A K Antony : New Indian Defence Minister

It looks like the Prime Minister and Finance Mnister means business.
By making A K Antony the Defence minister, they have ensured a non-corrupt
person controls a huge amount of government money almost 4%of Indian GDP) and hopefully he does a good job.

He is not seen as a smart politician, but a good person, with a corruption free public life. From 1991 to 1995 he was the Minister for Civil Supplies, Consumer
Affairs and Public Distribution in Narasimha Rao ministry. This is also the first time when two ministers from Kerala get to the Central Govt.

Congrats to you and all the best to all the new ministers!

Muhurat Trading

BSE and NSE will conduct Muhurat Trading on Diwali, Oct 21.

Muhurat trading is seen in India as an occasion for an auspicious beginning to the traditional Hindu new year. Investors place token orders and buy stocks for their children, which are held for the long term and sometimes never sold. Traders normally book their intra-day profits, however small they may be.

Brokers on the BSE normally start the New Year with traditional ceremonies and pujas.

source

Happy Diwali !

Advertising Standards Council of India

Last week while watching TV, I saw an ad by Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI ) regarding where to report complaints on advertisements. I have seen the ad only once though. It seems many FMCGs are in their radar. You can go to their website for more info. Checkout their mission statement  here.

Some of the controversial ads were those of Dabur Red Toothpaste that guaranteed strong teeth.

Now the most important part : You can send your complaints to  asci@vsnl.com or
Use their website :
http://www.ascionline.org/two/howtocomplain.htm

Message of Good Friday

In April this year, on Good Friday, I was at St. Thomas Mount Marthoma Church. Okay, I know this blog should have been made 4 months back. But for some reason it was left as an ofline draft.

We had a nice sermon on what is the importance of the death of Jesus on the cross and how sin came in to this world. It was well said by the preacher with the below 2 stories.

Why sin came into this world?

A boy was advised by his father not to take the road to the market that crosses through a river side. But he disobeyed and took this road which was a short cut. On his way he fell into the river and began to cry for help. His father heard it, jumped into the river and saved him.

The father had advised him not to use that road, but the son disobeyed. Out of his (father's) sheer love for his son, he still went ahead risking his life and saved his son. This is the same case with Adam and Eve. God asked them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of life but they disobeyed God and sinned. God being merciful did not destroy them, but sin came into the world. God gave humanity a way out of it. Believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Now why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why did'nt God just forgive?
God could have. But sin is not so trivial to be just forgiven. God is merciful but even more, righteous. Sin must be punished. To prevent us humans from being punished, he sent HIS only begotten son Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in HIM will be saved and will have eternal life. That is the significance of the Crucifixion of Christ.

Quick View : Time in different cities

www.timeanddate.com helps you find time at diff places in the world in an easy to view format.

View the time in diff places of interest.

Now you too can you create such a link :

Step 1 :
You can add your list of interested cities, by adding the relevant 'ID' to this url. Search and find the ID ('n') in the website http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/.

Here look at the link for your city. Eg: for New Delhi it is http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=176

Step 2 :

Hence 176 is the city id and just add it to the below list for the cites parameter.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.htm l?cities=553,127,70,179,188,136,248,33,236,122,240 ,57,2,676,19,195,570,83,257,116,95,262&sort=2


At work I have this bookmarked in my web browser. Very useful.

10 definitions for Web 2.0

Here is a good blog by Ian Delaney that tries to define what is web 2.0. It is a bit technical and assumes a few things in terms of the words used. But still worth understanding and reading.


From the article, some highlights on what it is :
* It contains the wisdom of the crowds
* Any app that uses Web as a platform
* There is more colaboration in web 2.0
* Apps with a rich user experience
* Its a marketing buzz word

http://twopointouch.com/2006/08/17/10-definitions-of-web-20-and-their-shortcomings/

New planets for our solar system ?

We are going to have 3 more planets added to our solar system soon.
Hooray that's going to bring down property prices :-))

The current number of nine planets in the solar system will change to 12.

If this proposal gets through, then the 12 planets in our Solar System will be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313. There will also be a category called plutons which is actually something like a standard for including a celstial body. A pluton is a prototype like the planet Pluto.

Check out
The International Astronomical Union website for more details.