, she was a manifestation of Parvati, Shiva's wife.
Durga puja is regarded as the most important festival of West Bengal. The city of Kolkata dresses up in a new look for the five days of the festival. The celebration lasts for five days starting from Maha Shashti (the sixth day) and ends with Bijoya dashami (the tenth day). The first day of the celebration starts with Bodhon on Maha-Shashti, which is like welcoming Goddess Durga and ends with immersing the idols in the nearby rivers, lakes and seas on the evening of Dashami. However, it is considered to immerse the idols in the sacred waters of the River Ganges. According to mythology Goddess Durga descends to the Earth on Shashthi and returns to her abode on Dashmi. The clear blue sky, the cool pleasant air, the beautiful fragrance of Shiuli (a type of flower of this season), the lush green fields and chanting of mantras and shlokas of Goddess Shakti, all sum up together to create the perfect ambience for the celebration of Durga Puja, the greatest festival of the Bengalis. The preparations for the festival are done way in advance as beautiful pandals are build in different areas of the city these are mainly community pujas, which are mainly financed by the local people or sponsorship from big corporate houses. Even the idol making also starts way in advance. Clay idols of Bengal are famous worldwide for the traditional way in which they are made. The people of Bengal start preparing for the festival from Mahalaya (the starting of the festive season) they decorate homes, buy gifts for fiends and relatives and new clothes for themselves and relatives for the festival. The shopping plaza and markets are totally packed up from one month before the festival.Durga puja festival is regarded as one of the biggest social event of India. Today it is celebrated not only as a religious festival but it has a cultural and social significance as everybody takes part in its celebration. People from all religious background participate in it. It is celebrated as a secular festival. Cultural programmes are organized in different parts of the city. During this festive time Kolkata attracts tourists not only from India but also from different regions of the world. There is feast and music everywhere in the city. Durga puja is that time of the year when everybody enjoys irrespective of their social status. During this time all the colleges, schools, offices and even government organizations are closed for the ceremony. Everybody is in a festive mood. This year Duga puja will be celebrated on the following dates:
DURGA PUJA CUSTOMS
Every festival in India is associated with certain rituals and customs। And these rituals are according to that particular region where the festival is originated. Though there are certain festival, which are celebrated across the country in that case every region celebrates it according to their culture and traditions. Dugra puja is one such festival, which is mostly celebrated in West Bengal but other parts of the country celebrates it as Dussehra. Durga Puja is not only celebrated in West Bengal but also among the Bengalis all around the world. It is celebrated for a period of five days but the most important are the four days of the festival. Starting from Mahasaptami, Mahaashtami, Mahanavami and Bijoyadashami. Which is the seventh, eighth, ninth and the tenth day of the festival. From the morning of Saptmi (the seventh day) the puja starts. A banana tree is dressed in a yellow silk cloth with a red border, which is carried by the priest in a grand procession to the to the Ganges accompanied by the drummers to welcome the Goddess after the bath she is taken to the Puja pandal and kept beside the idol of Lord Ganesha (the God of Good fortune). The next day or Ashtami is considered to be the most important day, as it is believed that Goddess Durga killed demon Mahishasura on this day. A special puja is performed on that time called the 'Sandhi Puja'. Earlier animals were also sacrificed on this day. But nowadays it is not done.The ninth day of the festival, Mahanavami is characterized by the all-day 'pujas' and 'shaloka-recitals' and a 'Maha Arti' that is considered a formal end of religious customs. Since it is the last day before immersion of the idols so people are sad as it marks the end of the glorious festival. Cultural programmes such as music and dance fill the rest of the day. The tenth day, Dashami marks the end of the festival with grand processions taken out on streets full of colors and dance, where the Durga idols are taken for 'visarjan' (immersion in a pond, river or sea). According to rituals idols are immersed in Ganges. Since Ganges is regarded as a holy river. Dussehra is also associated with the harvest festival of the agrarian societies and is believed to be the beginning of New Year in some communities.

DURGA PUJA RECIPES

Any festival in India is incomplete without food। Whenever we talk of festival we think of the special dishes prepared for the occasion। Festival cooking is a part of all celebration। Durga Puja is also one of the festivals where special emphases on sweets are given। Other than sweets different kinds of other dishes are also prepared। This festival is mainly celebrated in the West Bengal, which is famous for sweets. Durga Puja is the festival of fun and feasting. It is the time when people have the liberty to eat what ever they like. Different kinds of sweets are available in the market. You can choose from a wide variety of range. Other than sweets you can make various other items at home, which are easy to cook and very delicious to eat. Begalis are known for their delicious delicacies. Here are list of some traditional delicacies, which will make your celebration all the more exciting and happening.

इन थे wonderland ऑफ़ Business success

The quest of every high-quality corporate executive is to find the keys to superior performance. Achieving market leadership is hard enough, but staying at the top—given intense competition, rapidly changing technology, and shifting global forces—is even more difficult. At the same time, executives are under enormous pressure to deliver profitable growth and high returns for their shareholders. No wonder they constantly search for ways to achieve competitive advantage.
But many executives, despite their good intentions, look in the wrong places for the insights that will deliver an edge. Too often they reach for books and articles that promise a reliable path to high performance. Over the past decade, some of the most popular business books have claimed to reveal the blueprint for lasting success, the way to go from good to great, or how to craft a fail-safe strategy or to make the competition irrelevant.
At first glance, many of the pronouncements in such works look entirely credible. They are based on extensive data and appear to be the result of rigorous analysis. Millions of managers read them, eager to apply these keys to success to their own companies. Unfortunately, many of the studies are deeply flawed and based on questionable data that can lead to erroneous conclusions. Worse, they give rise to the especially grievous notion that business success follows predictably from implementing a few key steps. In promoting this idea, authors obscure a more basic truth—namely, that in the business world success is the result of decisions made under conditions of uncertainty and shaped in part by factors outside our control. In the real world, given the flux of competitive dynamics, even seemingly good choices do not always lead to favorable outcomes.
Rather than succumb to the hyperbole and false promises found in so much management writing, business strategists would do far better to improve their powers of critical thinking. Wise executives should be able to think clearly about the quality of research claims and to detect some of the egregious errors that pervade the business world. Indeed, the capacity for critical thinking is an important asset for any business strategist—one that allows the executive to cut through the clutter and to discard the delusions, embracing instead a more realistic understanding of business success and failure.
As a first step, it’s important to identify some of the misperceptions and delusions commonly found in the business world. Then, using these insights, we might replace flawed thinking with a more acute method of approaching strategic decisions.
Beware the halo effect
Many studies of company performance are undermined by a problem known as the halo effect. First identified by US psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920, it describes the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression.
How does the halo effect manifest itself in the business world? Imagine a company that is doing well, with rising sales, high profits, and a sharply increasing stock price. The tendency is to infer that the company has a sound strategy, a visionary leader, motivated employees, an excellent customer orientation, a vibrant culture, and so on. But when that same company suffers a decline—if sales fall and profits shrink—many people are quick to conclude that the company’s strategy went wrong, its people became complacent, it neglected its customers, its culture became stodgy, and more. In fact, these things may not have changed much, if at all. Rather, company performance, good or bad, creates an overall impression—a halo—that shapes how we perceive its strategy, leaders, employees, culture, and other elements.
As an example, when Cisco Systems was growing rapidly, in the late 1990s, it was widely praised by journalists and researchers for its brilliant strategy, masterful management of acquisitions, and superb customer focus. When the tech bubble burst, many of the same observers were quick to make the opposite attributions: Cisco, the journalists and researchers claimed, now had a flawed strategy, haphazard acquisition management, and poor customer relations. On closer examination, Cisco really had not changed much—a decline in its performance led people to see the company differently. Indeed, Cisco staged a remarkable turnaround and today is still one of the leading tech companies. The same thing happened at ABB, the Swiss-Swedish engineering giant. In the 1990s, when its performance was strong, ABB was lauded for its elegant matrix design, risk-taking culture, and charismatic chief executive, Percy Barnevik. Later, when the company’s performance fell, ABB was roundly criticized for having a dysfunctional organization, a chaotic culture, and an arrogant CEO. But again, the company had not really changed much.
The fact is that many everyday concepts in business—including leadership, corporate culture, core competencies, and customer orientation—are ambiguous and difficult to define. We often infer perceptions of them from something else, which appears to be more concrete and tangible: namely, financial performance. As a result, many of the things that we commonly believe are contributions to company performance are in fact attributions. In other words, outcomes can be mistaken for inputs.
Wise managers know to be wary of the halo effect. They look for independent evidence rather than merely accepting the idea that a successful company has a visionary leader and a superb customer orientation or that a struggling company must have a poor strategy and weak execution. They ask themselves, “If I didn’t know how the company was performing, what would I think about its culture, execution, or customer orientation?” They know that as long as their judgments are merely attributions reflecting a company’s performance, their logic will be circular.
The halo effect is especially damaging because it often compromises the quality of data used in research. Indeed, many studies of business performance—as well as some articles that have appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review and The McKinsey Quarterly and in academic business journals—rely on data contaminated by the halo effect. These studies praise themselves for the vast amount of data they have accrued but overlook the fact that if the data aren’t valid, it really doesn’t matter how much was gathered or how sophisticated the analysis appears to be.
This reliance on questionable data, in turn, gives rise to a number of further errors in logic. Two delusions—of absolute performance and of lasting success—have particularly serious repercussions for business strategists.

The delusion of absolute performance
One of the most seductive claims in business best sellers is that a company can achieve success if it follows a specific set of steps. Some recent books are explicit on this point, claiming that a company hewing to a certain formula is virtually sure to become a great performer. On closer inspection these studies rely on sources of data (including retrospective interviews, articles from the business press, and business school case studies) that are routinely undermined by the halo effect. Whereas a given set of factors may appear to have led predictably to success, the reverse is more likely—it would be more accurate to say that successful companies tended to be described in the same way. The direction of causality is wrong.
Following a given formula can’t ensure high performance, and for a simple reason: in a competitive market economy, performance is fundamentally relative, not absolute. Success and failure depend not only on a company’s actions but also on those of its rivals. A company can improve its operations in many ways—better quality, lower cost, faster throughput time, superior asset management, and more—but if rivals improve at a faster rate, its performance may suffer.
Consider General Motors. In 2005 GM’s debt was reduced to junk bond status—hardly a vote of confidence from financial markets. Yet compared with the automobiles GM produced in the 1980s, its cars today boast better quality, additional features, superior comfort, and improved safety. Owing to myriad factors, including the increased prominence of Japanese and South Korean automakers, GM’s share of the US market keeps slipping, from 35 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 1999 and 25 percent in 2005. Its declining performance must be understood in relative terms. Paradoxically, the rigors of competition from Asian automakers are precisely what have stimulated GM to improve. Is GM a better automaker than it was a generation ago? Yes, if we look at absolute measures. But that’s little comfort to its employees or shareholders.
The delusion of absolute performance is very important because it suggests that a company can achieve high performance by following a simple formula, regardless of the actions of competitors. If left unchecked, executives may avoid decisions that, although risky, could be essential for success. Once we see that performance is relative, however, it becomes obvious that a company can never achieve success simply by following certain steps, no matter how serious its intentions. High performance comes from doing things better than rivals can, which means that managers have to take risks. This uncomfortable truth recognizes that some elements of business performance are beyond our control, yet it is an essential concept that clear-thinking executives must grasp.

The delusion of lasting success
The halo effect leads to a second misconception about the performance of companies: that they can achieve enduring success in a predictable way. These studies typically begin by selecting a group of companies that have outperformed the market for many years and then gather data to try and distill what led to that high performance. Regrettably, however, much of the data come from sources that are commonly contaminated by the halo effect. What the authors claim to be the causes of long-term performance are more accurately understood as attributions made about companies that had been selected precisely for their long-term performance.
In fact, lasting success is largely a delusion, a statistical anomaly. As McKinsey’s Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan showed,1 corporate longevity is neither very likely nor, when we find it, generally associated with high performance. On the whole, if we look at the full population of companies over time, there’s a strong tendency for extreme performance in one time period to be followed by less extreme performance in the next. Suggesting that companies can follow a blueprint to achieve lasting success may be appealing, but it’s not supported by the evidence.
High performance is difficult for companies to maintain, for an obvious reason: in a free-market economy, profits tend to decline as a result of imitation and competition. Rivals copy the leader’s winning ways, new companies enter the market, best practices are diffused, and employees move from one company to another. Of course, it is always possible to pick out a handful of enduring success stories after the fact. Then if we study those companies by relying on data that are suffused with the halo effect, we may think we have discovered the keys to success. In fact, we have only managed to show how successful companies were described—an entirely different matter.
The delusion of lasting success is a serious matter because it casts building an enduringly high-performing company as an achievable objective. Yet companies that outperform the market for long periods of time are not just rare but statistical anomalies whose apparent greatness is observable only in retrospect. More accurately, companies that enjoy long-term success have probably done so by stringing together many short-term successes, not because they somehow unlocked the secrets of sustained greatness. Unfortunately, pursuing a dream of enduring greatness may divert attention from the need to win more immediate battles.

Clear thinking for business strategists
These points, taken together, expose the principal fiction at the heart of so many popular business books and articles: that following a few key steps will inevitably lead to greatness and that a company’s success is of its own making and not often shaped by external factors.
The simple fact is that no formula can guarantee a company’s success, at least not in a competitive business environment. This truth may seem disappointing. Many managers would like to find a formula that can be easily applied—a tidy plug-and-play solution that ensures success. But on reflection, the absence of a simple success formula should not be disappointing at all. Indeed, it might even come as a relief. If success could be reduced to a formula, companies would not need strategic thinking but could rely on administrators to tick the right boxes and ensure that formulas were followed with precision. What makes strategic decision making so difficult, and therefore so valuable to companies, is precisely that there are no guaranteed keys to success. The ability to make the sorts of difficult, complex judgments that are pivotal for a company’s fortunes is, in the last analysis, a business executive’s most important contribution. Here are some approaches that may help.

Recognize the role of uncertainty
Rather than search in vain for success formulas, business executives would do better to adjust their thinking about the context of strategic decisions. As a first step, they should recognize the fundamental uncertainty of the business world. Doing so does not come naturally. People want the world to make sense, to be predictable, and to follow clear rules of cause and effect. Managers want to believe that their business world is similarly predictable, that specific actions will lead to certain outcomes. Yet strategic choice is inevitably an exercise in decision making under uncertainty. Another source of uncertainty involves customers: will they embrace or reject a new product or service? Even if a company accurately anticipates what customers will do, it has to contend with the unpredictable actions of new and old competitors.
A third source of uncertainty comes from technological change. Whereas some industries are relatively stable, with products that don’t change much and customer demand that remains fairly steady, others change rapidly and in unpredictable ways. A final source of uncertainty concerns internal capabilities. Managers can’t tell exactly how a company—with its particular people, skills, and experiences—will respond to a new course of action. Our best efforts to isolate and understand the inner workings of organizations will be moderately successful at best. Combine these factors and it becomes clear why strategy involves decisions made under uncertainty.
See the world through probabilities
Faced with this basic uncertainty, wise managers approach problems as interlocking probabilities. Their objective is not to find keys to guaranteed success but to improve the odds through a thoughtful consideration of factors. Some of these are outside the company—including industry forces, customer trends, and the intentions of competitors. Others are internal—capabilities, resources, and risk preferences. On the foundation of that analysis, the role of the business strategist is to make decisions that improve a company’s chances for success while never imagining that a company can simply will its success.
Rather, the goal should be gathering accurate information and subjecting it to careful scrutiny in order to improve the odds of success. As former US Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs executive Robert E. Rubin wrote in his memoirs,2 “Once you’ve internalized the concept that you can’t prove anything in absolute terms, life becomes all the more about odds, chances, and trade-offs. In a world without provable truths, the only way to refine the probabilities that remain is through greater knowledge and understanding.” Wise managers know that business is about finding ways to improve the odds of success—but never imagine that it is a certainty.
Separate inputs from outcomes
Finally, clear-thinking executives know that in an uncertain world, actions and outcomes are imperfectly linked. It’s easy to infer that good outcomes result from good decisions and that bad outcomes must mean someone blundered. Yet the fact that a given choice didn’t turn out well doesn’t always mean it was a mistake. Therefore it’s important to examine the decision process itself and not just the outcome. Had the right information been gathered or had some important data been overlooked? Were the assumptions reasonable or were they flawed? Were calculations accurate or had there been errors? Had the full set of eventualities been identified and their impact estimated? Had the company’s strategic position and risk preference been considered properly?
This sort of rigorous analysis, with outcomes separated from inputs, requires the extra mental step of judging actions on their merits rather than simply making after-the-fact attributions, favorable or unfavorable. Good decisions don’t always lead to favorable outcomes, and unfavorable outcomes are not always the result of mistakes. Wise managers resist the natural tendency to make attributions based solely on outcomes. They avoid the halo bestowed by performance and insist on independent evidence.
Our business world is full of research and analysis that are comforting to managers: that success can be yours by following a formula, that specific actions will lead to predictable outcomes, and that greatness can be achieved no matter what rivals do. The truth is very different: the business world is not a place of clear causal relationships, where a given set of actions leads to predictable results, but one that is more tenuous and uncertain.
The task of strategic leadership is therefore not to follow a given formula or set of steps. Instead it is to gather appropriate information, evaluate it thoughtfully, and make choices that provide the best chance for the company to succeed, all the while recognizing the fundamental nature of business uncertainty. Paradoxically, a sober understanding of this risk—along with an appreciation of the relative nature of performance and the general tendency for performance to regress—may offer the best basis for guiding effective decisions. These complex decisions, made without any guarantee of success, are ultimately the main contribution of business strategists. If a set of steps that could guarantee success did exist, and if greatness were indeed simply a matter of will, then the value of clear thinking in business would be lower, not ग्रेटर

ASIA –THE CENTRE OF INNOVATION

Asia has strengths that promise to make it a leading center of technological innovation in the 21st century। These strengths are substantial, fundamental, and durable. At their base lie aspects of culture, on both a civilizational and generational time scale. Human capital and the capacity for mobilization build on these cultural advantages.

The term "Asia" is of course a label for a collection of very different societies. I will speak primarily of China, counting Taiwan and Singapore as strongly linked parts of what is almost a whole. South Korea shares similar strengths; Japan and India differ more substantially.
I focus on technological innovation because it drives innovation throughout the global economy, changing what we make, what we use, and what we do। Centers of technological innovation become centers of innovation across a broad economic spectrum for two reasons: innovation in technology is inseparable from the innovations that flow from it, and the regearing of a society for innovation of any kind has effects on law, capital, and business culture that spill across boundaries.

To become a world-class center of technological innovation, a society must have three basic elements:
• drive—a culture that supports change and hungers for it
• human capital—the personal abilities that make world-class technology possible
• a capacity for mobilization—a society’s ability to pursue ambitious new goals
These basic elements are more fundamental than any current performance metric or economic trend, and they are durable।

The drive for change
Cultures can shift between complacency and drive on a generational time scale. Where one generation struggles from poverty to prosperity, the next often treats prosperity as a natural part of life. Where one generation upholds a rigid social architecture, the next may be scrabbling in rubble and building anew. Japan and most Western societies have been stable and prosperous throughout the adult lives of their leaders. Recent history makes much of Asia quite different.
China’s social architecture was smashed in the 20th century, leaving rubble and persistent poverty as the West soared into the advanced industrial era। The rubble, though, was of extraordinary quality—the loosened parts of a high civilization. The drive for change in China is enormous for all the reasons that inspire the poor to strive. These are amplified by a conviction, which history and recent experience support, that China’s natural place in the world is far from the bottom.

The experience of change facilitates further change. People who have gone (and are continuing to go) from villages to skyscrapers in a single generation are prepared to dream of going further.
Human capital for science and technology।

Cultures differ radically in their attitudes toward education। In the rising societies of Asia, education is a top priority, far above, for example, sports. During national exam season, when students study for the test that will determine their future in higher education, I found that Indian newspapers carry science and mathematics quizzes that would stump most US college graduates. Recent physics tests given to US and Chinese students entering comparable technically oriented universities produced distributions of scores that had little overlap. In Chinese societies, scholarly students have a status among their peers like that of athletes in the United States and run little risk of being marginalized, ridiculed, or beaten. In India, I found that students chase after the autographs, not of entertainers, but of scientists.

It is routine to note that Asian education relies on drill, which tends to dampen the critical thinking and spontaneous habits of thought that generate innovative ideas। Looking forward, this problem has been recognized by Asian governments, which have undertaken efforts to offset it. These efforts may have some effect. Even now, however, the magnitude of the problem may be in part an illusion. Science and technology programs in US universities are increasingly populated by Asian students and professors. As readers of leading science journals know, an increasing portion of the best research in the United States and Europe appears in papers with authors bearing mainland Chinese names. In effect, the best products of Chinese education have been selectively exported, and their innovations are counted as products of their countries of residence.

This outflow of talent, which skews Western perceptions of Chinese education, may not be permanent; indeed, it has reversed as the appeal of life and careers in China has increased। China’s spending on R&D has risen by 20 percent a year for the past decade. In the United States, the growth rate of R&D spending has been about one-fifth of this level.

The capacity for mobilization
Drive and human capital are applied through organization, by both entrepreneurs and corporations, as well as national leaders and governments. India has been outstanding in its incapacity for reform and for interfering with entrepreneurship, though this is changing. China, however, has been outstanding in its capacity for learning from experience, radically transforming government policy, and unleashing a hyperentrepreneurial business culture.
As science and technology grow in importance, it becomes increasingly important for leaders to have a good understanding of these disciplines। Among US legislators, though, a background in science and engineering is exceedingly rare. In France, it is common. In Taiwan, many legislators have doctoral degrees in science or engineering. In China, of the nine members of the standing committee of the Politburo (the ruling body, which includes the president, the vice president, and the premier), one recently appointed member has an education in law. Previously, all nine had been trained as engineers.

A leading indicator
Perhaps the most robust indicator of change in the distribution of innovation potential is a change in the distribution of corporate research laboratories। Companies are opening new labs in China at an astounding rate. In software and electronics, NEC, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, and Microsoft all have established R&D centers in China; in pharmaceuticals, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Eli Lilly have done so. This list is not exhaustive. Recently, I read news of the groundbreaking ceremony for a $70 million research center being built by ExxonMobil Chemical in the Zizhu Science-based Industrial Park, in Shanghai.

Any system can fail, often for unexpected reasons। The future political and economic stability of China and Asia as a whole are matters for speculation. Nonetheless, the trends, the durable fundamentals, and the leading indicators all suggest that Asia, led by China, will be a leading force in the innovations that transform the world in the 21st century. The stronger global integration becomes, the better the odds of a smooth and broadly beneficial outcome.

INNOVATIONS FROM THE DEPTH OF RECESSION:

Amidst the pain of an economic downturn, comes an overlooked competitive opportunity for companies: during recessions, only major innovations pass the test of success। These are the kinds of innovations that can sweep away older business models, creating a foundation for major growth that will endure long after the downturn has passed and a New Normal has taken hold .

The history of recession is also the story of technology advances that overturned the existing competitive order। Digital computers were born during the Great Depression, the Ethernet during the 1970s oil crisis, the IBM personal computer in the early 1980s recession, and the World Wide Web, which emerged from the recession of the early 1990s। And it was during the last recession, in the early 2000s, that innovative companies began staking out new leadership positions via the Internet। Apple, for instance, changed the business model in the music industry when it launched its popular iPod music player, synched to its online iTunes music store. Amazon.com pioneered commercial "cloud computing" by selling Web services that tapped its huge in-house base of servers and other IT infrastructure. Google, meanwhile, became an online industry leader by linking its search engine to advertising.

Though companies are tempted during a downturn to manage for survival, recessions in fact reveal periods when the competitive pecking order changes dramatically। Research by our colleagues shows that nearly 40 percent of leading US industrial companies tumbled from the top quartile of their sectors during the 2000–01 recession, as did a third of leading US banks। In many cases, these stark reversals of fortune result from disruptive innovations as companies adopt new ways of doing business।

In the here and now, new technologies and technology adoption is setting the stage for novel business models that portend disruptions as great as those of past downturns। While the internet was at the heart of the dot।com bubble and the ensuing recession earlier this decade, this time around it is giving rise to innovations that will set the stage for a new era of growth. Among these are the expansion of broadband data networks and of social applications—both wired and wireless—which have become nearly ubiquitous; the development of tiny, embedded sensors that are built into products and that help create sources of new data across these expanding networks; and a breadth of powerful analytic software that is creating new business opportunities from these vast streams of information.

The network of all
We see two broad areas of innovation taking form as a result of these advances. The first of these is in what we call the "Internet of People." Broadband technology is linking individuals across the globe as never before. Many of the interactions in which these people participate are for enjoyment. However, a significant and growing number use this technology to connect professionally with other individuals, share knowledge, and collaborate on work projects. At the same time, new digital platforms are multiplying throughout this digital firmament, establishing new locales for this online collaboration. Think of them as "digital workplaces"—or even "factories"—where individuals and organizations can gather to co-create content, products, and services. It’s also important to note that while these new workspaces can be extensive and complex, they can also be highly efficient, providing a virtual marketplace that matches specific individual effort to the discrete tasks at hand. (a specialist, for example, signing on to create a challenging software component) As a result, they increase the possibility of radically reducing the cost of innovation and allowing much more talent to be brought to bear in creative work.
One place to see the application of these advances in action is in the mobile phone market, where manufacturers and service providers are tapping creative capabilities to increase their competitive firepower. In this case, the platforms are new applications stores. In these virtual labor markets, software developers—mostly third parties—create programs, or "apps," which cell phone users can download directly to their smart phones. They allow users to play games, locate nearby restaurants or friends, identify songs, and access countless sources of specific information, as well as a wealth of other activities, limited, it seems, only by the imagination of the application developers. During the current downturn, highly skilled and sometimes underemployed individuals, among others, are earning money by designing these programs. They are also enhancing their reputations and future marketability in the broader programming community. And, as the applications become more popular, these application stores attract even more developers, who in turn create better applications, creating even more benefits from the Internet business model.

The attention and interests of digital communities can be channeled in other ways as well। Many companies now invite their customers to rate products and recommend improvements। Not only is this a good way to keep customers engaged with the brand, but these streams of data also give companies powerful new insights on how to position products, create new ones and decide on pricing strategies।

This new connectivity is expanding at an ever faster pace and on an ever broader scale. New devices, some of them cheaper, from stripped down netbooks to smart phones, are expanding the ranks of the connected. And even cheaper connectivity may be in store thanks to disruptive models in emerging markets. India’s Novatium, for example, is a startup that uses low-cost hardware and a bare-bones subscription software model. It provides the Net connections and the experience of a standard PC at 60 percent less than what it could cost in the developed world.
When objects become smart
The second innovation nexus is what we call the "Internet of Things," which arises from the tiny sensors, computers, and other microdevices that can be built into physical objects and connected through wireless networks। The results are objects that become "smarter" and more interactive, with the potential to transform traditional business models. Goods and services that self-monitor can be sold in much finer slices and much more efficiently. Rather than buy a product outright, or sign a long-term service contract, sensors can track actual usage, enabling customers to pay only for what they consume or even the value they receive. In some cases, what was once a weighty capital expenditure is transformed into a lighter-weight operating expense, when products are transformed into services.

The new logic of paying for value is creating an array of novel business models। Take aircraft engines, where manufacturers are selling "thrust" as a service—rather than engines as a product—since they now are able to track the usage and performance of their engines electronically। At the same time, airplane manufacturers are offering contracts that guarantee "uptime" of their products, using embedded sensors in airframes that are able to determine when preventative maintenance is needed. Similarly, auto insurance companies now are experimenting with networked sensors installed in cars that allow them to price insurance based on actual driving behaviors (such as distance, speed, and where the car is driven) rather than blunter demographic characteristics (such as age or where a customer resides). _________________________________________________________________

Many of these technology building blocks also are helping companies navigate through the current downturn: video conferencing is reducing travel costs, the Web is furthering collaborative efforts and increasing the effectiveness of workers, and many companies are mining and analyzing their unused data to find new customers and better serve existing ones. To be sure, these are critical survival tools for tough times. But it is by thinking through the recession that business leaders will discover how technology will once again enable the successful business models of tomorrow.

THE MOUSHY THING

Shaving with stone razors was technologically possible from Neolithic times but the oldest portrait showing a shaved man with a moustache is a Scythian horseman from 300 BC.

In more modern history, moustaches have been worn by military men. The number of nations, regiments and ranks were equalled only by the number of styles and variations. Generally, the younger men and lower ranks wore the smaller and less elaborate moustaches. As a man advanced in rank, his moustache would become thicker and bushier, until he was permitted to wear a full beard.

There were 6 sub-categories for moustaches:

Natural – Moustache may be styled without aids. The hairs are allowed to start growing from up to a maximum of 1.5 cm beyond the end of the upper lip.

Hungarian – Big and bushy, beginning from the middle of the upper lip and pulled to the side. The hairs are allowed to start growing from up to a maximum of 1.5 cm beyond the end of the upper lip.

Dalí – narrow, long points bent or curved steeply upward; areas past the corner of the mouth must be shaved. Artificial styling aids needed. Named after Salvador Dalí.

English – narrow, beginning at the middle of the upper lip the whiskers are very long and pulled to the side, slightly curled; the ends are pointed slightly upward; areas past the corner of the mouth usually shaved. Artificial styling may be needed.

Imperial – whiskers growing from both the upper lip and cheeks, curled upward (distinct from the royale, or impériale)

Freestyle – All moustaches that do not match other classes. The hairs are allowed to start growing from up to a maximum of 1.5 cm beyond the end of the upper lip. Aids are allowed.

Other types of moustache include:

Fu Manchu – long, downward pointing ends, generally beyond the chin;

'Pancho Villa' moustache – similar to the Fu Manchu but thicker; also known as a "droopy moustache", generally much more so than that normally worn by the historical Pancho Villa.

Handlebar – bushy, with small upward pointing ends. See baseball pitcher Rollie Fingers. Also known as a "spaghetti moustache", because of its stereotypical association with Italian men.

Horseshoe – Often confused with the Fu Manchu style, the horseshoe was possibly popularized by modern cowboys and consists of a full moustache with vertical extensions from the corners of the lips down to the jawline and resembling an upside-down horseshoe. Also known as biker moustache.

Pencil moustache – narrow, straight and thin like a pencil, closely clipped, outlining the upper lip, with a wide shaven gap between the nose and moustache. Also known as a Mouthbrow, worn by John Waters.

Chevron - thick and wide, usually covering the top of the upper lip. NASCAR driver Richard Petty wears a narrow Chevron.

Toothbrush – thick, but shaved except for about an inch (2.5 cm) in the center; associated with Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy, and Robert Mugabe. Also known as a sole stash or a Hitler stash.

Walrus – bushy, hanging down over the lips, often entirely covering the mouth. Worn by John Bolton, Wilford Brimley and Jamie Hyneman

The GG – bushy hair grown only over the corners of the mouth, shaved in the middle. Named after musician and performing artist GG Allin, the most well-known wearer of the style. It is a shortened version of the one worn by Genghis Khan.

In some cases, the moustaches are so prominently identified with a single individual that it could be identified with them without any further identifying traits, such as in the case of Adolf Hitler or Friedrich Nietzsche. In some cases, such as with Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin, the moustache in question was artificial for most of their lives.

WE FORGOT SUNDERBAN

Sunderban

The Sundarbans National Park (Bengali: সুন্দরবন জাতীয় উদ্যান Shundorbôn Jatio Uddan) is a National Park, Tiger Reserve, UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve located in the Sundarbans delta in Indian state of West Bengal. This region is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves of the Bengal tiger. It is also home to a variety of bird, reptile and invertebrate species, including the salt-water crocodile.

"Sundarban" literally means "beautiful jungle" or "beautiful forest" in the Bengali language. The name Sundarbans may also have been derived from the Sundari trees that are found in Sundarbans in large numbers. Other possible explanations can be a derivation from "Samudra Ban" (Sea Forest) or "Chandra-bandhe" (name of a primitive tribe). But the generally accepted view is the one associated with Sundari trees

The present Sundarbans National Park was declared as the core area of Sundarbans Tiger Reserve in 1973 and a wildlife sanctuary in the year 1977. On 4 May 1984 it was declared a National Park. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1987. Whole Sundarbans area was declared as Biosphere Reserve in 1989.

Sundarbans National Park is located in between in the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. The average altitude of the park is 7.5 m above sea level. The park is made up of 54 small islands and it crisscrossed by several distributaries of Ganga.

Sundarban is the largest delta in India. The Sundarbans are a part of the world's largest delta formed by the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. They are vast tract of forest and saltwater swamp forming the lower part of the Ganges Delta, extending about 260 km along the Bay of Bengal from the Hooghly River Estuary in India to the Meghna River Estuary in Bangladesh. Sunderban covers an area of 4262 sq. km in India.

Sunderban is a unique ecosystem dominated by mangrove forests and gets its name from the Sundari trees. Sunderban is spread over 54 islands and two countries. It is one of the last preserves of the Bengal tiger and the site of a tiger preservation project

How to go:
Nearest airport: Dum Dum airport at Kolkata is 112 km away.
Nearest railhead: Canning is 48 km away from the Park.
Nearest Road: Road transportation is available from Kolkata for Namkhana (105 km), Sonakhali (100 km), Raidighi (76 km), Canning (64 km), and Najat (92 km), which are all near the Sunderbans and have access to the riverine waterways.
Nearest town: Gosaba is 50 km away.
Nearest city: Kolkata which is 112 km away.

The Royal Bengal Tigers:

The Sundarbans forest is home to more than 400 tigers. The Royal Bengal Tigers have developed a unique characteristic of swimming in the saline waters, and are world famous for their man-eating tendencies.

Tigers are the largest members of the cat family and are renowned for their power and strength.There were eight tiger subspecies at one time, but three became extinct during the 20th century. Over the last 100 years, hunting and forest destruction have reduced tiger populations from hundreds of thousands of animals to perhaps fewer than 2,500.

Tigers are hunted as trophies, and also for body parts that are used in traditional Chinese medicine. All five remaining tiger subspecies are endangered, and many protection programs are in place.Bengal tigers live in India and are sometimes called Indian tigers. They are the most common tiger and number about half of all wild tigers.

Over many centuries they have become an important part of Indian tradition and lore.Tigers live alone and aggressively scent-mark large territories to keep their rivals away. They are powerful nocturnal hunters that travel many miles to find buffalo, deer, wild pigs, and other large mammals. Tigers use their distinctive coats as camouflage (no two have exactly the same stripes). They lie in wait and creep close enough to attack their victims with a quick spring and a fatal pounce. A hungry tiger can eat as much as 60 pounds (27 kilograms) in one night, though they usually eat less.Despite their fearsome reputation, most tigers avoid humans; however, do become dangerous maneaters.

These animals are often sick and unable to hunt normally, or live in an area where their traditional prey has vanished.Females give birth to litters of two to six cubs, which they raise with little or no help from the male. Cubs cannot hunt until they are 18 months old and remain with their mothers for two to three years, when they disperse to find their own territory.

Average lifespan in the wild: 8 to 10 years
Size: Head and body, 5 to 6 ft (1.5 to 1.8 m); Tail, 2 to 3 ft (0.6 to 0.9 m)
Weight: 240 to 500 lbs (109 to 227 kg)
Did you know? A tiger's roar can be heard as far as two miles (three kilometers) away.

Lifecycle:
Mating can occur at any time, but happens to be usually between November and April. The females can have cubs at the age of 3–4 years; males reach maturity in about 4 years. After the gestation period of 103 days, 2-5 cubs are born. Newborn babies weigh about 1 kg (2.2 lb) and are blind and helpless. The mother feeds them milk for 6–8 weeks and then the cubs are introduced to meat. The cubs depend on the mother for 1.5 years and then they start hunting on their own.

Behaviour:
Tigers do not live in prides or clusters like lions do. They do not follow the pattern of family responsibility. However, an individual tiger will often limit his or her outgoings to a distinct territory. This territory is marked by spraying urine on a branch or leaves or bark of a tree which leaves a particular scent behind. Tigers also spray urine to attract the opposite sex.

When an unknown tiger comes in contact with the scent, she or he comes to know that the territory has been occupied by another tiger. Hence, every tiger lives independently in his own territory.
Male Bengal tigers fiercely defend their territory from other tigers, often indulging in deadly fights. Female tigers are relatively less territorial and there have been rare instances of the female sharing her territory with other females. If a male happens to enter a female's territory, he would probably mate with her, if she isn't having litter. If she has litter, he has no choice but to retreat and to find himself a new territory. Similarly, females entering a male's territory are known to mate with him. Both males and females are separated from their mother almost when they are a year old whereupon, the newly grown cubs have to establish their own territory. A male territory is larger than the female territory.

Bengal tigers kill large animals for meal purposes as well as a signal of their power.

IT'S A MAN THING

Be a good wife. Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready for his return from work. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs.

Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed. Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Gather up school books, toys, papers etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables. During the colder months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him. Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first, remember his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Make the evening his. Never complain if he arrives home late or goes out to dinner or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax. Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. Don't greet him with complaints and problems. Don't complain if he's late for dinner, or even stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange the pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice. Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise this will with fairness and truthfulness. [*] When he has had a chance to have his evening meal, clear the dishes and wash up promptly. If your husband should offer to help decline his offer as he may feel obliged to repeat this offer and after a long working day, he does not need the extra work.

Encourage your husband to pursue his hobbies and interests and be supporting without seeming to encroach. If you have little hobbies yourself try not to bore him speaking of these, as women's interests are often rather trivial compared to men's.

At the end of the evening tidy the home ready for the morning and again think ahead to his breakfast needs. Your husband's breakfast is vital if he is to face the outside world in a positive fashion. Once you have both retired to the bedroom, prepare yourself for bed as promptly as possible. Whilst feminine hygiene is of the utmost importance, your tired husband does not want to wait for the bathroom as he would for his train. But remember to look your best when going to bed. Try to achieve a look which is welcoming without being obvious. If you need to apply face cream or hair rollers wait until he is asleep as this can be shocking to a man last thing at night. When it comes to the possibility of intimate relations with your husband, it is important to remember your marriage vows and in particular your commitment to obey him. If he feels that he needs to sleep immediately then so be it.

In all things be led by your husband's wishes; do not pressure him in any way to stimulate intimacy. Should your husband suggest congress then accept humbly, all the while being mindful that a man's satisfaction is more important than a woman's. When he reaches his moment of fulfillment, a small moan from yourself is encouraging to him and quite sufficient to indicate any enjoyment that you may have had. Should your husband suggest any of the more unusual practices, be obedient and uncomplaining but register any reluctance by remaining silent.

It is likely that your husband will then fall promptly asleep, so adjust your clothing, freshen up and apply night time and hair care products. You may then set the alarm so that you can arise shortly before him in the morning. This will enable you to have his morning cup of tea ready when he awakes.

MALES ARE MALE AND FEMALES ARE FEMALE

BOTH ARE DEFINITELY DIFFERENT NOT ONLY PHYSICAL BUT VERY MUCH IN EMOTION AS WELL

As far as the characteristics of males and females are concerned, we are not really talking about individuals at all, but only about male and female strategies. This is the basis on which the following analysis is made. Indubitably however, most males are male and most females are female.

NATURAL DOMAINS: THINGS VERSUS RELATIONSHIPS. An essential component of the male character is his capacity to react at the level of the thing. A male may become excited or even obsessed by a clever piece of computer code or a tiny part or modification of an engine. These things can be utterly fascinating to a male but they mean nothing whatever to a female, because the female's basic level of interaction is the relationship. Things are absolutely meaningless to most females save for the functionality they provide. Indeed to some males this functionality is only an end-product, at which point the item becomes so mundane that it is no longer of challenging interest.

This may be partly the reason for a certain female ruthlessness in manipulating relationships. Not only are their instinctive drives directed to a very great degree towards finding a mate, and most particularly an ideal or optimal one, but essentially they have no thing else. They are far less able to redirect their sexual energies, to sublimate them in other productive directions, as males can.

The basic relational transaction between the sexes is that the female gives the male physical sex and the male gives the female a relationship.

The primary sexual activity of the female is relationships.

DISCUSSION. If I go to a male and talk to him about computers it is not sex, or if I go to a female and talk about computers it is not sex, but if I go to a female and talk to her because she is female it is sexual activity. For the purpose of this analysis, and fundamentally, all relationships which are not business are sexual. Relationships may be very pleasant but ultimately the only thing they produce is babies. The primary sexual activity of the female is personal relationships, particularly and especially with children. The male instinct is to have sex, the female instinct is to have babies. The male who is not interested in physical sex and the female who does not want babies became extinct long ago.

There are feminist books which purport to be about sex but which say little or nothing about the sex act, the male perspective, but which talk almost exclusively about children. A large proportion of female art is concerned with childbirth and children. By nature females are very good at having and nurturing babies, and doing so can give them considerable pleasure. Reproduction is fundamental to the female 'reason for being,' and relationships and sex are an inseparable part of that, as we shall see from the nature and paucity of female sex substitutes.

Females cannot give up sex in pursuit of an objective to the extent that males do. A male will surrender sex to achieve some goal but a female will never give up relationships, which is her expression of sex, because it is totally essential to her being. The question to a male "Why is sex so important to you?" is utterly ridiculous, coming from a female.

For a male to make a major achievement or breakthrough he must often be obsessive to the point of craziness. To succeed he must be prepared to be hated while, I maintain, a female longs and desires above all else to be loved. For a male to succeed he must be prepared to be hated because his success will inevitably be to the envy and discomfort of others. Maybe he will be loved afterwards, too late or not at all, but he must shed his care to be loved to succeed.

The natural domain of the female is relationships, the natural domain of the male is things. I concluded that females are something like 6-8 times better at reading signals and manipulation than males. Correspondingly males are 6-8 times better at manipulating things.

SEXUAL-POLITICAL ANALOGIES. Some parallels can be drawn in male-female relationships between an expert chess player and a beginner. The female is expert while the male is severely handicapped. The male always loses, or is allowed to win once in a while just to maintain his interest. The female makes the male do as much work as possible as he attempts to get what he wants, but he always has to overcome his natural handicap. It is in the female's interest to make the male do as much work as possible, because by this tactic she learns the male's strategies even as he is learning them. Then if she sees what she wants she can immediately fall back on her natural skill and win immediately.

A rather more forceful analogy is a man being trapped in a cage with a member of the cat family which is about the same weight as him, such as a jaguar or tiger. The cat is many times more aggressive and much better equipped; the man is at a severe disadvantage.

Both of these analogies can be applied to the situation in which males attempt to compete in females' natural domain of relationships, although both fall down when applied more generally. In the first case the male ultimately refuses to play the game altogether and the female appears to become incompetent through laziness and lack of practice. In the second the man must not only fight and win the battle with the cat but also live with it.

BONDING. The crux of it however is that males bond on shared experience, while females do so solely on the basis of who they like.

The classical male grouping is the gang. Males will admit a member to the gang solely because he is useful, but females are only interested in who they like.

POLYGAMY VERSUS MONOGAMY. The most successful male strategy for the furtherance of his genes is to impregnate as many reproductive females as possible. This is the pure masculine perspective, to finish one and go on to the next. This polygamous drive is also the most effective business and evolutionary strategy. The male instinct is to bring things to a head, finish and get on to the next. We can think of business, which is a masculine activity. The optimum strategy is to clinch a deal, make a profit and go on to the next transaction. In pursuit of this drive the male seeks resolvement.

The male instinct is to act, because even if he makes a mistake he can finish, learn from his mistake and do it better next time. Contrarily, because of the high cost of sex and her desire for an optimum partner, the female instinct is to prevaricate and delay if it is at all possible. The female instinct is to drag things out and stall, so that she can gather information and obtain maximum advantage before committing herself to bearing a child.

Certainly the results of Experiment 1 and subsequently were that females never initiate action. The female instinct is normally not to act: not to resolve matters, not to take risks, not to have sex, or at least until the conditions are perceived as ideal and if so, apparently often without taking precautions against pregnancy.

REFLECTION OF NEUROSIS. A direct proposal ('Come with me for a beer') may be a direct reflection of neurosis. Such a proposal certainly attempts to set the cost of sex low. In one circumstance, a female may really want to agree but is forced by the proposal to confront her inability to do so. Females cannot help but reject approaches. Then she is likely to wish at a later date 'If only I'd said yes.' As a very wide generalization, nonetheless carrying some truth, it seems that males usually say yes and regret it later, while females generally say no and regret it later.

WE BASICALLY LOVE CONFLICT

Causes of conflict, and cures

In principle, the cause of most conflict is misunderstanding. The parties don't have the same facts, same experience, same perspective, and don't fully appreciate how someone else could see it differently.

A second cause of conflict is fundamental difference of values. This is where the parties understand the facts and each other but they simply have different values. For example one person believes in Jesus as savior, another does not. Each person's beliefs are deeply rooted and not easily changed.

Third, parties are in conflict because of some outside issue, something that has nothing to do with the immediate issue at hand. The conflict might be because of some incident between the parties that happened years ago and has never been dealt with or because of a mental disorder or an irrational fear or an addiction which is influencing someone's judgment or behavior. An outside issue is preventing one or more key people from seeing or acting clearly.

ANY SOLUTIONS?

Practical Tip: When conflicts arise, work first to develop shared understanding. Talk, listen, express truth, learn, be open-minded, let go, ponder, talk some more.

If differing values are the cause, identify the values you have in common. Identify your common goals. See how you believe in similar things but have different ways of acting on them. Document and work on the things you agree on and let go of the rest, for now.

If a debilitating outside issue is at play, peace will only come about if the issue is dealt with. If it is your issue, deal with it, seek help, do the personal work. If the issue is not dealt with by the parties, an outside authority must be invoked to make and enforce a decision. There might be a winner and a loser. Fine. Move on. The group should not try to resolve an outside issue; it is a set up for more conflict.

Dreaming

I got this interpretations from various sources , whether it's true or false I don't know but it's worth exploring as we all love to dream sometime or the other

Meaning of Dreams :

Cab
To ride in a cab in dreams, is significant of pleasant avocations, and average prosperity you will enjoy.
To ride in a cab at night, with others, indicates that you will have a secret that you will endeavor to keep from your friends.
To ride in a cab with a woman, scandal will couple your name with others of bad repute.
To dream of driving a public cab, denotes manual labor, with little chance of advancement.

Cabbage
It is bad to dream of cabbage. Disorders may run riot in all forms. To dream of seeing cabbage green, means unfaithfulness in love and infidelity in wedlock.
To cut heads of cabbage, denotes that you are tightening the cords of calamity around you by lavish expenditure.

Cable
To dream of a cable, foretells the undertaking of a decidedly hazardous work, which, if successfully carried to completion, will abound in riches and honor to you.
To dream of receiving cablegrams, denotes that a message of importance will reach you soon, and will cause disagreeable comments.

Cabin
The cabin of a ship is rather unfortunate to be in in{sic} a dream. Some mischief is brewing for you. You will most likely be engaged in a law suit, in which you will lose from the unstability of your witness.
For log cabin, see house.

Cackle
To hear the cackling of hens denotes a sudden shock produced by the news of an unexpected death in your neighborhood, Sickness will cause poverty.

Cage
In your dreaming if you see a cageful of birds, you will be the happy possessor of immense wealth and many beautiful and charming children. To see only one bird, you will contract a desirable and wealthy marriage. No bird indicates a member of the family lost, either by elopement or death.
To see wild animals caged, denotes that you will triumph over your enemies and misfortunes. If you are in the cage with them, it denotes harrowing scenes from accidents while traveling.

Cakes
Batter or pancakes, denote that the affections of the dreamer are well placed, and a home will be bequeathed to him or her.
To dream of sweet cakes, is gain for the laboring and a favorable opportunity for the enterprising. Those in love will prosper.
Pound cake is significant of much pleasure either from society or business. For a young woman to dream of her wedding cake is the only bad luck cake in the category. Baking them is not so good an omen as seeing them or eating them.

Calomel
To dream of calomel shows some person is seeking to deceive and injure you through the unconscious abetting of friends. For a young woman to dream of taking it, foretells that she will be victimized through the artful designing of persons whom she trusts. If it is applied externally, she will close her eyes to deceit in order to enjoy a short season of pleasure.

Calves
To dream of calves peacefully grazing on a velvety lawn, foretells to the young, happy, festive gatherings and enjoyment. Those engaged in seeking wealth will see it rapidly increasing.

Called
To hear your name called in a dream by strange voices, denotes that your business will fall into a precarious state, and that strangers may lend you assistance, or you may fail to meet your obligations.
To hear the voice of a friend or relative, denotes the desperate illness of some one of them, and may be death; in the latter case you may be called upon to stand as guardian over some one, in governing whom you should use much discretion.
Lovers hearing the voice of their affianced should heed the warning. If they have been negligent in attention they should make amends. Otherwise they may suffer separation from misunderstanding.
To hear the voice of the dead may be a warning of your own serious illness or some business worry from bad judgment may ensue. The voice is an echo thrown back from the future on the subjective mind, taking the sound of your ancestor's voice from coming in contact with that part of your ancestor which remains with you. A certain portion of mind matter remains the same in lines of family descent.

Calendar
To dream of keeping a calendar, indicates that you will be very orderly and systematic in habits throughout the year.
To see a calendar, denotes disappointment in your calculations.

Calm
To see calm seas, denotes successful ending of doubtful undertaking.
To feel calm and happy, is a sign of a long and well-spent life and a vigorous old age.

Calumny
To dream that you are the subject of calumny, denotes that your interests will suffer at the hands of evil-minded gossips. For a young woman, it warns her to be careful of her conduct, as her movements are being critically observed by persons who claim to be her friends.

Camera
To dream of a camera, signifies that changes will bring undeserved environments. For a young woman to dream that she is taking pictures with a camera, foretells that her immediate future will have much that is displeasing and that a friend will subject her to acute disappointment.

Cameo Brooch
To dream of a cameo brooch, denotes some sad occurrence will soon claim your attention.

Camels
To see this beast of burden, signifies that you will entertain great patience and fortitude in time of almost unbearable anguish and failures that will seemingly sweep every vestige of hope from you.
To own a camel, is a sign that you will possess rich mining property.
To see a herd of camels on the desert, denotes assistance when all human aid seems at a low ebb, and of sickness from which you will arise, contrary to all expectations.

Camp
To dream of camping in the open air, you may expect a change in your affairs, also prepare to make a long and wearisome journey.
To see a camping settlement, many of your companions will remove to new estates and your own prospects will appear gloomy.
For a young woman to dream that she is in a camp, denotes that her lover will have trouble in getting her to name a day for their wedding, and that he will prove a kind husband. If in a military camp she will marry the first time she has a chance.
A married woman after dreaming of being in a soldier's camp is in danger of having her husband's name sullied, and divorce courts may be her destination.

Campaign
To dream of making a political one, signifies your opposition to approved ways of conducting business, and you will set up original plans for yourself regardless of enemies' working against you. Those in power will lose.
If it is a religious people conducting a campaign against sin, it denotes that you will be called upon to contribute from your private means to sustain charitable institutions.
For a woman to dream that she is interested in a campaign against fallen women, denotes that she will surmount obstacles and prove courageous in time of need.

Cane
To see cane growing in your dream, foretells favorable advancement will be made toward fortune. To see it cut, denotes absolute failure in all undertakings.

Cancer
To have one successfully treated in a dream, denotes a sudden rise from obscure poverty to wealthy surroundings.
To dream of a cancer, denotes illness of some one near you, and quarrels with those you love. Depressions may follow to the man of affairs after this dream.
To dream of a cancer, foretells sorrow in its ugliest phase. Love will resolve itself into cold formality, and business will be worrying and profitless.

Canal
To see the water of a canal muddy and stagnant-looking, portends sickness and disorders of the stomach and dark designs of enemies. But if its waters are clear a placid life and the devotion of friends is before you.
For a young woman to glide in a canoe across a canal, denotes a chaste life and an adoring husband. If she crossed the canal on a bridge over clear water and gathers ferns and other greens on the banks, she will enjoy a life of ceaseless rounds of pleasure and attain to high social distinction. But if the water be turbid she will often find herself tangled in meshes of perplexity and will be the victim of nervous troubles.

Canary Birds
To dream of this sweet songster, denotes unexpected pleasures. For the young to dream of possessing a beautiful canary, denotes high class honors and a successful passage through the literary world, or a happy termination of love's young dream.
To dream one is given you, indicates a welcome legacy. To give away a canary, denotes that you will suffer disappointment in your dearest wishes.
To dream that one dies, denotes the unfaithfulness of dear friends.
Advancing, fluttering, and singing canaries, in luxurious apartments, denotes feasting and a life of exquisite refinement, wealth, and satisfying friendships. If the light is weird or unnaturally bright, it augurs that you are entertaining illusive hopes. Your over-confidence is your worst enemy. A young woman after this dream should beware, lest flattering promises react upon her in disappointment. Fairy-like scenes in a dream are peculiarly misleading and treacherous to women.

Candles
To see them burning with a clear and steady flame, denotes the constancy of those about you and a well-grounded fortune.
For a maiden to dream that she is molding candles, denotes that she will have an unexpected offer of marriage and a pleasant visit to distant relatives. If she is lighting a candle, she will meet her lover clandestinely because of parental objections.
To see a candle wasting in a draught, enemies are circulating detrimental reports about you.
To snuff a candle, portends sorowful{sic} news. Friends are dead or in distressful straits.

Candlestick
To see a candlestick bearing a whole candle, denotes that a bright future lies before you filled with health, happiness and loving companions. If empty, the reverse.

Canker

To dream of seeing canker on anything, is an omen of evil. It foretells death and treacherous companions for the young. Sorrow and loneliness to the aged.
Cankerous growths in the flesh, denote future distinctions either as head of State or stage life.
The last definition is not consistent with other parts of this book, but I let it stand, as I find it among my automatic writings.

Ditch

Falling in a Ditch
To dream of falling in a ditch, denotes degradation and personal loss; but if you jump over it, you will live down any suspicion of wrong-doing.

Diving, Diving in Water, Clear Water, Muddy Water
To dream of diving in clear water, denotes a favorable termination of some embarrassment. If the water is muddy, you will suffer anxiety at the turn your affairs seem to be taking.
To see others diving, indicates pleasant companions. For lovers to dream of diving, denotes the consummation of happy dreams and passionate love.

Dividend, Dividends
To dream of dividends, augments successful speculations or prosperous harvests. To fail in securing hoped-for dividends, proclaims failure in management or love affairs.

Divining Rods, Divining Rod, Rod
To see a divining rod in your dreams, foretells ill luck will dissatisfy you with present surroundings.

Divorce, Being Divorced, Divorced
To dream of being divorced, denotes that you are not satisfied with your companion, and should cultivate a more congenial atmosphere in the home life. It is a dream of warning.
For women to dream of divorce, denotes that a single life may be theirs through the infidelity of lovers.

Docks, Dock
To dream of being on docks, denotes that you are about to make an unpropitious journey. Accidents will threaten you. If you are there, wandering alone, and darkness overtakes you, you will meet with deadly enemies, but if the sun be shining, you will escape threatening dangers.

Doctor, Doctors, Incision, Operation, Operated
This is a most auspicious dream, denoting good health and general prosperity, if you meet him socially, for you will not then spend your money for his services. If you be young and engaged to marry him, then this dream warns you of deceit.
To dream of a doctor professionally, signifies discouraging illness and disagreeable differences between members of a family.
To dream that a doctor makes an incision in your flesh, trying to discover blood, but failing in his efforts, denotes that you will be tormented and injured by some evil person, who may try to make you pay out money for his debts. If he finds blood, you will be the loser in some transaction.

Dogs, Vicious Dog, Vicious Dogs, Blood-Hound, Small Dogs, Small Dog, Biting Dog, Being bited by a dog, Pet Dogs, Fear of Dogs, Fearing a Dog, Snarling Dog, Dogs and Cats, Friendly Dog, Many Headed Dog, Mad Dog, Dogs Swimming, Swimming Dog, Dog Kills a Cat, Dog kills a Snake, Baying of a Dog, Lonely Dog

To dream of a vicious dog, denotes enemies and unalterable misfortune. To dream that a dog fondles you, indicates great gain and constant friends.
To dream of owning a dog with fine qualities, denotes that you will be possessed of solid wealth.
To dream that a blood-hound is tracking you, you are likely to fall into some temptation, in which there is much danger of your downfall.
To dream of small dogs, indicates that your thoughts and chief pleasures are of a frivolous order.
To dream of dogs biting you, foretells for you a quarrelsome companion either in marriage or business.

Lean, filthy dogs, indicate failure in business, also sickness among children.
To dream of a dog-show, is indicative of many and varied favors from fortune.
To hear the barking of dogs, foretells news of a depressing nature. Difficulties are more than likely to follow. To see dogs on the chase of foxes, and other large game, denotes an unusual briskness in all affairs.
To see fancy pet dogs, signifies a love of show, and that the owner is selfish and narrow. For a young woman, this dream foretells a fop for a sweetheart.
To feel much fright upon seeing a large mastiff, denotes that you will experience inconvenience because of efforts to rise above mediocrity. If a woman dreams this, she will marry a wise and humane man.
To hear the growling and snarling of dogs, indicates that you are at the mercy of designing people, and you will be afflicted with unpleasant home surroundings.
To hear the lonely baying of a dog, foretells a death or a long separation from friends.
To hear dogs growling and fighting, portends that you will be overcome by your enemies, and your life will be filled with depression.
To see dogs and cats seemingly on friendly terms, and suddenly turning on each other, showing their teeth and a general fight ensuing, you will meet with disaster in love and worldly pursuits, unless you succeed in quelling the row.
If you dream of a friendly white dog approaching you, it portends for you a victorious engagement whether in business or love. For a woman, this is an omen of an early marriage.
To dream of a many-headed dog, you are trying to maintain too many branches of business at one time. Success always comes with concentration of energies. A man who wishes to succeed in anything should be warned by this dream.
To dream of a mad dog, your most strenuous efforts will not bring desired results, and fatal disease may be clutching at your vitals. If a mad dog succeeds in biting you, it is a sign that you or some loved one is on the verge of insanity, and a deplorable tragedy may occur.

To dream of traveling alone, with a dog following you, foretells stanch friends and successful undertakings.
To dream of dogs swimming, indicates for you an easy stretch to happiness and fortune.
To dream that a dog kills a cat in your presence, is significant of profitable dealings and some unexpected pleasure.
For a dog to kill a snake in your presence, is an omen of good luck

Dolphin, Dolphins
To dream of a dolphin, indicates your liability to come under a new government. It is not a very good dream.

Dome, Dome of a Building, Dome from Distance
To dream that you are in the dome of a building, viewing a strange landscape, signifies a favorable change in your life. You will occupy honorable places among strangers.
To behold a dome from a distance, portends that you will never reach the height of your ambition, and if you are in love, the object of your desires will scorn your attention.

Dominoes, Domino, Game, Games
To dream of playing at dominoes, and lose, you will be affronted by a friend, and much uneasiness for your safety will be entertained by your people, as you will not be discreet in your affairs with women or other matters that engage your attention.
If you are the winner of the game, it foretells that you will be much courted and admired by certain dissolute characters, bringing you selfish pleasures, but much distress to your relatives.

Donkey, Donkeys, Riding a Donkey, Dead Donkey, White Donkey
To dream of a donkey braying in your face, denotes that you are about to be publicly insulted by a lewd and unscrupulous person.
To hear the distant braying filling space with melancholy, you will receive wealth and release from unpleasant bonds by the death of some person close to you.
If you see yourself riding on a donkey, you will visit foreign lands and make many explorations into places difficult of passage.
To see others riding donkeys, denotes a meagre inheritance for them and a toiling life.
To dream of seeing many of the old patriarchs traveling on donkeys, shows that the influence of Christians will be thrown against you in your selfish wantonness, causing you to ponder over the rights and duties of man to man.
To drive a donkey, signifies that all your energies and pluck will be brought into play against a desperate effort on the part of enemies to overthrow you. If you are in love, evil women will cause you trouble.
If you are kicked by this little animal, it shows that you are carrying on illicit connections, from which you will suffer much anxiety from fear of betrayal.
If you lead one by a halter, you will be master of every situation, and lead women into your way of seeing things by flattery.
To see children riding and driving donkeys, signifies health and obedience for them.
To fall or be thrown from one, denotes ill luck and disappointment in secular affairs. Lovers will quarrel and separate.
To see one dead, denotes satiated appetites, resulting from licentious excesses.
To dream of drinking the milk of a donkey, denotes that whimsical desires will be gratified, even to the displacement of important duties.
If you see in your dreams a strange donkey among your stock, or on your premises, you will inherit some valuable effects.
To dream of coming into the possession of a donkey by present, or buying, you will attain to enviable heights in the business or social world, and if single, will contract a congenial marriage.

To dream of a white donkey, denotes an assured and lasting fortune, which will enable you to pursue the pleasures or studies that lie nearest your heart. For a woman, it signals entrance into that society for which she has long entertained the most ardent desire. Woman has in her composition those qualities, docility and stubbornness, which tallies with the same qualities in the donkey; both being supplied from the same storehouse, mother Nature; and consequently, they would naturally maintain an affinity, and the ugliest phase of the donkey in her dreams are nothing but woman's nature being sounded for her warning, or vice versa when pleasure is just before her.

Doomsday
To dream that you are living on, and looking forward to seeing doomsday, is a warning for you to give substantial and material affairs close attention, or you will find that the artful and scheming friends you are entertaining will have possession of what they desire from you, which is your wealth, and not your sentimentality.
To a young woman, this dream encourages her to throw aside the attention of men above her in station and accept the love of an honest and deserving man near her.

Door, Entering a Door, Doorway, Doorways, Walking thru Doorway, Close a Door
To dream of entering a door, denotes slander, and enemies from whom you are trying in vain to escape. This is the same of any door, except the door of your childhood home. If it is this door you dream of entering, your days will be filled with plenty and congeniality.
To dream of entering a door at night through the rain, denotes, to women, unpardonable escapades; to a man, it is significant of a drawing on his resources by unwarranted vice, and also foretells assignations.

To see others go through a doorway, denotes unsuccessful attempts to get your affairs into a paying condition. It also means changes to farmers and the political world. To an author, it foretells that the reading public will reprove his way of stating facts by refusing to read his later works.
To dream that you attempt to close a door, and it falls from its hinges, injuring some one, denotes that malignant evil threatens your friend through your unintentionally wrong advice. If you see another attempt to lock a door, and it falls from its hinges, you will have knowledge of some friend's misfortune and be powerless to aid him.

Door Bell
To dream you hear or ring a door bell, foretells unexpected tidings, or a hasty summons to business, or the bedtide of a sick relative.

Doves, Dove, Dead Dove, White Doves, White Dove, Letter from a Dove, Exhausted Dove
Dreaming of doves mating and building their nests, indicates peacefulness of the world and joyous homes where children render obedience, and mercy is extended to all.
To hear the lonely, mournful voice of a dove, portends sorrow and disappointment through the death of one to whom you looked for aid. Often it portends the death of a father.
To see a dead dove, is ominous of a separation of husband and wife, either through death or infidelity.
To see white doves, denotes bountiful harvests and the utmost confidence in the loyalty of friends.
To dream of seeing a flock of white doves, denotes peaceful, innocent pleasures, and fortunate developments in the future.
If one brings you a letter, tidings of a pleasant nature from absent friends is intimated, also a lovers' reconciliation is denoted.
If the dove seems exhausted, a note of sadness will pervade the reconciliation, or a sad touch may be given the pleasant tidings by mention of an invalid friend; if of business, a slight drop may follow. If the letter bears the message that you are doomed, it foretells that a desperate illness, either your own or of a relative, may cause you financial misfortune.

Dowry
To dream that you fail to receive a dowry, signifies penury and a cold world to depend on for a living. If you receive it, your expectations for the day will be fulfilled. The opposite may be expected if the dream is superinduced by the previous action of the waking mind.

Dragon, Dragons
To dream of a dragon, denotes that you allow yourself to be governed by your passions, and that you are likely to place yourself in the power of your enemies through those outbursts of sardonic tendencies. You should be warned by this dream to cultivate self-control.

See Devil.
Drama, Theatre, Play
To see a drama, signifies pleasant reunions with distant friends.
To be bored with the performance of a drama, you will be forced to accept an uncongenial companion at some entertainment or secret affair.
To write one, portends that you will be plunged into distress and debt, to be extricated as if by a miracle.

Dram-drinking
To be given to dram-drinking in your dreams, omens ill-natured rivalry and contention for small possession. To think you have quit dram-drinking, or find that others have done so, shows that you will rise above present estate and rejoice in prosperity.

Draw-knife, Knife, Knifes
To see or use a draw-knife, portends unfulfiled hopes or desires.
Some fair prospect will loom before you, only to go down in mistake and disappointment.

Dressing , Being Dressed
To think you are having trouble in dressing, while dreaming, means some evil persons will worry and detain you from places of amusement.
If you can't get dressed in time for a train, you will have many annoyances through the carelessness of others. You should depend on your own efforts as far as possible, after these dreams, if you would secure contentment and full success.

Drinking, To Drink, Drink Water
For a woman to dream of hilarious drinking, denotes that she is engaging in affairs which may work to her discredit, though she may now find much pleasure in the same. If she dreams that she fails to drink clear water, though she uses her best efforts to do so, she will fail to enjoy some pleasure that is insinuatingly offered her.

Driving, Driving a Car, Car Driving, To drive a car, To drive a cab
To dream of driving a carriage, signifies unjust criticism of your seeming extravagance. You will be compelled to do things which appear undignified.

To dream of driving a public cab, denotes menial labor, with little chance for advancement. If it is a wagon, you will remain in poverty and unfortunate circumstances for some time. If you are driven in these conveyances by others, you will profit by superior knowledge of the world, and will always find some path through difficulties. If you are a man, you will, in affairs with women, drive your wishes to a speedy consummation. If a woman, you will hold men's hearts at low value after succeeding in getting a hold on them.

Dromedary
To dream of a dromedary, denotes that you will be the recipient of unexpected beneficence, and will wear your new honors with dignity; you will dispense charity with a gracious hands. To lovers, this dream foretells congenial dispositions.

There are definitely many more...... DAY DREAM...

INITIATIVE ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY

How the world should invest in energy efficiency

One hundred and seventy billion dollars a year invested in efforts to boost energy efficiency from now until 2020 could halve the projected growth in global energy demand. What’s more, these investments could also deliver up to half of the emission abatement required to cap the long-term concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million, the level experts suggest will be needed to prevent the global mean temperature from rising by more than two degrees centigrade.

The key to achieving these results will be carefully targeting cost-effective opportunities to boost energy productivity—the level of output achieved from the energy consumed. The possibilities for improving the efficiency of lighting, cooling, and heating systems, and of other technologies like vehicles and factory machinery. Concerted action could reduce global energy consumption in 2020 by 135 quadrillion British thermal units (QBTU) a year, the equivalent of roughly 64 million barrels of petroleum a day.

How to invest $170 billion a year
The energy productivity investment opportunity varies dramatically by sector and region. Industrial sectors around the world could remuneratively deploy just under half of the $170 billion a year, residential sectors about a quarter. The commercial and transportation sectors would absorb the remaining investment, in roughly equal proportions . About two-thirds of the $170 billion would go to developing economies, where the cost of abating a unit of energy demand is about 35 percent lower than it is in the developed world, because these economies are growing rapidly, consume energy in a relatively inefficient way, and have large supplies of cheap labor

The industrial sector
By 2020, $83 billion a year, properly invested, would allow the world’s industrial sectors to abate 53 QBTU of energy demand, equivalent to about 25 million barrels of petroleum a day—40 percent of the world’s energy productivity opportunity. The money would boost energy productivity in hundreds of small ways, including cross-sector moves, such as generating heat and power at the same time and increasing the efficiency of motor-driven systems. Sector-specific opportunities, such as enhanced liquid-membrane separation in chemicals, abound as well.

The residential sector
Almost 80 percent of the residential sector’s $40 billion a year of investments would be devoted to just one opportunity: installing more efficient heating and cooling systems in new and existing homes . Yet these improvements would capture only 37 percent of the abatement opportunity in residential energy demand, which adds up to 35 QBTU, or 26 percent of the potential across all sectors.
The remaining 63 percent of the residential sector’s abatement potential will require little more than 20 percent of the sector’s $40 billion a year in capital. One major low-capital opportunity is more efficient lighting—expanding the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs)—which will account for only about 4 percent of the sector’s capital requirements but for 26 percent of the opportunity to abate residential energy demand in 2020.
Another low-capital opportunity, representing 27 percent of the residential energy productivity opportunity, lies in boosting the efficiency of appliances. The capital cost to end users could be close to zero

The commercial sector
In the commercial sector—which includes hospitals, hotels, offices, restaurants, retail buildings, and schools—the opportunity is much smaller than it is in the industrial and residential sectors. Investing $22 billion a year, 13 percent of the total $170 billion, would generate energy savings of roughly 13 QBTU, 10 percent of the energy productivity opportunity across all sectors.

Furthermore, the regional distribution of investment opportunities is quite different from what it is in the industrial and residential sectors . In the commercial sector, developed countries have about 60 percent of the energy-abatement potential and would absorb more than 70 percent of the capital required to achieve it, because the sector’s importance typically increases along with a country’s income. Similarly, the energy that office equipment and many other appliances consume increases as well.

For lighting, the huge difference is due primarily to the fact that lighting in the commercial sector is already more efficient and therefore requires upgrades more expensive than CFLs. Replacing halogen lamps with LEDs cuts demand by 50 percent, for instance, but the incremental cost of LEDs is much higher than that of CFLs. For appliances, the major difference is that in the commercial sector, the mix is dramatically more diverse and fragmented than it is in the residential one. As a result, fewer economies of scale for upgrading are available within each category, prices are less likely to fall, and end users will foot the bill.

The transportation sector
Fully one-third—4.5 QBTU—of the transportation sector’s energy-saving opportunity requires no additional capital. These gains would come from removing fuel subsidies in oil-exporting regions such as the Middle East and Venezuela, thereby reducing their over consumption of transportation fuel.

The remaining two-thirds of the sector’s total opportunity—13 QBTU, 10 percent of the savings potential across all sectors—is relatively capital intensive. Opportunities to reduce the weight and size of vehicles by redesigning them and substituting new materials, for example, can be expensive. (Lightweight materials such as aluminum and high-performance composites cost significantly more than iron and steel do.) In all, the capital requirements in transportation are larger than those for the other sectors.

Three priorities for action
In many cases, the energy-investment opportunities we have described are not being seized. Why not? The main reason is a wide range of market failures, including fuel subsidies that directly discourage productive energy use, a lack of information for consumers about the energy efficiencies available to them, and the misaligned balance of incentives among builders, landlords, and tenants . There are no easy ways around these obstacles, but policy makers and business leaders can make significant progress by focusing on three priorities. Although a few leaders have already begun to act, many more will be needed.

Set energy efficiency standards for appliances and equipment
The investment requirements are relatively modest in appliances, lighting, equipment, and the like. Efficiency standards can play a critical role in coordinating the transition of production volumes from less efficient products to more efficient ones, thus boosting their market penetration by generating large unit cost reductions.7 In the United States, for example, the steady growth of demanding standards boosted the efficiency of refrigerators by 4.4 percent a year from 1970 to 1985.

Some governments have chosen to base standards on specific technologies (as Australia has done by mandating the use of CFLs). A more effective approach is to set overall performance standards that can be reached in a variety of ways. South Korea, for example, has a one-watt standby power requirement,8 and California is phasing out incandescent lights by 2012 but allowing consumers to replace them with any of several more efficient options. There is a strong case for adopting similar standards for other household appliances, as well as for business equipment sold in high volumes, and for applying existing local standards to larger regions.

Meanwhile, private-sector companies can create voluntary industry standards for energy efficiency. In the United States, the Consumer Electronics Association, for example, has defined the maximum energy consumption for the sleep mode of basic digital TV set-top boxes. The voluntary disclosure of information can help as well. In 2007, for instance, the UK’s Bathroom Manufacturers Association announced a voluntary industry-led labeling scheme for more efficient bathroom products.

Finance energy efficiency upgrades in new buildings and in remodels
Incorporating energy efficiency features in new houses and other structures is much cheaper than retrofitting them later on; for instance, the cost of installing double-pane windows in new buildings is a great deal lower than the cost of replacing existing single windows with new double ones. Likewise, if households or companies tear down walls when they have buildings remodeled, it pays to install more insulation.

Yet capital constraints prevent many households from seizing these opportunities. Even in developed economies with established mortgage markets, people who have preapproved mortgages for defined amounts often face trade-offs—for example, between buying a marble kitchen countertop or energy-efficient double-pane windows. In most private commercial buildings, the main challenge is to overcome agency issues between landlords and tenants and rapid turnover of commercial businesses that lead to very high discount rates.

For all these reasons, the public and private sectors should help provide capital to finance upfront investments in energy-efficient construction. Some private- and public-sector players already offer energy efficiency loans: Citigroup and Bank of America, for instance, have announced $50 billion and $18 billion funds, respectively, for green investments, including preferential loans for energy-efficient homes. China has set aside $1 billion (financed by the sale of carbon credits) for energy-efficient products such as new lightbulbs.

There is much room for further innovation—for instance, by aggregating the energy savings from a number of households and companies and securitizing them into tradable energy-efficient mortgages, "white certificates" (tradable documents indicating energy efficiency gains), or emission permits. In addition, mortgage players can find innovative ways of collaborating with utilities and energy intermediaries to link future energy savings directly to the terms of mortgages.

Public–private partnerships often expand the investment pie and tap into specialized expertise effectively. Under the Clinton Climate Initiative, for example, the US federal government has teamed up with building-control companies and financial institutions to increase the energy efficiency of urban structures through retrofitting. Some $5 billion of loans from five major financial institutions are available to facilitate economically practical efficiency solutions.

International financial institutions and development agencies, as well as non governmental organizations (NGOs), play a critical role in expanding financial support for energy efficiency in rapidly growing developing regions. The World Bank’s investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, for example, have grown by 67 percent, to $1.4 billion, during the last fiscal year.

The Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP)—a global public–private undertaking backed by more than 200 governments, businesses, development banks, and NGOs—specializes in the innovative financing of energy efficiency investments. One of the beneficiaries, the E+Co West Africa Modern Energy Fund, aims to mobilize $120 million of third-party capital to finance energy efficiency projects in the region.

Raise corporate standards for energy efficiency
Why does so much of the potential energy productivity opportunity in the industrial and commercial sectors remain untapped? One important reason is that many companies around the globe continue to be government owned (for instance, those that control much of China’s industrial capacity) or enjoy high levels of regulatory protection that shields them from competition (such as steel, until recently, in the United States and many other countries).

Improving performance is hard work for managers. Without market pressure to do so, many companies just will not take advantage of all the available opportunities to boost their energy productivity.

In state-owned enterprises and other non market institutions, including energy productivity, considerations in a manager’s performance evaluation is another option, which we already see in China. Private-equity firms can implement significant change too. In the United States, some of them (and utilities as well) are already tapping into the large combined-heat-and-power opportunity in industrial companies; capturing heat to generate electricity on-site can increase the efficiency of power generation to 80 percent, from 40.

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GALAPAGOS - THE LIVING HISTORY

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION:

The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 972 km west of continental Ecuador.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature.

The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Located in the eastern Pacific Ocean at 973 km (604 miles) off the west coast of South America. The closest land mass is the mainland of Ecuador to the east (the country to which they belong), to the North is Cocos Island 720 km (447 miles) and to the South is Easter Island and San Felix Island at 3200 km (1,990 miles).

WEATHER:

Although located on the Equator, the Humboldt Current brings cold water to the islands, causing frequent drizzles during most of the year. The weather is periodically influenced by the El Niño phenomenon which brings warmer temperatures and heavy rains.

During the season known as the "Garua" (June to November) the temperature by the sea is 22°C, a steady and cold wind blows from South and Southeast, and frequent drizzles (Garuas) last most of the day, along with dense fog which conceals the islands. During the warm season (December to May) the average sea and air temperature rises to 25°C, there is no wind at all, there are sporadic though strong rains and the sun shines.

DEMOGRAPHICS:

It is one of the few places in the world without an indigenous population. The largest ethnic group is composed of Ecuadorian Mestizos, the mixed descendants of Spanish colonists and indigenous Native Americans, who arrived mainly in the last century from the continental part of Ecuador.
In 1959, approximately 1,000 to 2,000 people called the islands their home. In 1972 a census was done in the archipelago and a population of 3,488 was recorded. By the 1980s, this number had risen to more than 15,000 people, and 2006 estimates place the population around 40,000 people.
Five of the islands are inhabited: Baltra, Floreana, Isabela, San Cristobal and Santa Cruz.

Noteworthy species include: Iguana , turtle , penguin , Sea Lion

In 2007, UNESCO put the Galápagos Islands on their World Heritage in Danger List.

On January 28, 2008, Galapagos National Park official Victor Carrion announced the killing of 53 sea lions (13 pups, 25 youngsters, 9 males and 6 females) at Pinta, Galapagos Islands nature reserve with their heads caved in. In 2001 poachers killed 35 male sea lions.

The Galápagos Islands were short-listed as a candidate to be one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature by the New Seven Wonders of the World Foundation.

GRAPHOLOGY

Graphology is the scientific study and analysis of handwriting which depictes a person's personality. It's interesting to subject to explore. If you are interested to learn more about do get in touch as I do practice this for fun....

It may open the ways to many unexplored areas for anyone. Handwriting must be studied taking into consideration of following areas:

size

( Small -Such persons are meticulous andobservant,reserved and restrained.They are mentally alert but lackself confidence ,

Large -Such persons are bold and aggressive.They are ambitious, enthusiastic and extrovert.Lacks concertation and discipline.Strongly motivated,confident and optimistic ,

Moderate - Such persons are conservative,conventional and traditional,practicaland realistic.They are honest,sincere,adaptable and moderate in attitude,

Variable - Such persons are moody and quick-tempered.They are indecisive and inconsistent.They are naive and immature,unpredictable and emotionally off-balance)

slant of letters

Extreme Right Slant -This pattern indicates insecurity andimpulsiveness.Such persons are sensitive,possesive and intense.At times they are unrestrainedand capable of hysteria

Extreme Left Slant -Such persons have a repressed childhood and are fearful of the life itself.They are emotionally withdrawn,apprehensive of intimacy and defensive

Vertical Slant -This hand writing is indicator of independent, self controlled,self restrained and self reliant.Their head controls heart

Irregular Slant -Persons with such hand writing are extremely sensitive

moody, thoughtful,erratic,unpredictable,versatile,nervousand excitable.

word spacing,

Closely spaced letters -Such persons are repressed,scared,selfish,hostile and inhibited.They are resentful and notvery adjusting in nature..

Widely spaced letters - Such persons are extrovert.They are sympathetic and humane.It is indication of a considerate and spendthrift person.

Evenly spaced words - Such persons are resonable,self confident,amiable person.They are well balanced and non adventurous.

Unevenly spaced words -Such persons are insecure andspontaneous.They show changeable social attitude and gullible.

line spacing

Evenly spaced lines -Such persons are well balancedin their attitude.They are harmonious and flexible.

Widely spaced lines -Such persons are good mannered butfearful of intimacy.They are suspicious,non spontaneous and hostile in theirbehaviour.

Narrowly spaced lines - Such persons are thrifty and frugalThey fear of isolation and distance.They are forceful and creative.

Unevenly spaced lines - Such persons are moody and quick-tempered.They are indecisive and inconsistent.They are naive and immature,unpredictable and emotionally off-balance.

zones

Different zones -
1.Upper zone:determines intellect,imagination,ambition & spritualism.

2.Middle zone:determines routine actions,social work,instant matters.

3.Lower zone:determines desires.

Upper zone
1.Inflated:Imaginative,spritual,intellect.

2.Enlarged:Extremely imaginative.

3.Compressed:Lack of self image and creativity.

4.High:Cautious,interest in abstract matters.

Middle zone
1.Inflated:Immaturity,conceit,tendency to exxagerate,boredom.

2.Compressed:Lack of interestin everyday social and work life.

Lower zone
1.Inflated:Wilfulness,wastage of time & money.

2.Angular:Hostile,uncompromising,resentment.

3.No loops:Materialistic repression.

4.Short loop:Lethargic,no material interest

pressure

Heavy Pressure - Such persons are aggressive,possesiveviolent and egoistic.They are creativeenthusiastic,sensuous and enduring.It shows an emotionally strong and deeply committed person.

Light pressure - Such persons are sensetive,tender,tolerant,spritual,adaptableand forgiving.They are passively indifferent,weak-willed and lackvitality.It indicates physically weak andfragile person who prefers pastel colors.

Moderate pressure - Such persons are moderately energetic,cooperative,sociable.They are calm and collected.They shun extremesand are balanced mentally

margins

Upper margin -

Wide:Modest,formal,reservedand withdrawn to oneself.

Narrow:Informal,direct,lackof respect and indifferent.

Lower margin
Wide:Idealistic,superficial,aloofand reserved.It indicates emotional trauma.

Narrow:Sentimental,materialistic,depressedcommunicative and fatigued.

Left margin
Wide:Self respect,reserved,courageousA late riser but faces life bravely.

Narrow:Shy and unsociable.Lackof spontaneity & good health.Deprssed

Right margin
Wide:Reserved and fearful of future.Oversensitiveextravagant,unrealistic and a poor mixer.

Narrow:Love of travel,unwise thriftness.Ambivalent social attitude.

Besides other factors as signatures,connects and disconnects, formation of individual letters may also be taken into consideration.

ANTOLOGY

Who says we are only civilized?

Ants are highly social , which means they live in large colonies or groups. Some colonies consist of millions of ants. There are three types of ants in each species, the queen, the sterile female workers, and males.

The male ants only serve one purpose, to mate with future queen ants and do not live very long - such a tension free full of sex life !!!!!! .
The queen grows to adulthood, mates, and then spends the rest of her life laying eggs.

A colony may have only one queen, or there may be many queens depending on the species.

Ants build many different types of homes. Many ants build simple little mounds out of dirt or sand. Other ants use small sticks mixed with dirt and sand to make a stronger mound that offers protection from rain. Western Harvester ants make a small mound on top, but then tunnel up to 15 feet straight down to hibernate during winter. Ant mounds consist of many chambers connected by tunnels. Different chambers are used for nurseries, food storage, and resting places for the worker ants. Some ants live in wood like termites. Army ants don't make a home at all but travel in large groups searching for food.

Ants have been living on the Earth for more than 100 million years and can be found almost anywhere on the planet. It is estimated that there are about 20,000 different species of ants. For this reason ants have been called Earth's most successful species.

Indian

I have a neighbour who is from Bihar , next door is a Tamil, me a Bong and my best friend is a Punjabi , the chance encounter together between us last week reveals something interesting.
we started discussion on ....

the general perception - Biharis as aggressive, Punjabis are hardworking but they lost their mind after 12.00 , Tamils doesn't tike to talk or learn other than tamil, Bengalis either don't like others or they are not liked by others.

while all of us trying to find the root cause , we couldn't came to any apparent conclusion but all of us agreed that these are some extend true . none of us a social scientist and why in a particular state have the same natural characteristics is beyond any science but the root cause we all agreed might be the cultural development of each society over the years and the self esteem of the people of that part.

While the history of Bihar says they could have been the cultural capital of india if you look at Maurya, Gupta and other dynasty and the development they had 1000 years back but actually it's just opposite. they are one of the most culturally backward state.

we couldn't draw any conclusion ....

do you have any answer????

Money ....would you call it sexy ?

Does money is really sexier than sex? no I havemn't said it...

nobody would doubt about it but to be honest both are equally sexy and compliment each other. Sex could be a money making business and in other way you could spend all your money on sex ..

So who is sexier ?? It's upto you to decide ..

Can't we be more humane?

Cosmetic animal testing still occurs for products that don't legally require testing. We are still subjecting animals to brutal tests for such products as eye shadow,and lipstick etc.

There are tests run on helpless animals for everything from eye shadow and soap to furniture polish and oven cleaner. Millions of animals suffer in these tests and the results do not help prevent or treat human illness or injury. It is still going on.

can't we be more humane?

Are we all crazy some extend?

I think all of us crazy for something or the other, Some people grow nails,some beard, some hair, then donate all these to Gods .. Is their any rationale logic and anybody could justify 'why you sacrifice such things to God' ? ..... what God would do with your ugly beards..

Tirupathi temple collects the max amount of such human sacrifices , what the temple trust do with it ?

I have heard that they sell it some companies and it comes back in the market as wigs & part of hair weaving processand may be some of them making amino acids ( I am not sure) . So it has a commercial side , do you call it sacrifice or business ?

GREED

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed ...

why we need more and what for? Is it the way we want to live ' by having more grabbing more ' ?

Happy ?

Who doesn't want to be happy? We all desire happiness. We pursue pleasures systematically through life - it comes as naturally to us as the sunflower turns to the sun.

But, pleasure once obtained does not last; so once again, the search begins. Moreover, pleasure is ephemeral; it eludes the seeker at the final moment.

One may work very hard and get all that the world considers necessary for a happy life, yet none of these things can make us really happy.

You deal with people and situations effectively only when you are happy. Otherwise, in your unhappiness, it won't matter what good intentions you have, you will only spread misery in the world. Being happy or unhappy is actually your choice.

Religion

The ultimate Consciousness

is always present everywhere.

It is beyond space and time,

with not before or after.

It is undeniable and obvious.

So what can be said about it?

“All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity,” said the French materialist phi-losopher Baron d’Holbach. Religion has been described as the root of human misery and conflict - that more people have been killed in the name of God than in any other cause.

Religion has never been the root of man’s miseries. The problem with man has been man. Religion is but an instrument; man its wielder. Like any instrument or organisation, religion can be misused. But, with religion there exists an agonising and eternal irony: it is the only path to transform the materialists who abuse it.

The Cain-Abel story provides deep insight into religion-related tensions: First, it is in the context of religion that brother kills brother. The very purpose of religion is being largely misunderstood. The purpose of religion is to enable us to be keepers rather than killers of each other, protectors rather than predators of life and nature. The ascendancy of vested interests in religion, however, degrades it into a licence for murder and mayhem, as has happened in the history of all religions.

Yesterday I lived bewildered, in illusion. But now I am awake, flawless and serene, beyond the world. From my light the body and the world arise. So all things are mine, or nothing is.

The Lord does not partake in the good and evil deeds of any person; judgment is clouded when wisdom is obscured by ignorance. But ignorance is destroyed by knowledge of the Self within.

- Bhagavad Gita

The Mayan Prophecy for 2012

The Mayan Calendar is something profoundly different than just a system to mark off the passage of time. The Mayan Calendar is above all a prophetic calendar that may help us understand the past and foresee the future. It is a calendar of the Ages that describes how the progression of Heavens and Underworlds condition the human consciousness and thus the frames for our thoughts and actions within a given Age.

The Mayan Calendar is not predicting the end of the world 2012, but the start of a new era.

The Interview with God

I dreamed I had an interview with God.

�So you would like to interview me?� God asked.

�If you have the time� I said.

God smiled. �My time is eternity.�
�What questions do you have in mind for me?�

�What surprises you most about humankind?�

God answered...
�That they get bored with childhood,
they rush to grow up, and then
long to be children again.�

�That they lose their health to make money...
and then lose their money to restore their health.�

�That by thinking anxiously about the future,
they forget the present,
such that they live in neither
the present nor the future.�

"That they live as if they will never die,
and die as though they had never lived.�

God�s hand took mine
and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked...
�As a parent, what are some of life�s lessons
you want your children to learn?�

�To learn they cannot make anyone love
them. All they can do is let themselves be loved.�

�To learn that it is not good
to compare themselves to others.�

�To learn to forgive
by practicing forgiveness.�

�To learn that it only takes a few seconds
to open profound wounds in those they love,
and it can take many years to heal them.�

�To learn that a rich person
is not one who has the most,
but is one who needs the least.�

�To learn that there are people
who love them dearly, but simply have not yet learned how to express or show their feelings.�

�To learn that two people can
look at the same thing and see it differently.�

�To learn that it is not enough that they forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.�

"Thank you for your time," I said humbly.
"Is there anything else you would like your children to know?"

God smiled and said,
�Just know that I am here... always.�

women...

I have the opportunity to come across couple of beautiful women.. I prefer to call them that way as all are matured, progressive, educated, well off and certainly beautiful .. they all are intelligent , dynamic , highly professional and what not ? everything all the qualities you could imagine..

One thing is common .. what ? they all love jewellery, good sexy cars, good food, good perfumes, branded handbags, watches, paintings …
what they don’t like ? idealistic man , man with a strong opinion, vision for the people , vision for the society, vision for the country, love to their parents, greater families , man who loves sports , man who doesn’t show constant interest to them , not praising them, forgetting their birthdays, anniversary …so on..

I was trying to figure out what man likes…
Home cooked food, beautiful wife , innocent and decent, but at bed she need to be indecent, juggling between family and work, skilled in various things, loves their aged parents , women with flawless curves, skins and lustrous hair… some addl …
How many of the above qualities could one man /women could have, may be many of them already have but what they don’t have the right attitude to appreciate.. that’s creates the whole lot of problems.. none of us try to understand each other .. end result all of us knows…

Is there any short cut? No…
Is there any formula ? no
Is there any councelling could sort out this issue ? most probably no…
Then what? don’t know … the same way as I don’t have answer to most of my problems…

who am i ?

existence, at what cost?

by birth , I hope I had some definite value addition to my child profile and by the time I have grown up everyone started expecting from me , either in the form of good grade/GPA score at school or become a genius not less than JC Bose or PC Roy at least be an IITian .

But grace of God, I couldn't become either of them and became a disgrace to the family, people started talking as if I am a hard nut to crack and only good for all bad purposes . with the immense contribution from bengali cultures/values and with the gangetic weather , I was able to shed some of the unwanted inhibitions and somehow grown up.. became idealistic nerd wanted to become another Mau Se Tung started dreaming big, socialist fundas , revolting against existing ... I just wanted to break away from the traditions ... the first step -start smoking as that could be the first revolt against your family .. easily got hooked into it .. become smoker.., tried Alchol, Ganja, Bhang and others for further rebellion .. what next ? student union leader at college? have some good girl friends ? bunk classes to have intellectual socialist movies on Cuban revolution , perestrioka what else?
but no.. none of them could really gave a meaning what I was doing .. why ? system is corrupted no place for any idealism. the simple pleasure of doing is not there. the rational mind always ask me why should I drink if the taste I can't enjoy.. why politics if it's don't do good for anyone , if the food doesn't taste like a food - how you call it a food ? example ... burger ?

actually the biggest puzzle I didn't know what I want , restless, have fundas but not so bold to take it as a challenge , joining political rallies but ending at a bitter fight , writing wall magazines but ...on which dog shits , then what ? it's too late thanks to bunk classes ...university final exams approached, realizing that i have to have good result why? as I have to survive ... as no one is there idealism will not support financially , then what ? put your 100 % to get a good score ? sucess was not so as expected then what? compromise for second category business school ॥ why business school? as every body says the corporate world is ultimate , big salary, fun, perks, good secretary , overseas trip, bonus, all modern gadgets , good sexy wife, what not ..
So where are your idealism now? where you are ? aha.... passed ten years into this funny world .. the corporate world .. how very badly yaar... why ? 'the boss is a fool' , he doesn't allow me to grow .. why? as because he is the boss .. then what ? change the job.. another boss ... this one is more dangerous than the previous one .. then what? pl help me yaar I don't know..

by the way ,you know I got married during this long 10 years, how you got married? family pressure ... no then? sexual urge ? no .. yes.. no.. again confused then what ? nothing yaar just for a change ... for a change? how? you are a fool... no doubt... the right word is Gandu I was trying to find the meaning of gandu.. after searching virtually all the sites i couldn't find a meaning .. who has started the word? he/she must be a genius . Gandu is the right word for me, by the time you might also realized the meaning to whom we should call gandu..
How to define GANDU ? is basically a man who doesn't like to use the actual potential he has and end up being as a loser... the perfect bong word as most of bongs who think themselves as intellectual but miserably failure in life.
by the way I have missed out something very much in line with my failure.. the girl to whom I like .. as still today she is as innocent as before .. not spoiled like me.. but tragedy is ...
so what you are upto? what you want? confused? lot .. don't know... then what ? killing time or killing yourself ? who knows? i don't have the answer.. i am lost in a crowded city trying to find the way out .. how i don't now.. 5W 6H all failed .. a management फुन्दास अरे गुड इन बुक्स नोट इन लाइफ .बाकि फिर कभी ...

How long shall we sleep?

Who won the election in Bengal ?? Is it Didi or it's CPM helped her to win by all it's wrongdoing...

But how long will it continue? Any idea ?

Communists are now intellectuals but without ideas

Didi is winner but it's not a win, could she claim to be a constructive leader who has vision ? simply no...

what happened to all Bongs? Are we becoming same as communists? lost our creativity ? can't we have some better leader ? I can't see anyone , what happened?

The Road to success is always under construction

The Road to success is always under construction

Never make predictions—particularly about the future

Never make predictions—particularly about the future

The coming middle ages

The middle of the 21st century will resemble nothing so much as the Middle Ages of the 5th to 15th centuries, from the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths, in 410, to the fall of Constantinople, in 1453. This was a long and uncertain period and thus an ideal metaphor to characterize our times. It was an age of plagues and progress, commercial revolutions, expanding empires, crusades, city-states, merchants, and universities. It was multipolar, with expanding empires on the Eurasian landmass, and apolar, with no one global leader. The new Middle Ages—synonymous with the age of globalization—have already begun.

First let us take the empires. Charlemagne’s efforts to resurrect the Roman Empire have been succeeded, over a millennium later, by the multipronged armadas of Brussels Eurocrats steadily colonizing Europe’s periphery, in the Baltics, the Balkans, and, eventually, Anatolia and the Caucasus. The Eurocrats’ book is not the Bible but rather the acquis communautaire: the 31 chapters of the Lex Europea, which is rebuilding EU member states from the inside out. By 2040, even depopulated Russia, with any luck, will be an EU member and the West’s front line against the far more populous East.

By then, a rebranded, globalizing China will be just a decade shy of the centennial of its civil war’s end, in 1949; the Communist Party has long declared that 2050, not 2008 (the year of the Beijing Olympic Games), will mark the country’s real coming-out party as a superpower. A half century from now, China may still be the world’s most populous country, and if the exploits of its 15th-century explorer–statesman Zheng He are any guide, its demographic, commercial, and strategic presence from Africa to Latin America—to say nothing of its diplomatic and cultural dominance in East Asia—will have substantially increased.

The world’s third center of gravity will be the United States, demographically stable but also more thoroughly amalgamated with Latin America. Almost a century after John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, the country will have rediscovered its southern neighbors, especially Brazil, for an industrial partnership to boost the Western hemisphere’s competitiveness against Asia—and to achieve energy independence from the Middle East.

What then of the Middle East, the current center of geopolitical travails? Monarchies may still support dreams of a caliphate, but a unified Islamic ummah, such as the Abbasid empire attempted, is unlikely to emerge. Global energy resources will be more diversified than they are today, so oil and petrochemicals will sustain only a modest degree of Arabian cultural expansionism, even if they still support a few Islamic crusades. With something of a reformation under way in parts of the Muslim world, one of the most practiced religions on Earth will be ever more fractured and embedded in diverse geographies, much as Christianity is today.

Meanwhile, the resurrection of the city-state, the most prominent medieval political unit, will continue. To the current list of global cities—Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo—we may add additional globalized nodes, such as Alexandria, Istanbul, and Karachi along major trade routes. Now, as then, city-states are commercial hubs all but divorced from their national anchors, reminding us that corporate actors will be paramount well into the future. City-states will pay for protection as global security privatizes further into corporate hands—the 21st century’s knights, mercenaries, and condottieri. Today’s sovereign-wealth funds, fused with city-state savvy, will be tomorrow’s Hanseatic League, forming capital networks that disperse the newest technologies to nearby regions. Not Oxford and Bologna, but rather Silicon Valley, Singapore, Switzerland, and their like will be the standard-setting centers.

The Middle Ages witnessed a number of innovations—from the cannon to the compass—that were geared to intensified global exploration. In the 21st century, the speed of communication and transport will bring us ever closer to simultaneity. As the ranks of billionaires soar beyond Gates, Branson, and Ambani, mega-philanthropists will become the postmodern Medicis, financing explorations in outer space and the deep sea alike and governing territory and production in the manner of medieval princes.

And, as in the Middle Ages, humanity faces diseases and invasions in the decades ahead. AIDS, malaria, SARS, and other maladies could become plagues like the 14th-century Black Death. What will be the impact of the coming migratory hordes, potentially unsettled by wars and environmental disasters? Who will be the next Mongols—small, concentrated hordes who violently establish their own version of peace, law, and order? How will contemporary diasporas—the millions of Chinese, Indian, Turkish, and Arab peoples living outside their home countries—blend into European, African, and American societies?

Finally, the fundamental reality of the Middle Ages was feudal social stratification, whose return the global economy may be accelerating. In medieval times, diverse power structures—religious, political, military, and commercial—all vied for control in shifting alliances. All of this is true again today and will remain so until a dominant form, like the nation-state in the 16th century, finally emerges. For now, the state is still in flux: declining in the Near East, resurgent in Asia, and almost nonexistent in Africa. Establishing a new system of global governance will take centuries, hence the uncertain leadership and complex landscape of the mid-21st century. The next Renaissance is still a long way off.

Seduction and it's secret

The foundational lies are basically that there is no personal God who created the universe and who makes laws that man must obey. The universe has always been here, yet we create it with our minds through numerous occult laws that exist to serve our selfish desires. One of the most enticing is "the law of attraction": whatever thought (health, wealth, disaster, gain, loss, pain, joy, etc.) you hold in your mind, you will attract to yourself as a reality of your life. We are all gods who create our individual destinies with our thoughts.

It's about New Thought movement, which is based upon the same delusion? there is a material mind and a Spiritual mind; a lower self and a higher Self, and the latter receives thoughts from the "Supreme Power."

The Secret is a lie as well , the Babylonians, "became one of the wealthiest races in history." No, it was through their military might at the cost of the lives, torture, and slavery of multitudes of victims. Babylon was one of the cruelest empires in history. And this commends the Secret? Thankfully, Babylon is no more. Why did it fall? Did the Secret fail the Babylonians, or did they fail to apply it? The evidence is overwhelming: the Secret is a lie.

Another thought / philosophy ....People who have drawn wealth into their lives...think thoughts of abundance and wealth...nothing else exists in their minds." "You've got to feel good about money to attract more to you....Start to say and feel...I am a money magnet. I love money." (The Bible says not money itself but "the love of money is the root of all evil"

Who is to blame for current chaos?

Some of the people says it's due to Financial crysis and initial impact was at US but it's not only a financial crysis it's due to human capitalist greed .. How????

capitalism encourage people to take risk , motivate people to have more /grab more attitude and the is no end.. which indirectly as well as directly encourage people to take the path of gambling , speculation, more profit, more consume, corruption, exploitation etc. etc. 

The nature have a healing process and it stabilize all uneven / unexpected phenomenon.. that has been happened and it's happening ... don't get panicked... it would stable at it's real term...in between some of you might loose capital gains/ loss of job/ social unrest/ more crime.... 

When we should realize the true meaning of humanity, values in life and the true meaning of a wondeful productive society? As long as we don't understand the inner dynamics more such cycle would happen....  

Solution...... it's simple start to live a collective life , give part ou our earnings to others who don't have, uplift poor , give education to all , learn to live in a crime free society... but elusive dream ? when and how... no one have clear answer... till then some more mindless people would write another blog....

 

How ‘animal spirits’ destabilize economies

For years, the world economy has been on a roller coaster. Yet not until it began to veer off the tracks did the passengers realize that they had embarked on a wild ride. Abetted by their thoughtlessness, the amusement park’s management didn’t set limits on how high they could go or even provide safety equipment.

Why didn’t people recognize the warning signs until banks collapsed, jobs vanished, and millions of mortgages were foreclosed? The answer is simple. Textbook economics teaches the benefits—and only the benefits—of free markets. This belief system, which has flourished throughout the world, holds that capitalism is essentially stable and has little need for government interference. According to that line of reasoning, which dates back to Adam Smith, if people in free markets rationally pursue their own economic interests, they will exhaust all mutually beneficial opportunities to produce and exchange.

Even at the theory’s worst, it deserves high marks, at least by the criterion of a schoolboy we overheard in a restaurant who was complaining about the C he had received on a spelling test, though 70 percent of his answers were correct. In fact, however, we believe that Adam Smith was basically right about the economic advantages of capitalism. But we also think that his theory fails to explain why the economy takes roller-coaster rides, and the takeaway message—that there is little need for government intervention—is simply wrong.

Adam Smith saw that human beings rationally pursue their economic interests, and his economic theories explain what happens when they do. But they are also guided by noneconomic motives—“animal spirits”—which Adam Smith and his followers largely ignore. Sometimes people are irrational, wrong, shortsighted, or evil; sometimes they act for action’s sake; and sometimes they uphold noneconomic values like fairness, honor, or righteousness.

As the economist John Maynard Keynes understood, “Our basis of knowledge for estimating the yield ten years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a textile factory, the goodwill of a patent medicine, an Atlantic liner, a building in the City of London amounts to little and sometimes to nothing.” In such an uncertain world, many decisions “can only be taken as a result of animal spirits.”

Five aspects of these animal spirits affect the economy: confidence and the feedback mechanisms that amplify disturbances; the setting of wages and prices, which depend largely on attitudes about fairness; the temptation toward corrupt and antisocial behavior; the “money illusion,” or confusion between the nominal and real level of prices (so that people, for example, often miss the fact that conservative investments may be risky in times of inflation); and the story of each person’s life and the lives of others—stories that in the aggregate, as a national or international story, play an important economic role.

The current crisis stems from our changing level of confidence, from temptations, envy, resentment, illusions, and, especially, from changing stories about the economy—stories that first glorified financial “innovation” and then represented it as a con game. These intangibles explain why people paid small fortunes for houses in cornfields; why others financed those purchases; why the Dow Jones industrial average peaked above 14,000 and fell, little more than a year later, below 7,000; why the US unemployment rate rose by 4 percentage points in 24 months; why Bear Stearns was only (and barely) saved by a Federal Reserve bailout and Lehman Brothers collapsed; why many banks are underfunded; and why some totter on the brink, even after a bailout, and may yet vanish.

Animal spirits at play

Explanations that involve only small deviations from Adam Smith’s system of pure economic rationality are clear because they are posed within a very well-understood framework. But this doesn’t mean that small deviations describe how the economy really works. Economic theory should be derived not from them but from the large, observable deviations that actually occur. A description of how the economy really works must consider animal spirits.
Why are financial prices so volatile?

No one has ever made rational sense of the wild gyrations in financial prices—gyrations as old as financial markets themselves. The US stock market’s real value rose over fivefold between 1920 and 1929 and then came all the way back down from 1929 to 1932. It doubled between 1954 and 1973 but fell by half from 1973 to 1974. It rose almost eightfold between 1982 and 2000 and then fell by half from 2000 to 2008. No one can explain these fluctuations rationally, even after the fact. Economists can sometimes justify the stock price changes of individual companies, but not aggregate stock price movements, which don’t seem explicable by changes in interest rates, dividends, earnings, or anything else.

When the stock market tanks, the authorities try to restore public confidence by insisting that “the fundamentals of the economy remain strong.” The authorities are right in the sense that, almost always, it is the stock market that has changed; the fundamentals haven’t. How do we know that they couldn’t generate these changes? If prices reflect fundamentals, they do so because those fundamentals are useful in forecasting future stock payoffs. In theory, stock prices predict the discounted value of future income streams: dividends or earnings. But stock prices are much more variable than the discounted streams of dividends or earnings they are supposed to predict.

A person who claims that stock prices reflect information about future payoffs resembles a berserk weather forecaster in a town where temperatures are fairly stable. The forecaster predicts that on one day the temperature will be 150° F and on another day –100° F. Even if he has the mean right, he should be fired. Likewise, you should reject the notion that stock prices reflect predictions, based on economic fundamentals, about future earnings. Prices are much too variable.

Price changes do, however, seem to be correlated with social changes. The economists Andrei Shleifer and Sendhil Mullainathan have observed this phenomenon in Merrill Lynch advertisements. In the early 1990s, before the stock market bubble, Merrill ran advertisements showing a grandfather fishing with his grandson. The caption said: “Maybe you should plan to grow rich slowly.” When the market peaked, around 2000, Merrill’s dramatically changed ads showed a picture of a bull-shaped computer chip, with a caption that read: “Be Wired . . . Be Bullish.” After the collapse, Merrill went back to the grandfather and grandson fishing. The caption advertised “Income for a lifetime.”

Keynes compared the stock market to a competition that asks the contestants to pick the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs. The prize goes to the person whose choices come closest to the whole group’s average preferences. Of course, to win such a competition you shouldn’t pick the faces you find prettiest. You should pick those you think others will find prettiest or, better yet, the faces you think that others will think that others will find prettiest. Investing in stocks often resembles that.

Red Delicious apples offer another metaphor. Hardly anyone really likes their taste, yet they have become, overwhelmingly, the best-selling apples in the United States. They tasted better in the 19th century, when a different apple was marketed under this name. As connoisseurs shifted to other varietals, growers, to salvage their profits, moved the Red Delicious apple into a new market niche. It became the inexpensive apple that people thought other people liked or that people thought other people thought other people liked. Most growers gave up on good flavor. Most Americans don’t understand that an apple could be so debased.2 Likewise with speculative investments: many people don’t understand how much a company can change or how many ways it can be debased. Stocks that nobody believes in but keep their value are the Red Delicious apples of investment.

Bubbles and the confidence multiplier

Obviously, investors want to get rich quickly when the market soars and to protect themselves when it sags. If they buy or sell in reaction to stock price increases or decreases, that response can feed back into additional price changes in the same direction—a price-to-price feedback. A vicious circle may prolong the cycle for a while. Eventually, the bubble bursts, since only expectations of further increases support it.

Price-to-price feedback may not suffice to create major asset price bubbles, but other forms of feedback—in particular, those between bubble-inflated asset prices and the real economy—reinforce it. This additional feedback increases the cycle’s length and amplifies price-to-price effects. There are at least three sources of feedback from asset markets to the real economy. When stock and housing prices rise, people who own these assets have less reason to save. Feeling wealthier, they spend more. They may also count their stock market gains or housing appreciation in current savings.

Asset values also play an important role in determining investment levels. When the stock market falls, companies spend less on new factories and equipment. When the market for single-family homes falls, construction companies drop plans to build. Bankruptcies too can greatly influence investments in business and housing. When asset prices fall, debtors default, compromising the financial institutions that normally provide debt financing. When they become less willing to make loans, the price of the assets drops more. Such asset price movements feed into public confidence: the price-to-earnings-to-price feedback. By contrast, rising stock prices boost confidence. People buy more goods and services, so corporate profits go up and stock prices rise again. These mutually reinforcing positive feedbacks continue for a while, until the feedback—and the economy—head in the opposite direction.

Leverage feedback and the leverage cycle intensify other kinds of feedback. The collateral ratio is the amount lenders extend to investors as a percentage of the value of the assets posted as collateral. On the cycle’s upswing, collateral ratios rise: for example, in the market for single-family homes, the amount banks lend to buyers (as a fraction of their homes’ value) goes up. Rising leverage feeds back into asset price increases, encouraging still more leverage. As asset prices fall, the process works in reverse.

The leverage cycle operates in part because of bank capital requirements. As asset prices rise, the capital of leveraged financial institutions rises relative to their regulatory requirements, so they may buy more assets. If many do, they may bid prices up, freeing more capital. A feedback loop thus propels prices steadily higher. If asset prices fall, leveraged financial institutions may have to meet their capital requirements by selling. The systemic effect may be still-lower asset prices, which decrease capital ratios, so the institutions must sell yet more assets. In extreme cases, downward feedback pushes prices to fire sale levels.

For most people, the rise in real earnings that accompanies a stock market boom proves that the boom is rational. Few see that the earnings rise may be a temporary manifestation of the stock market rise. If rents go up during a housing-price boom, people think the increase justifies the boom. They don’t consider the possibility that rising rents are a temporary manifestation of it.
Animal spirits and oil price movements

The price of oil too has fluctuated greatly—especially during the oil crisis years, 1973 to 1986. The first such crisis lasted from 1972 to 1974, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) restricted production. The price of crude oil more than doubled.
Ostensibly, OPEC was avenging the Arab defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. But there is another, less well-known explanation. Before 1973, the anachronistically named Texas Railroad Commission regulated the fraction of time Texas oil producers could pump. These restrictions raised the price of oil. Little notice was taken in late 1972, when the quota rose to 100 percent. From then on, OPEC could restrict output to push up prices, and the United States couldn’t increase output in response, since it was already as high as possible. In 1979, the Iran–Iraq War disrupted the supply of Persian Gulf oil, and prices doubled again, remaining high until 1986. Then, following the recession of the early 1980s, oil prices fell by half.

This summary seems to suggest that fundamentals—if not economic fundamentals, then political and military ones—determine oil prices. Indeed, these probably were the dominant factors then and ever since. Even so, feedbacks among confidence, production, and prices in the oil market strikingly resemble those in the stock market.

A crescendo of rhetoric about the population explosion and the shortages it would engender accompanied the rise of oil prices in the 1970s. Just 18 months before OPEC restricted production, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind3 foretold worldwide economic disaster—in one scenario, the death of as much as half of the world’s population late in the 21st century. Such thinking encouraged OPEC, whose ministers reasoned that reducing oil production would not only lead to higher prices but also save the remaining oil for a day when prices would be higher still. Of course, OPEC’s decision also confirmed the beliefs of those who concurred with the Club of Rome, a global think tank. What more dramatic proof could there be than a tripling of the price of oil? When the price fell in the wake of the recession of the early 1980s, the doomsday stories abated. A ProQuest search of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post for articles containing the words “proven reserves” and “oil” yields 115 results from 1975 to 1979, 137 from 1980 to 1984—and only 73 from 1985 to 1989.

Resources are indeed limited. Global warming is a threat. But the price of oil and the stories about it resembled those about the stock market. Oil prices are variable. Again, the weather forecaster should be fired.

The markets as drivers of investment

A country’s investment in new machinery and equipment, factories, bridges and highways, software, and communications infrastructure matters enormously for its economic prosperity. Careful studies have confirmed that such investments raise the standard of living.
Nonetheless, executives make them in the face of fundamental uncertainty. Theoretical economists who struggle to understand how people handle uncertainty seem to be converging on behavioral economics. Jack: Straight from the Gut, the title of the autobiography of former GE chairman Jack Welch, sums up this reality: investment decisions are intuitive, not analytical. Intuition, a social process, follows the laws of psychology—indeed, of social psychology. Asking why capital expenditure fluctuates from year to year is a bit like asking why beer consumption fluctuates from one poker party to another.

Given the speculative fluctuations in asset prices, variations in investment levels must partly reflect beliefs about these changing prices. As Welch writes, “The company’s mood fluctuated on the bullishness of our press clippings and the price of our stock. Every positive story seemed to make the organization perk up. Every downbeat article gave the whimpering cynics hope.”

To be sure, there is some doubt about the relation between stock prices and investment. According to a metric devised by the economists James Tobin and William Brainard, the correlation should be exact. In reality, it is weak.

The correlation holds for the crash years (1929 to the early 1930s) and for the millennium boom in the 1990s, when the market and investment rose and fell together. But there were two significant episodes when the stock market declined while investment continued robustly. After World War II, the market tanked, yet the economy became so strong that inflation rose above 14 percent in 1947; investment was also high. A similar scenario unfolded after the first oil crisis. The data seem to imply that if the stock market falls because of inflation while the economy remains strong, investment probably will too.

Taming the beast: Making financial markets work for us

For decades, the dominant story about the economy maintained that all the fluctuations described previously had a rational basis. During the bubble years, the story also held that any risk arising from assets such as houses and subprime mortgages could be managed through complex financial devices like securitization and derivatives, which were largely unregulated. Then the story changed. The new one suggested that all this complexity was just a novel way of selling snake oil. As the new story about Wall Street and its products took hold, the life drained out of financial markets. Housing prices sank, the demand for exotic products collapsed, and the credit crunch began.

So once again, capitalism’s dark side must be addressed. In the 1930s, in the wake of a huge catastrophe, the Roosevelt administration set up safeguards to protect the public from the excesses of free enterprise. For more than 70 years, those safeguards worked, but then complexity provided a way to evade regulation. Now there must be a new story about markets—a story that doesn’t always predict sunshine. New financial regulations will be needed to acknowledge the animal spirits that often drive markets, to make markets work effectively, and to minimize the possibility that they will collapse and require vast bailouts at public expense.
The present troubles aren’t really a crisis of capitalism. Free enterprise is still the best way to supply most goods and services. But financial goods and services are different. Capitalism works well when people know and understand what they buy. Most people, however, know almost nothing about the financial products purchased on their behalf—for example, through pension funds, 401(k) accounts, money market funds, or, if they are very rich, hedge funds.

If we thought that human beings were totally rational and acted mainly from economic motives, we, like Adam Smith and his followers today, would believe that governments should play little role in regulating financial markets and perhaps even in determining aggregate demand. But on the contrary, we believe that animal spirits play a significant and largely destabilizing role. Without government intervention, employment levels will at times swing massively, financial markets will fall into chaos, scoundrels will flourish, and huge numbers of people will live in misery. The right answers may not always be clear. But our country has no chance of finding them if it doesn’t acknowledge the importance of animal spirits.

Downturn In India Takes Uneven Toll

Effects vary within the corporate sector, while government actions to restore business confidence may take time to succeed.

The Indian stock market, and with it the confidence of India's entrepreneurs, has suffered a precipitous decline since the National Stock Exchange's Nifty index hit all-time peaks about 12 months ago at twice today's level. At the time, many Indian entrepreneurs felt that the downside was limited to about 20% to 30%; they could not see where a fall in the growth rates of their businesses, or the wider economy, could come from.

Now, with foreign investors having withdrawn billions of dollars and Indian retail investors having only re-entered the market very selectively, even high-performing companies have seen substantial reductions in their equity valuation. This extends to fast-growing firms such as Bharti Telecom (now capitalized at $25 billion), which is down 33% since its peak in early 2008.

Uneven impact. The sectors most affected by job losses so far have been retail (especially Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail) and information technology/outsourcing (which is not easy to assess and may bounce back), as well as consumer finance companies.
Many Indian businesses are very efficient at running with low amounts of working capital. Nonetheless, in the present downturn, working capital cutbacks have affected many smaller players severely, particularly auto-components suppliers to manufacturers such as Tata Motors (nyse: TTM - news -people ).

Slow recovery. Inflation has retreated a long way from the center-stage position it held until October 2008. The government has responded with a series of slow but increasingly radical stimulus packages, most recently including a four percentage point cut in excise duty. If this is maintained, it will eventually shore up many companies' bottom lines.

Yet the corrective measures taken by the government will only slowly add liquidity and restore business confidence:
They will affect sectors that require significant amounts of debt funding, such as infrastructure and real estate companies building power plants, airports, ports, roads and warehouses, as well as capital-intensive manufacturing companies.

--It is these sectors, together with agriculture, that keep most gross domestic product growth estimates for the year to March 2010 still above 5%, despite significant contraction in other areas of the economy.

Moreover, the relief will come only after a long period of inertia surrounding the election season. A staggered election timetable is now set for April 16 to May 13, with a new government not likely to take office before June. This is already affecting the pace of business decision making in a season that is critical for placing orders.

Outlook. A key factor in rebuilding business confidence will be how the rate of public- and private-sector spending on infrastructure holds up. Other forms of government intervention will probably not rebuild business confidence, which continues slowly but surely to fall. Though India's large domestic market means that the effects of the global recession on its economy are muffled, there is little prospect that the momentum of rising rates of growth will return in the short to medium term. As a result, the fastest-growing companies in telecoms and infrastructure will see their own rates of growth and profitability fall for the next year.

No sector will be immune from the effects of lower growth, but many businesses do not need credit to run well. Thus, if GDP growth holds up at above 5% and there is no serious political impasse after the elections, average company earnings should grow by 5% to 10%. Manufacturers of consumer basics and well-run companies in telecoms and power should do best; those with heavy debt burdens will slide further.

RECESSION ALL IN MIND...

What is recession?

This Story is about a man who once upon a time was selling "Wada-Pav"(Indian Burger) by the road side. He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers. He was hard of earing, so he never listened to the radio. His eyes were weak, so henever watched television.

But enthusiastically, he sold lots of"Wada-pavs". He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes toincrease his sales. His sales and profit went up.. He ordered more a more raw material and buns and use to sale more. He recruited few moresupporting staff to serve more customers. He started offering homedeliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove.

As hisbusiness was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from College,joined his father. Then something strange happened. The son asked, "Dad,aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?" The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse.We should be prepared for the coming bad times.

" The man thought thatsince his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radioand watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be takenlightly. So the next day onwards, the father cut down his raw materialorder and buns, took down the colourful signboard, removed all the specialschemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic.He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs.

Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his "Wada-Pav" stand. And his sales startedcoming down rapidly, same is the profit. The father said to his son, "Son,you were right". "We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am gladyou warned ; me ahead of time." Moral of The Story: It's all in your MIND!And we actually FUEL this recession much more than we think wedo!!!!!!!!!! !!

What can we take away from this story??

1. How many times we confuse intelligence with good judgment?
2. Choose your advisors carefully but use your own judgment
3. A person or an organization will survive forever, if they have the 5 Cs* Character * Commitment * Conviction * Courtesy * Courage

The tragedy today is that there are many walking encyclopedias that areliving failures. The More practical and appropriate views on this economicrecession is: "This is the time to reunite together for any small or a bigorganization, this is the time to motivate and retain people which are the biggest asset, this is the time to show more commitments to the customers,this is the time show values of our company to the world, and this is thetime to stand by our Nation".