YOU ARE BORN TO BLOSSOM - A.P.J ABDUL KALAM

You Are Born to Blossom is a book about scientist and philosopher Dr. A P J Abdul Kalams vision of a new India that enumerates the most vital facets of education and their contributions in building a better workforce for societal prosperity and development.Co-authored with engineer, scientist and erstwhile pupil Professor Arun K. Tiwari, the book delves into the vivid life events of Dr. Kalam, which have taken him through varied corners of the country. The former President of India, who is known for his valuable insights on social progress, has met thousands of school students on various occasions over the last five years, and recognised a prime necessity for the perfect fusion of quality education and proper guidance. Penned down with much hopes of creating awareness about the strengths of knowledge, the book promises to refurbish the missing link in the modus operandi of the Idealists and the Globals in achieving their goals. The speedy and substantial progress of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the wide possibilities at its disposal have been highlighted as the key factor for this specific purpose. The book encompasses the different stages of human life to emphasise on the common goal of unearthing the tremendous resources and support systems implicit in the field of education. It mentions about the school days of Dr. Kalam and his friend Kota Harinarayana (former chief of Indias Light Combat Aircraft Development Programme) when vision and inspiration were the only tools to keep the fire of aspiration burning in a not-so advanced educational system. The book serves its purpose well in inspiring young minds to open their doors of creative perception and pour out their latent skills when they are most needed for national growth. While education is the most powerful instrument in building a stable and mature society, every reader will realise how best to utilise the available resources in fulfilling hisher responsibility. The book has aptly been structured under eight chapters, each one depicting the sequential paths to human fulfilment, with the finale resting on education as a spiritual journey.
An Excerpt
The book contains many little ideas I found fascinating during my interaction with about a million school children over the last five years, but are rarely included in conventional academics, despite being indispensable. I receive interesting questions on my website: Why do we divide a circle into 360 degrees? When were the plus and minus signs introduced into mathematics? What was all the fuss about when Copernicus discovered a thousand years later what Aryabhatta recorded in the year 499? We live in a terror induced era. There are people who believe they will earn an honoured place in paradise by sacrificing themselves for a dream. Where does this strange notion, paradise, come from? Is not the earth an abode bestowed upon mankind? Is not every human being born destined to blossom in this very life? This book does not provide the answer. Instead of providing such answers, it asks a question - Why not? Are not all buds destined to blossom?.In a way, You Are Born to Blossom is not just a book about ideas and perceptions, but a real guide for the growth and development of the future generation.

Kirsten is in the John Wright mould

I think Gary Kirsten is a good choice. He's a nice guy and he's been a good cricketer. He's got the right sort of attitude for India, much like John Wright. He's tough inside and has got a good Test record. He's a good choice, but the players must not rely on the coach. They should rely on their own brains, their own instincts, and their own ideas.

Open Source and Free Software hackers

In the Open Source and Free Software hacker culture, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness.
According to Eric.S.Raymond, the Open source and Free Software hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among ‘academic hackers’ working on early minicomputers in computer science environments. After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Arpanet. The PDP-10,machine AI at MIT, which was running the ITSoperating system and was connected to the Arpanet, provided an early hacker meeting point. After 1980 the subculture coalesced with the culture of unix, and after 1987 with elements of the early microcomputer hobbyists that themselves had connections to radio amateurs in the 1920s. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software and open source movement.
Many programmers have been labeled "great hackers," but the specifics of who that label applies to is a matter of opinion. Certainly major contributors to computer sciencesuch as Edsger Dijkstra and Donald Knuth, as well as the inventors of popular software such as Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (the C programming language) are likely to be included in any such list; see also list of programmers. People primarily known for their contributions to the consciousness of the academic hacker culture include Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement and the GNU project, president of the Free Software Foundation and author of the famous Emacs text editor as well as the GNU Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of theopen source initiativeand writer of the famous text The Cathedral and the Bazaar and many other essays, maintainer of theJargon file(which was previously maintained by Guy L. Steele, Jr.).
Within the academic hacker culture, the term hacker is also used for a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to extend existing code or resources. In this sense, it can have a negative connotation of using kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. This derogatory form of the noun "hack" is even used among users of the positive sense of "hacker" (some argue that it should not be, due to this negative meaning; others argue that some kludges can, for all their ugliness and imperfection, still have "hack value"). In a very universal sense, a hacker also means someone who makes things work beyond perceived limits in a clever way in general, for example reality hackers.