Saturday, June 23, 2007

Revolt in the Animal Kingdom

This an amazing video... a must-watch!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM


The nearest imagery from the human world that came to my mind when I watched it, were some of the scenes from Eisenstein's films like October, Battleship Potemkin, Strike, etc...

Saturday, June 16, 2007

still remember these verses

Another of those verses that I still remember, but can't recall the poet (if you know, would be grateful for the info):

रे चिरंतन!
ठहर कुछ क्षण,
शिथिल कर यह
मर्म बन्धन।

जानता अभिसार का चिर मिलन पथ मुझको बुलाता,
कौन गाता... कौन गाता...

trying "transliteration"

one learns...

only recently, I came across a term "transliteration"... googled, and found that blogger provides a "transliteration tool"... which allows me to make blog-posting in Hindi devanagari lipi

it is a trial... just keying in some of the many verses of the old days (not mine... and have forgotten who wrote these), which I still remember after 35-40 years (I grew up with/through them):

गीत गाता हूँ किसी दिन बाँध चंचल काल का पल
चेतना अपनी बना दूंगा स्वरों की एक हलचल
मौन का जब बाँध टूटेगा, घड़ी होगी प्रलय की
क्या नहीं इस मौन मे हलचल छिपी मेरे हृदय की?...

if this works out, then there is more to come...

Update: It works!!.. यह काम करता है!!

Friday, May 04, 2007

Making a "tough" quiz for a "tough" OB course

For those who don't know this "OB" stands for "Organisational Behaviour"...

In MOC (my creativity course), I try to communicate to the students that our thinking and actions are influenced/constrained by how we perceive a situation (and so, if we change our way of perceiving a situation, new solutions would emerge)

The disadvantage of such a simplistic approach is that it is not sufficiently complex, lacks academic rigor, and since students learn it easily, there is no way one can make a tough quiz on this point, which they can't solve.

Today, luckily, I stumbled upon something called "Theory of Situated Cognition", which defines the above mentioned common sense in the following mysterious, complex and academically respectable format:

"A theory of situated cognition suggests that activity and perception are importantly and epistemologically prior - at a nonconceptual level - to conceptualization and that it is on them that more attention needs to be focused. An epistemology that begins with activity and perception, which are first and foremost embedded in the world, may simply bypass the classical problem of reference - of mediating conceptual representations."

I am sure, an ordinary sane person will find it almost impossible to make sense out of such inane drivel - and thus, this is a proof that OB is actually a tough subject, if one takes sufficient pains to prove so.

...and now, I also know how to make tough quizzes for the students!!! :0))

Friday, April 06, 2007

at the right place, at the right time

Well.. I was at the at Oxford end of March '07 to attend the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship '07 at the Said Business School - and to attend the first meeting of the Advisory Board of the University Network...

....we both met on the side walk of the Broad Street, both searching for the Sheldonian Theatre where he was to be a speaker in the inaugural ceremony, and I was to sit on an excruciatingly uncomfortable chair/bench... !!



I can't claim it as an "achievement" - it wasn't!!

I was merely at the right time at the right place...

...last time similar coincidence happened was when I was born :0)