Saturday, August 31, 2013

Life On Earth Started On Mars, Say Scientists

There is growing evidence we are really Martians and that "life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock".

8:29am UK, Thursday 29 August 2013
View of Mars (Nasa)


An element believed to be crucial to the origin of life would only have been available on the surface of the Red Planet.
These "seeds" of life probably arrived on Earth in meteorites blasted off Mars by impacts or volcanic eruptions, Geochemist Professor Steven Benner claims.
Prof Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the US, said: "The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock."
Speaking at the Goldschmidt 2013 conference in Florence, Italy, he said: "It's lucky that we ended up here nevertheless, as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life.
NASA's Curiosity rover celebrates one year on MarsImages from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars
"If our hypothetical Martian ancestors had remained on Mars, there might not have been a story to tell."
Prof Benner said the element molybdenum was thought to be a catalyst that helped organic molecules develop into the first living things.
"This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did.
"It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."
He added: "Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too."
Another reason why life would have struggled to start on early Earth was that it was likely to have been covered by water, said Prof Benner.

Chimp wins $10,000 for tongue-painted work after 37,000 vote in animal art contest


Artwork created by Brent, a chimpanzee at Chimp Haven in Keithville, La.
AP Photo/Humane Society of The United StatesArtwork created by Brent, a chimpanzee at Chimp Haven in Keithville, La.
NEW ORLEANS — A painting by a 37-year-old primate who applies colour with his tongue instead of a brush has been deemed the finest chimpanzee art in the land.
Brent, a retired laboratory animal, was the top vote-getter in an online chimp art contest organized by the Humane Society of the United States, which announced the results Thursday. He won $10,000 for the Chimp Haven sanctuary in northwest Louisiana.
A Chimp Haven spokeswoman said Brent was unavailable for comment Thursday. “I think he’s asleep,” Ashley Gordon said.
But as the society said on its website, “The votes are in, so let the pant hooting begin!” — pant hooting being the characteristic call of an excited chimp.
AP Photo/Chimp Haven, Inc.
AP Photo/Chimp Haven, Inc.The 37-year-old artist.
Five other sanctuaries around the country competed, using paintings created during “enrichment sessions,” which can include any of a wide variety of activities and playthings.
Chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall chose her favourite from photographs she was sent. That painting, by Cheetah, a male at Save the Chimps in Florida., won $5,000 as Goodall’s choice and another $5,000 for winning second place in online voting, Humane Society spokeswoman Nicole Ianni said.
Brent paints only with his tongue. His unique approach and style, while a little unorthodox, results in beautiful pieces of art
Ripley from the Center for Great Apes in Florida, won third place and $2,500.
More than 27,000 people voted, Ianni said in a news release. The organization is not giving vote totals “to keep the focus on the positive work of the sanctuaries and not necessarily the ‘winner,’” she said in an email. The sanctuaries care for chimpanzees retired from research, entertainment and the pet trade. Chimp Haven is the national sanctuary for those retired from federal research.
A profile of Brent on the Humane Society’s website says he has lived at Chimp Haven since 2006, is protective of an even older chimp at the sanctuary and “loves to laugh and play.” It continues, “Brent paints only with his tongue. His unique approach and style, while a little unorthodox, results in beautiful pieces of art.”
Cathy Willis Spraetz, Chimp Haven’s president and CEO, said she chose a painting by Brent partly because of that unusual method. She said she later held a canvas up to the mesh of his indoor cage so she could watch him at work.
Some other chimps use brushes or point to the colours they want on the canvas, but Brent comes up to smush pre-applied blobs of child-safe tempera paints with his tongue, she said.
“If we handed the canvas to them where it was on the inside, they might not want to hand it back,” she said. “They might throw it around and step on it.”

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Encyclopedia of Hinduism unveiled


PTI | 2013-08-28 01:04:00 +0000
COLUMBIA: A 25-year quest by nearly 1,000 scholars to document and present one of the world's oldest living traditions came to fruition when the 'Encyclopedia of Hinduism' was unveiled here today.

Hundreds of scholars, dignitaries, students, Hindu leaders and the public converged on the University of Southern California campus to witness the release of much anticipated and definitive 11-volume guide conceived, compiled and produced by the India Heritage Research Foundation.

Those present on the occasion included South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Indian Consul General in Atlanta Ajit Kumar and Gandhian Anna Hazare.

The two-day event coinciding with the release featured some of the top Indian scholars who discussed the significance of the encyclopedia and the richness and diversity of Indian culture that binds more than one billion people worldwide.

The event is the launch of the international edition of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama had launched the Indian edition in 2010 in Rishikesh.

Dr Harris Pastides, President of University of South Carolina, said that he was humbled to see the encyclopedia being launched in his campus.

"It is a deep honor to be participating in the American release of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism. This is a remarkable work of scholarship and research. I hope that many in academia and in everyday life will turn to it as a resource to better understand the characters, the tenets, and the impact that Hinduism has had, and is having in the world," he said.

Consul General Kumar said India and Hindus all over the world are grateful to the University of South Carolina for the launch of the monumental work.

The comprehensive encyclopedia has 11-volume work and it covers Hindu spiritual beliefs, practices and philosophy, and is the culmination of a 25-year academic effort.

The encyclopedia is written in English and includes about 7,000 articles on Hinduism and its practices.

The work also deals with Indian history, languages, art, music, dance, architecture, medicine, and women's issues. It contains more than 1,000 illustrations and photographs.

The encyclopedia's volumes run from 600 to more than 700 pages. Some 3,000 copies are being printed in first edition.

Hinduism is the world's third-largest religion, with 1 billion followers, according to a Pew Research Center study. Christians number 2.2 billion and Muslims 1.6 billion.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

FACEBOOK is bad for you ( from the ECONOMIST)

THOSE who have resisted the urge to join Facebook will surely feel vindicated when they read the latest research. A study just published by the Public Library of Science, conducted by Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan and Philippe Verduyn of Leuven University in Belgium, has shown that the more someone uses Facebook, the less satisfied he is with life.
Past investigations have found that using Facebook is associated with jealousy, social tension, isolation and depression. But these studies have all been “cross-sectional”—in other words, snapshots in time. As such, they risk confusing correlation with causation: perhaps those who spend more time on social media are more prone to negative emotions in the first place. The study conducted by Dr Kross and Dr Verduyn is the first to follow Facebook users for an extended period, to track how their emotions change.

When the researchers analysed the results, they found that the more a volunteer used Facebook in the period between two questionnaires, the worse he reported feeling the next time he filled in a questionnaire. Volunteers were also asked to rate their satisfaction with life at the start and the end of the study. Those who used Facebook a lot were more likely to report a decline in satisfaction than those who visited the site infrequently. In contrast, there was a positive association between the amount of direct social contact a volunteer had and how positive he felt. In other words, the more volunteers socialised in the real world, the more positive they reported feeling the next time they filled in the questionnaire.
The researchers recruited 82 Facebookers for their study. These volunteers, in their late teens or early 20s, agreed to have their Facebook activity observed for two weeks and to report, five times a day, on their state of mind and their direct social contacts (phone calls and meetings in person with other people). These reports were prompted by text messages, sent between 10am and midnight, asking them to complete a short questionnaire.
A volunteer’s sex had no influence on these findings; nor did the size of his (or her) social network, his stated motivation for using Facebook, his level of loneliness or depression or his self-esteem. Dr Kross and Dr Verduyn therefore conclude that, rather than enhancing well-being, Facebook undermines it.
Their study does not tease out why socialising on Facebook has a different effect from socialising in person. But an earlier investigation, conducted by social scientists at Humboldt University and Darmstadt’s Technical University, both in Germany, may have found the root cause. These researchers, who presented their findings at a conference in Leipzig in February, surveyed 584 users of Facebook aged mostly in their 20s. They found that the most common emotion aroused by using Facebook is envy. Endlessly comparing themselves with peers who have doctored their photographs, amplified their achievements and plagiarised their bons mots can leave Facebook’s users more than a little green-eyed. Real-life encounters, by contrast, are more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
What neither study proves is whether all this is true only for younger users of Facebook. Older ones may be more mellow, and thus less begrudging of their friends’ successes, counterfeit or real. Maybe.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'

Using Facebook can reduce young adults' sense of well-being and satisfaction with life, a study has found.
Checking Facebook made people feel worse about both issues, and the more they browsed, the worse they felt, the University of Michigan research said.
The study, which tracked participants for two weeks, adds to a growing body of research saying Facebook can have negative psychological consequences.
Facebook has more than a billion members and half log in daily.
"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it," said the researchers.
Internet psychologist Graham Jones of the British Psychological Society - who was not involved with the study - said: "It confirms what some other studies have found - there is a growing depth of research that suggests Facebook has negative consequences."
But he added there was plenty of research showing Facebook had positive effects on its users.
Loneliness link
In the survey, participants answered questions about how they felt, how worried they were, how lonely they felt at that moment, and how much they had used Facebook since the last survey.
They received five text messages each day at random times between 10:00 and midnight, containing links to the surveys.
Researchers also wanted to know about how much direct interaction participants had with people - either face-to-face or by phone - between questionnaires.
Results showed that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt afterwards. But it did not show whether people used Facebook more or less depending on how they felt, researchers said.
The team also found that the more the participants used the site, the more their life satisfaction levels declined.
The pattern appeared to contrast with interacting "directly" with people, which seemed to have no effect on well-being.
But researchers did find people spent more time on Facebook when they were feeling lonely - and not simply because they were alone at that precise moment.
"Would engaging in any solitary activity similarly predict declines in well-being? We suspect that they would not because people often derive pleasure from engaging in some solitary activities (e.g., exercising, reading)," the report said.
"Supporting this view, a number of recent studies indicate that people's perceptions of social isolation (i.e. how lonely they feel) are a more powerful determinant of well-being than objective social isolation."
Colloquially, this theory is known as FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - a side effect of seeing friends and family sitting on beaches or having fun at parties while you are on a computer.
Learning the rules
According to the study, almost all the participants said they used Facebook to stay in touch with friends, but only 23% said they used the social networking site to meet new people.
More than three-quarters said they shared good things with their communities on the site, while 36% said they would share bad things on Facebook as well.
Mr Jones warned that the study's findings were probably most relevant to people who spent too much time on Facebook, and the study did not offer a full comparison with "direct" social contact.
He also said that since Facebook was such a recent phenomenon, society was still learning to use the platform.
"As a society as a whole we haven't really learnt the rules that make us work well with Facebook," he said, adding some people became unable to control their experience with it.
The researchers said their study was the first to examine the effect Facebook has on its users' well-being over time.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Bank on your Mentor, not your Coach .....

Bangalore:  Former India captain Rahul Dravid today said young and budding cricketers should vouch for mentors not coaches to develop themselves as a worldclass players.

"Young players should be looking at mentors not coaches. A lot of youngsters think that they will make themselves a world-class players through coaching academies," he said at the Club Day organised by KSCA on the occasion of Platinum Jubilee celebrations here.

Dravid said coaching is a task-oriented job and mentoring is relationship-oriented. "Coaches focus on concrete issues of the game but mentors go beyond what coaches do. Their focus is on matters including self-confidence and self-perception," he explained.

"Coach Ramakant Achrekar never stuffed techinal aspects of the game in young Sachin Tendulkar's mind. Instead he gave him opportunities to play games almost everyday and made him bat for five hours in the nets which made him what he is today. In real sense, he was a mentor not a coach to the Mumbaikar," he said.

Former fast bowler Javagal Srinath said players should look at coaching only it is required to correct technical faults.

"They should interact more with senior players as Rahul used to do with G R Vishwanath and Syed Kirmani while travelling in a train to play Ranji matches," he said.

To make his point, Srinath gave the example of Australian great Dennis Lilee's interaction with him at the MRF camp at Chennai.

"But in came Lilee and he immediately found the problem and came up to me and asked whether I had bowled for the last six months? The great Australian great hit the bull's eye and said nobody on this earth could bowl at right areas without playing for the last six months. That was enough and gained confidence. Now, this is the type of coaching is required," Srinath said.

"When I reached MRF training camp a week ahead of Lillee's arrival. The coach there, after watching me bowl at the nets, ruled me out that I could not bowl," he said.

"But in came Lilee and he immediately found the problem and came up to me and asked whether I had bowled for the last six months? The great Australian great hit the bull's eye and said nobody on this earth could bowl at right areas without playing for the last six months. That was enough and gained confidence. Now, this is the type of coaching is required," Srinath said.

Monday, August 12, 2013

India will not join US alliance against China: Think tank


By PTI | 12 Aug, 2013, 08.00PM IST


"To a large degree, to shape an alliance between the US and India is wishful thinking from Washington," says Fu Xiaoqiang.
"To a large degree, to shape an alliance between the US and India is wishful thinking from Washington," says Fu Xiaoqiang.





BEIJING: Plans by the US to pull India into an alliance to contain China was a "wishful thinking" by the Obama administration as New Delhi will prefer to retain its strategic independence to fulfil its ambition to become a great power, according to a state-run think tank here today.

"To a large degree, to shape an alliance between the US and India is wishful thinking from Washington," Fu Xiaoqiang of the state-run China Institute of Contemporary International Relations wrote in a commentary on the recent visit by US Vice President Joe Biden to India.

"Admittedly, Biden made some achievements in his recent visit. In strategic aspects, India was officially invited to the 'chain' of containing China," said the commentary published in the state run Global Times newspaper.

"Biden mentioned directly that India is to play an indispensable part in the pivot," it said. "However, India cares more about drawing practical benefits from its relationship with the US, such as getting advanced military equipment and dual-use technology," it added.

"No matter how many promises the US has made to India, it is hard to change India's strategy of being independent and remaining non-aligned. On the base of shared democratic values, the 'natural alliance' between the US and India needs time to reach its full potential," the commentary said.

According to US geostrategic desires, in order to push India to integrate into its system to contain China, the US not only encourages India to move east but also brings up the concept of an "Indo-Pacific" to justify India's intervention in Asia-Pacific affairs, it said.

However, India still has various concerns over the US re-balancing strategy for the region.

India worries this may stimulate China to develop weaponry and draw India into an open confrontation with China, it said.

"This is obviously far from India's interests, since India prefers balancing China naturally by ensuring peaceful and fruitful competition. India has no intention of becoming a regional test balloon by going against China," it said.

New Delhi also worries that small countries, incited by the US, may confront China openly, worsening regional conflicts as well as damaging regional stability.

Moreover, India is afraid of being reduced to a strategic vassal of the US, which will block its path to becoming a great power in the world, it said.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

155 mm Towed Howitzers



The United States has decided to sell 145 state-of-the-art 155 mm towed Howitzers to India worth about $885 million to improve the security of "an important partner" for political stability, peace, and economic progress in South Asia.The US Department of Defense had on August 2 notified the Congress about the proposed sale.
The Indian government has requested a sale of 145 M777  155mm light-weight towed Howitzers with laser inertial artillery pointing systems, warranty, spare and repair parts, maintenance, and training equipment, the Department of Defence said in a notification.The estimated cost is USD 885 million, it said.

Welcome-Kit for WW2 Soldiers : BOMBAY


 





   An informational booklet prepared by the Hospitality Committee in Bombay for soldiers newly-arrived in the CBI Theater of World War II.

Shared by the family of CBI Veteran John Sunne.


Scroll down to view









 Welcome to Bombay

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 CLICK HERE TO ZOOM


COPYRIGHT © 2009  CARL W. WEIDENBURNER 

Friday, August 9, 2013

७२ का जयराज और २५ की लक्ष्मी ( 72's JOYRAJ and 25's LAKSHMI )


A 72-year-old elephant India is indebted to

Kaziranga National Park: He is known as "Kaziranga's Pride." But at the world-famous national park in Assam, Joyraj is quietly slipping away.

Vets who are treating him say the 72-year-old has just weeks to live. They conduct daily medical check-up and prescribe medicines to help him overcome weakness.

Joyraj, who weighed eight tonnes at his peak, and is now down to seven, retired about five years ago after a career studded with adventure and heroism.

He used to carry officers on his back to inaccessible areas in the sanctuary that did not have roads and even through water, hence helping them catch poachers and rescue other animals trapped in floods. He also helped tourists on their safaris around the 430 square km park, known best for its one-horned rhino.

"He never got angry or fought with any other elephant. There was no other elephant like Joyraj. Visitors to Kaziranga always asked for Joyraj," said Ranjit Baruah, a forest guard at the Kaziranga National Park.

There are 61 elephants who are housed at Kaziranga and are assigned different jobs.  Joyraj is the universal favourite among keepers.  He was brought here from a nearby village when he was six years old.   Before roads were developed in this hilly, forested part of Assam, food and other essential supplies were carried by him to remote camps where forest guards were staying. 

Others find it easy to offer eulogies for Joyraj.  But his mahout is a man of few words.  When asked to describe the elephant in his life, Mangal Karmakar pauses, then speaks slowly. "After Joyraj goes there will be no one else like him."



Rohtak: Lakshmi from Rohtak in Haryana has a new home. She is headed to Andhra Pradesh with a farmer who bought the prize buffalo for a whopping Rs. 25 lakh.

Lakshmi is a "Murrah," a special breed of buffalo known for high milk yield. Her owner, Kapoor Singh, of Singhwa village in Rohtak had bought her for Rs. two lakh two years ago and says she is "special." 

Ever since he named her Lakshmi for the Goddess of Wealth, says Mr Singh, she has brought him much money. The buffalo, the farmer claims, yields up to 32 litres of milk every day. She has also won many prizes at shows at the state level, earning Rs. three lakh in prize money. 
Among those who have praised Lakshmi at such shows are Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, he says. 

And now, he has earned a profit of Rs. 23 lakh with the sale to the farmer from Hanuman Junction in Andhra Pradesh. He says even Lakshmi's calf fetched him Rs. 3 lakh. 

The government veterinary in Mr Singh's Singhwa village says more farmers here are now breeding Murrah buffaloes. Haryana is known as the home of the Murrah, which are now bred all over the world. 


A Short Parsi Film-- AFTERGLOW

It is a 15-minute film “Afterglow”, made by a student director from the FTII Institute, India, a while ago. This was his graduation project.

It has been doing the rounds, at both national and international film festivals, and is doing quite well. 
So far they have won 3rd place at the London Film Festival, and the 'best picture' at the recent Calcutta Festival.

This is story about a middle-class Parsis family (complete with accents and mannerisms), in what I think is a very touching piece.

Do find the time to watch it! All you have to do is click on the link below and please do not forget to enter the password.

PASSWORD:   after11glow


http://vimeo.com/kaushaloza/afterglow

Autogrammar Is Coming to Autocorrect

REBECCA GREENFIELDAUG 7, 2013
As much humor as autocorrect's mistakes have bestowed on us, it would be nice if our "smart" phones understood the most embarrassing of grammar errors, changing our "its" to "it's" and correcting all those small, but incredibly frowned upon grammar crimes that we commit far too often. In addition to the standard word dictionary, some of us hurried texters would benefit from a grammar dictionary. It's not that we don't know the difference between "we're" and "were," but when texting it's hard to get all the way over to the character screen and sometimes we're rushing and things just come out wrong and who proof reads text messages, anyway? Sure, there's growing social acceptance of these mistakes, but we know some of you judge us by our typos. 
Well, lucky for us less-than-careful texters, the developers over atNuance — the company that invented T9 (the predictive text used on dumbphones which guesses, for instance, whether you wanted D, E, or F when you press the 3) and now provides predictive typing software for most of the major phone makers other than Apple — are working on just such a technology. It's called "future context" and it will look at an entire sentence, or a sentence fragment, and if it thinks that, say, an "its" should be an "it's," a little underline will show up, prompting the texter to change it.
As of right now, smartphone texting programs work off of what is called an "Ngram" model of language, which uses an algorithm to figure out likely strings of words. "You just basically have a big huge dictionary that lists all of the words from highest frequency to lowest," Aaron Sheedy, vice president of the Tech Input and Mobile Group at Nuance, told The Atlantic Wire. "So you have a way to algorithmically go through the tap sequence — there's a very complex algorithm trying to figure out which word you're going for." 
So, if you write "I pledge," for example, the software has a pretty good indication that "allegiance" might come next, especially if you type "al," so it will autocorrect to that. That type of program can also account for certain aspects of grammar. Like, if you type "I" it will know to use the singular of a verb, like "am" instead of "are." 
But, it doesn't work for anything that needs more context like "its" versus "it's" "'Its' is heavily dependent on whats about to be written, not what's already written," added Sheedy. The computer can't know the right version of the word without the full sentence. "Once we've written 'it's going to be a great day' versus 'its my thing,' then we know and then we can correct it."
That capability is exactly what Sheedy and his team are hoping to accomplish with the future context software. Using the same Ngram model, Nuance hopes to broaden its capabilities to take entire sentences into consideration. "We're working on how to take the Ngram to look at the right and left of any given word," says Sheedy. 
For all of you language snobs lamenting the end of "proper English" due to all the typing on the Internet, don't worry: autocorrect for grammar will continue to degrade the mother tongue. This new and improved phone dictionary will only suggest proper grammar, not automatically correct it. And, if it learns that you like to subvert the stodgy old rules of standard English, it will conform — just as it always has — adding your unique usages of "its" along with those l8rs and lols. "Learning your own personal style of language is, for us, more important than adhering to a prescriptive model of language," added Sheedy. Good, because some of us like it that way. 
Photo by Intel Free Press via Flickr.

MySnaps : Mandu, recently








Wednesday, August 7, 2013

More and more children are being raised by grandparents

The silver-haired safety net



BARACK OBAMA was raised by his grandparents for part of his childhood. He remembers his grandmother as being “tough as nails”. Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court judge, was raised by his grandparents because his mother could not make ends meet. He called his grandfather “the greatest man I have ever known”. Grandparents have always reared children when need arose. Most have done it well. A few have done it badly—the late comedian Richard Pryor, who was raised by his grandmother in a brothel she owned, was constantly beaten.
What is new is that, as the nuclear family frays, grandparents are taking more and more of the strain. Of the 75m children in America, 5.5m live in households headed by grandparents, a number that has risen by almost a million since 2005, according to the Census bureau. Beware stereotypes. Child-rearing grandparents are disproportionately black, but in absolute terms most are white, live above the poverty line and own their own homes. When a parent loses a job or cannot pay the mortgage, many families move in with grandma. Sometimes, however, the parents have disappeared: an estimated 900,000 children are being raised solely by grandparents.

Pemberton Park is purpose-built for grandparents raising youngsters in so-called “skipped generation” families. Its publicly subsidised apartments are reserved for those over 55 or under 21. Like most retirement homes it is a matriarchy: of its 36 households, all but three are headed by women. The complex opened in 2011, joining about a dozen similar projects across America, from the Bronx to Arizona. More are expected.
Pemberton Park, an apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri, caters to such families. The hush of the retirement home hangs over its brightly lit corridors and snail-slow lifts. Yet there are signs of youth everywhere: Girl Scout notices in the activity room, pop-star posters on apartment walls. Local donors have dropped off food to feed growing bodies: sacks of apples, pallets of yogurts, gallons of fruit juice. There is a computer lab, a children’s library and, outside, a playground, regularly patrolled to keep drug dealers away. The complex has a part-time social worker, charged with everything from mediating school disputes to overseeing a sexual-abstinence programme for teenagers.
Some of the observed rise in grandparent-headed families is simply down to their becoming more visible, as informal arrangements of the past clash with modern red tape, notably when registering children at school or seeking medical treatment. But something is happening, and on a scale that is drawing policy responses. It is not just that public-housing authorities are building playgrounds outside retirement homes. To avoid long custody cases, more states are creating guardianship laws, allowing grandparents to register children with schools or doctors without formally severing ties with missing or hostile parents.
Visiting Pemberton Park inspires both hope and gloom. On a positive note, resident grandmothers describe tireless efforts to bring stability to the lives of their children’s children. Lois Powell, wheelchair-bound at 59, has been raising her teenage step-granddaughter since she was a baby. She is “really old-fashioned” with her, stressing the need to finish school. Rose Stigger, 61, twice went to court to win custody of her granddaughters, fearing for their welfare with an errant mother and a father (her son) in and out of prison. Miss Stigger longs for her girls to attend college, as she never did. Pemberton Park is a support group in bricks and mortar, she beams: the grandmothers “have each other’s backs”.
On a bleaker note, the grandmothers describe a society in bad shape. Miss Stigger has worked her whole life and still does. Coming generations may never know such stability. Too often, it is “babies having babies”, she says. That creates parents too young or poorly educated to land a job that pays enough to bring up a family: “Then they drop them off at Mom’s.”
Hang about, look out for Supergran
The grandmothers struggle with modern schoolwork (mathematics is a special trial), modern morals and sheer exhaustion. Absent parents drop in for disruptive, fleeting visits, flashing cash and shiny possessions. Most youngsters want to do Grandma proud, says Latoya Walker, Pemberton Park’s resident counsellor. But they also see her as “the person who nags all the time”.
Samuel McHenry, a legal-aid lawyer, has worked with grandparents for more than 20 years. He can list the crises that send them to his downtown office in Kansas City, anxiously seeking guardianship of a child. Perhaps one in ten cases involves a parent’s death. Those are simple, unless competing grandparents start fighting, sighs Mr McHenry, a gentle, world-weary sort. It is not unusual for military parents to grant temporary guardianship to grandparents when they are deployed. About a third of his casework involves parents jailed for drugs or too addicted to cope with raising children. Roughly half of the time, parents “just took off”. Here too drugs are usually suspected. Some big changes jump out: the grandparents in his office are getting much younger, with a median age in the late 40s now. More are repeat clients, seeking to take care of multiple babies by different adult children, four or five years apart. Fewer of these adult children ever marry.
Mr McHenry’s clients are poor, but he sees plenty of private lawyers at court, representing more affluent grandparents in similar straits. What all have in common is that they are trying to save their families, after earlier disasters.
That, perhaps, should nudge the onlooker towards wary optimism. Kansas City’s grandmothers inhabit a society under great strain. But they head families of amazing resilience, built on a faith in second chances buttressed by hard work. That is not nothing. Wish them luck, them and the children they are raising.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Granny Skypes her way to MA in Sanskrit

BANGALORE: There's no age bar in education, feels 80-year-old TPShantaBai, who received a cash prize for securing the highest marks among senior citizens at the Karnataka State Open University's13th annual convocation.

Shanta Bai, who is from Kolar district and is based in Bangalore, is keen on learning new subjects and languages. After her retirement from the department of minorities in 1991, she started attending Sanskrit classes.

"I couldn't teach Sanskrit to my granddaughter who was doing her SSLC in 1994. This prompted me to learn Sanskrit. But after some years, I felt I should study the language under a teacher. So I joined an institute," she explained.

She's currently attending the Vidhyuth Uttama Alankara course in Bangalore. While attending the classes, her friends forced her to apply for MA in Sanskrit offered by KSOU and attended its contact classes in Bangalore. "I was the seniormost in the course - they were in 30-50 age group. We used to discuss a lot about the lessons. My grandson helped me use Skype to discuss lessons with my friends. I'd study in the morning for the exams," Shanta added.

Though she received support from her children and grandchildren, she did not inform her husband H R Mukund Rao, a retired officer from the central excise department, about her course. "I feared he would scold me. But like other family members, he too supported me, when he got to know about it," she said.

Shanta completed BSc from University of Mysore in 1952, BEd from Osmania University and MA in mathematics from Banaras Hindu University in 1962. She has learnt French too. "I want to translate Sanskrit works to French," she added.