A man, who was of no use to anyone, after death, went to heaven.  He asked for a luxurious room, he got one.  He asked for excellent food, he got them.  He asked for an LCD TV with all his favorite channels, he got it. He asked for a vehicle to roam around the place, he got one.  Then he started asking one by one and the angels were providing all he wanted.

After a few weeks, he was fed up with all the luxurious and comfortable things.  He wanted to do some work to engage his mind.  He asked the angel, “I want to do some work.  Do you have any work for me here?”.  For that the angel said, “I’m sorry, here you can get anything you want but for work”.  This man was annoyed and shouted at the angel, “This place is horrible.  How can you call this as heaven?”.  For that the angel replied, “I beg your pardon.  Did you say this place as heaven?  I think you misunderstood it.  This is not heaven.  This is hell.”

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 My Physics Prof. Ananthan doesn’t only talk about Maths & Physics but also tells me many thought provoking stories.  One of them he told me when we visited Rameswaram Temple was this ‘Hell & Heaven’. The context of this story came when we were describing about people’s motivation to build such wonderful temples few hundred years ago when they had everything in their life.

My advance apologies for two reasons: (1) This article is also going to be more than one page and (2) I may hurt few Graduates from India’s premier institutes.

1. Why do we need a University?

I had an interesting discussion with my Prof. Ananthan about the need for a degree.

If you take any famous contributor to Science or Business, they would be mostly a school dropout or at least did not get any degree from any University. E.g. Ramanujam, Einstein, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.) etc.

Once it was thought that Universities produced Educated Persons.  But, with the latest technological advances, a person may get education without any University.  In fact, the syllabus in many Universities are so old that a student has to learn from private institutes or in a job – to cope up with the latest technology.

Today a person need not get a degree to do a job.  If you take my company M/s HomePlanGuru.com for example, I never insist for any degree.  All I want is people with good analytical skills & attitude.

2. Why there are so many “Deemed Universities” in our country now?

This is my belief:

a) Deemed Universities (DUs) can make lot of money since they can specify the number of seats in each course.

b) Education is looked at as a business today by both the Institutes and Students.  Most of the students join a course not out of passion but out of compulsion to get a high paying job.  These DUs find the gap between “Supply-Demand” and fulfill the  need of these students.

c) DUs can ‘produce’ more ‘qualified’ students since they set the exam questions and their own staff correct the answer sheets. [For external Examiners, they give a 'bonous' amount for paper valuation].

3. What is the status of “Government Universities”?

This is my understanding:

a) Government Universities (GUs) are worse than DUs because they have very old syllabus and pathetic examination system [a system that tests the memorizing capacity of students rather than their knowledge in the subject].

b) Many Government and Government aided institutes lack  basic infrastructure but is still famous not because of their infrastructure or staff, but because of the students who join there.  [Only 'Creamy layer' of the students join these institutes since the fees is very less and the institutes already have an established name - which helps them in placement].

c) Teaching and Non-teaching staff in GUs are pathetic. If you conduct an exam for all the teaching staff in their own subjects, more than 50% of the staff will score less than 50% marks in their own subjects.

d) Mostly, those who didn’t get any good private jobs stick to teaching in Govt institutes.  Or they may get excellent commission from the vendors who supply lab materials and other items to the institutes. [One of my friend in Bengaluru told me that he had to pay 20% of his billed amount as commission to the HOD of a department in a Govt Institute for supplying lab items.  This amount will be more than what a CEO of a private company may get].

4. Why are students from such Government Universities not complaining about the quality of their degree/Institute?

Come on! If I say that I got a degree from such a Government Institute, would anyone give me a job or at least respect my degree?  Why should I open my mouth and tell the truth?

5. Conclusion:

As long as companies look for a ‘degree’ for employment, both DUs and GUs will produce ‘low quality Graduates’ as they do now.  If employment is de-linked from ‘degree’, all ‘Doomed’ Universities will die naturally.  Also, institutes like ICA (Chartered Accountants) must inspire other Universities to produce graduates purely based on merit [you should ask a CA student how difficult it is to pass the exam].   I’m waiting for that day to come!

Do you have to change your online passwords very often? Do you have many accounts and passwords to remember? Do you have problem remembering your passwords?

Do not worry. Here is one simple solution:

Just write down your passwords in your ‘own’ alphabets. That is, first create a list of your own alphabets. [ Say for 'a' use some symbol like 'apple'. But let it not be very obvious for others to guess it. For 'A', just underline this 'a' symbol. Each 'new' alphabet should be understandable by you and not others. Do not let others know your own alphabets.] Then use this “new English script” to write down your passwords in a notebook so that even if others look at your notebook containing all the passwords, they won’t understand it.

If you want to store your passwords in an email(sent to yourself) so that you do not have to carry the notebook with you, then use an offset character list. i.e. for ‘a’ use an offset of 3 characters and so ‘a’ will become ‘d’. This means, ‘antz’ will become ‘dqwc’.
If you know a language other than English, then write down the password in an email(sent to yourself) in both English and your language so that no one will be able to understand it quickly. [But if they can read it, they may be able to crack your password easily]

If you find these tips useful, please leave a comment here!

This particular article may be a bit lengthy(may not fit in one page) since I need to explain almost everything.  If I write like this: “We went to Rameswaram, saw the annular eclipse, it was wonderful, it was a life time event, amazing!”, then it won’t reveal how I really enjoyed the episode.  So, I’m writing in detail here:

1. Plan:

When I called my Physics Professor.  Ananthan on 1st Jan 2010 at 00:00 hrs (since 1992 I’m greeting him every year like this), he told me that he had planned to go to either Kanyakumari or Rameswaram on 15-Jan-2010 to watch the Annular Solar Eclipse (which will not happen again in our life time).  I expressed my interest to join him.

2. Travel:

Mr. Badri Seshardi, one of the promoters of New Horizon Media, booked the train tickets to Rameswaram (since tickets to Kanyakumari were not available even in ‘Tatkal’) and Hotel rooms in Ramanathapuram – 60 kms before Rameswaram.  The train reached Ramanathapuram on 14th Jan 2010 at 3:30 am and it was a pleasant journey. The Hotel was just 3 minutes drive from the railway station in an auto rickshaw.

3: Stay:

I never imagined that such a good hotel will be available in a small town in Tamil Nadu.  It was an amazing hotel named “Hotel Garish Park”  [ neat rooms, luxurious look, clean bathroom (very important) and with TV, split AC & backup power supply].  The only drawback was, they didn’t accept credit/debit card for payment.  We had food in near by restaurants which was quite good and reasonably priced. We didn’t get a room in Rameswaram itself because the Governors of TamilNadu and Puducherry were there those days ( not to watch the eclipse, but for some religious reasons, I guess).

4: Observation Location

The day before the eclipse, we went to Rameswaram to decide about our observation location.  Initially we thought of going to Dhanushkodi - a ruined city at the edge of Rameswaram (about 6 kms from it).  But later we decided to watch it from Rameswaram itself (on the roof of a Guest House Building) as there were many other scientific groups.

5. Expected things that happened:

A few things happened as I expected during the Annular Solar Eclipse:

a) During the eclipse I expected the ocean waves to rise higher. It happened.

b) During the eclipse I expected that the birds and animals might get confused about day & night.  It happened (many eagles that were flying there returned to their nest during eclipse time).

6. Unexpected things that happened:

Few unexpected things that thrilled me are:

a) I was thinking that the Sun may not be visible during eclipse and only a thin ring would be visible.  But without a cooling filter, the Sun looked normal with less intensity.  i.e. if you looked at the Sun during eclipse with your bare eyes, then it would have appeared normal to you.

b) Before the eclipse, the temperature at our location was about 34 degree Celsius.  After that, within 2 hours, the temperature decreased to around 26 degree Celsius. i.e. 8 degrees change.  It was amazing.

c) My shadow on the ground changed.  During eclipse, the shadow of my hand became blurred as I moved away from the wall.

d) I went there with my simple 5 mega pixel digital camera.  I never thought that, using a simple filter, I could capture the annular eclipse in my own camera.  It was really a great surprise for me. SEE THE VIDEO here –>  http://tr.im/ase15jan2010

e) An young boy from “Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal” taught me how to adjust my digital camera settings to capture the photo.  So far, I was using only the “Click button”, “ON button” “Zoom button”, “View mode”  and “Delete button” of my camera.  I never bothered to learn how to set the camera for different exposures (though they were available in the camera).  I felt ashamed. I never expected that my ignorance would hinder me taking pictures during eclipse.

7. Conclusion

I witnessed once in a life-time event on 15th Jan 2010 with my Physics Professor Ananthan at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu India.  When I saw people from other parts of the country there to watch the event, I was happy that “scientific temper still exists in our country”. I’m grateful to my Physics Professor Ananthan and Publisher Mr. Badri who helped me watch this event live.

Photo Album:

Annular_Solar_Eclipse_15Jan2010_at_Rameswaram_Trip

I am a member of The Physics Society and I am very much convinced about the reason for the existence of the society.   According to the founder and my Professor R.Ananthan, the education system is in such a way that students who can memorize better can score better in exams.  Very few exams test the knowledge of students.  Also, the so called ‘brilliant’ students are more informative about the subject and less knowledgeable about the subject.

Many people refer “Information” as “Knowledge”.  Recently I saw this in a Tweet: “One person’s knowledge is another person’s information”.  I disagree with this.  Because, in my perception, both are different.

In my perception Knowledge is “Information with understanding/application of mind” and Information is “Data about some fact”.   My view point is this: if both Information and Knowledge are same, then which sentence would you prefer (a) “You are a very knowledgeable person” or (b) “You are a very informative person”?

A simple example will explain the difference between Information and Knowledge:

Many persons who think that they are good in Mathematics or at least the basic four operations (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division) may still be informative about the basic operations and not knowledgeable about them.  For example, they may know that -1 x -1 = +1 (because they were informed about this rule by their teacher) but they may not know “Why -1 x -1 = +1 (and not -1x-1 = -1)?”.

Do you know why “Negative Number multiplied by another Negative Number is a Positive Number” (i.e. -1 x -1 = +1)? If yes, it means you are knowledgeable in Basic Mathematical Operations.  If no, it means that you are informative about Basic Mathematical Operations.