Quick notes: Millet man | CS skills...

• Millet Man of India - Dr Khader Vali: “Dietary preferences were changed during the green revolution. Traditional food grains like millets took a back seat, as they were being considered too primitive for the modern population”.
  
  “Any food that takes a longer time to break down the glucose and fructose to be absorbed by the blood is truly healthy. While Ragi takes almost two hours to break down, positive grains or traditional millets take more than six hours. As opposed to this, rice only takes 45 minutes to be absorbed by the blood, thus increasing the risk of diabetes.” . . . . Millets— India's age-old super-food. 



• English medium burden on India: Indian students scored lower than those in China, Russia and the US in Computer Science skills



• Dr G Satheesh Reddy: India’s ‘Star Wars’ mastermind



• The One Self in all:

In monotheistic traditions the One Deity excludes all other deities. In Hindu Dharma the One Deity includes all other deities - and dwells as the Self in the hearts of all beings.
The issue is not one of conversion to a belief but of an inner Self-realisation.

— Dr David Frawley (@davidfrawleyved) March 24, 2019




• Gadkari: Priyanka Vadra took boat ride on waterway I made



• Save the Uighurs: China’s crackdown on Muslims is being felt beyond its borders



• Chinese spies: Britain rebukes Huawei over security failings, discloses more flaws

Quick notes: Caliphate shutdown | Ericsson victory...

• Caliphate gone but ISIS is alive: About 14,000 ISIS fighters are still in Syria and Iraq and are believed to have blended in with the local population.



• Syrian Kurds under threat after IS 'caliphate' falls: The presence of American troops had acted as a shield against any Turkish offensive. But Trump in December shocked Washington's allies by announcing a full withdrawal of all 2,000 US troops from Syria."The Kurds are facing an uncertain future. The most urgent threat appears to be from Turkey".



• Ericsson Teaches Anil Ambani, and India, a Lesson: When a history of the early years of India’s 2016 bankruptcy code is written, Ericsson’s lawyers will deserve a glowing mention.



• Chinese support for JeM chief: Indian traders call for boycott of Chinese products. . . . Indians are trending #BoycottChineseProducts using Chinese smartphones .



• Indian naiveté: At a time when most Western countries have virtually banned the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from entering the 5G space, what prevents India from keeping the Chinese company out of the 5G trials on security grounds?



• First Victim of “Anger”:




• Italy signs Silk Road deal defying allies: “Beijing took advantage of EU divisions.” . . . China adds another vassal state.



• Standing upto the US: China refuses to concede on U.S. demands to ease curbs on tech firms. Rejects requests to reduce limits on overseas data transfers and to relax a requirement for companies to store data locally.

Google is helping China and their military, but not the U.S. Terrible! The good news is that they helped Crooked Hillary Clinton, and not Trump....and how did that turn out?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2019




• China’s Hydrogen Economy Is Coming: The world’s EV king is seeking leadership in fuel cells, too.



• Storing excess renewable energy: German pilot project involves ripping out the boiler from an old coal plant and replacing it with a molten salt thermal storage tank that will be heated using excess renewable energy. . . . . India’s Energy Storage Market is finally starting to grow.



• Fraud: IIT alumni cheat hundreds of techies in Bengaluru.

Quick notes: Helping PLA | Kaveri engine...

• Aiding the adversary: Google is helping China's People's Liberation Army, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has told Congress on Thursday.  "The work that Google is doing in China is benefitting the Chinese military. I have a hard time with companies that are engaging in projects where intellectual property is shared with the Chinese, which is synonymous with sharing it with the Chinese military, and then don't want to work for the U.S. military". Google announced last year that it will  cease working with the Pentagon on a project  to have artificial intelligence analyze footage from drones, yet it has opened an artificial intelligence center in Beijing.
  
  $5 trillion of the Chinese economy comes from state-owned business, which share their technology with the PLA.  "The fusion of commercial business with military is significant. The technology that is developed in the civil world transfers to the military world – it's a direct pipeline. Not only is there a transfer, there is also systemic theft of U.S. technology that facilitates even faster development of emerging technology."  In June 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company is "not developing AI for use in weapons."  Yet China expert Patrick Cronin said the U.S. govt is only beginning to understand China's military-industrial complex and how the PLA accesses information.  "Technological mastery is a core element of the CCP's indirect and largely unrestricted warfare campaign to challenge the US. Stealing know-how, accumulating big data, aiding national champion corporations, coopting foreign friends in high places, identifying vulnerabilities in U.S. telecommunications, and perpetuating the mythological narrative of 'peaceful rise' are among the specific goals of Beijing." 



• DRDO shelving the Kaveri turbo-jet engine project? Until India can design and produce its own aero-engines, the performance and capabilities of any indigenously designed/built aircraft will be seriously limited by the technology that we are permitted to import. 



• Indians clinging to their daily newpaper: India might be known around the world as a centre of the high-tech industry, but it's also a country where the print media is booming.  Annual newspaper and magazine sales have soared from 40 million in 2006 to nearly 63 million in 2016. The main reason India is bucking the global trend is that although access to the internet via smartphones, laptops and tablets is widespread, many Indians still prefer to have their news delivered to their homes every morning in the form of a daily newspaper.



• Human rights issue:

This should be a human rights issue. Karnataka priests get paid $20 per month in government controlled temples! They are fighting to get $60 a month and nobody seems to listen. https://t.co/GIFwnbqDJt via @TOIBengaluru

— Subhash Kak (@subhashkak1) March 9, 2019




• Plug-in Hybrid with Rotary-engine: Mazda range-extended electric car may help the rotary live on



• Eggs may not be so good for you after all:

You might not want that omelet for brunch. A new study finds a link between eggs and higher risk of heart disease, suggesting dietary guidelines should be revisited https://t.co/vA2Ls7LC2S via @WSJ

— Betsy McKay (@betswrites) March 15, 2019

Quick notes: Desi Smithsonian | Geothermal power...

• Desi version of Smithsonian planned: Indian Museum of the Earth may come up near Faridabad



• Our charity rarely begins at home: Indian mathematician VS Varadarajan and wife Veda donate $1 Million to establish 'Ramanujan Visiting Professorship' post in UCLA 



• Air chief marshal Anil Yashwant Tipnis: "Converting the initial deal for 36 Rafales to the original IAF requirement for 126 aircraft is the crying need of the hour to counter emerging Chinese capabilities in stealth technology, cruise missiles and airborne early warning systems".



• Geothermal power: Swedish technology could make geothermal as mainstream as wind and solar. . . produces just 3% of the emissions of a coal plant generating the same power. . .Off-Grid Energy Access.



• You are the product: When Zuckerberg said privacy, he didn’t mean privacy from Facebook. . . . ‘Greatest Con Man in History’ . . . BJP splurging on Facebook, Instagram ads



• Following India's footsteps: France targets Google, Amazon and Facebook with 3% digital tax. Germany, Spain and UK may follow.



• Google's learn-to-read app: "Bolo" is essentially a reading assistant for elementary school children that harnesses Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech smarts.

Important point and the Language mission of @GoI_MeitY and MHRD addressing this. https://t.co/KFumyAu3cb

— Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India (@PrinSciAdvGoI) March 7, 2019




• How jihadists bought and sold their Yazidi captives : “They took women, abused them and killed them. A woman was shifted from one man to another unless it was to one who had a bit of mercy” . . . . . Women of Islamic State assault others they deem “infidels” at a camp where they are being held in Syria. “After being segregated to avoid problems, they fight among themselves”.



• Say NO to Vaseline: Petroleum Jelly May Not Be As Harmless As You Think



• Max Planck: "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve". . . . “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Will Pak Army Chief Survive India's Air Strikes?

Pak Army has 2 main enemies - kaffir India, and of course the elected civilian political leadership of Pakistan, who have to be kept under control. If Pak Army is weakened in a clash with one, then the other may benefit and get the upper hand over them. It will always be in India's interest to see Pak's civilian leaders have the upper hand over the war-mongering Pak military.

The latest air strike by India destroying the Jaish e Mohammad camp, has had a jarring impact on Pakistan. The position and standing of the Army chief may have been weakened in the eyes of the lower ranking officers of the Army. As a result, he might not be able to gain an extension of his position in the future, when it comes up for renewal.

Imran Khan himself may have bolstered his own stature in front of his own people by offering to free Indian pilot Abhinandan to keep the peace. We of course see his act as the hollow farce it is - but in the context of Pak's military-civilian balance of power, what matters more is how the Pakistani people themselves see things.

If Pak Army chief is fearful for his prospects of being able to renew his term, he may seek to initiate more stunts against India (or against his other threat Imran) in order to save his own position. We should be watchful.

Quick notes: Preferential status | Summer holidays...

• Access to Markets: India becomes Trump's latest trade target

India is caught between an unpredictable and transactional Trump administration and an overambitious and predatory China. In fact, Trump and Xi are birds of the same feather. Defiant unilateralism binds the U.S. and China. https://t.co/9mrhygLnc0

— Brahma Chellaney (@Chellaney) March 5, 2019




• Sad turn: Many schools curtailing summer holidays, some as low as 10 days. “Children have the right to relax and play and to join cultural, artistic and other recreational activities. With fewer holidays, there is little time for extracurricular activities”.



• Farmers in a hurry:

...cont'd

That stubble burning is estimated to cause India $30 billion in economic cost of exposure to pollution! That's a staggering ₹2,10,000,00,00,000 economic cost as farmers don't
want to wait for a few weeks to clear the old crop's remains manually or using machines.

— Kiran Kumar S (@KiranKS) March 5, 2019




• Auxiliary Battery Module: Rivian patent reveals removable battery for the truck bed.



• The promise of ultracapacitors: Why Elon Musk Spent $218 Million on Maxwell.



• Pakistani Reacts: Who is better, Sadhguru or Dr. Zakir Naik?

#WelcomeBackAbhinandan

After flying onto enemy territory and being taken prisoner and harassed, our guy is now back with us

Meanwhile in an ironic twist befitting Ramayana, the Pakistani pilot shot down by Wing Commander Abhinandan landed by parachute in a Pakistani village - whose inhabitants then promptly lynched him, thinking he was an Indian. Pakistan Zindabad! :p

Having shown his courage and calm level-headedness in a dire situation, I feel Wing Commander Abhinandan should be considered as an astronaut candidate for the Gaganyaan mission. He can make the nation proud yet again.