Saturday, January 30, 2010
MDI signs MoU with Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
ISB ranked 12th in top global B-schools
Friday, January 22, 2010
CAT 2009 Results to be announced in February
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Narsee Monjee switches to a computer based admission test
Friday, January 15, 2010
IIMs To Meet Sibal To Draw 5-yr Vision
Directors of the seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will meet the Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD), Mr.. Kapil Sibal, in the last week of January to chalk out a vision for the next five years for the institutes. The seven-point agenda will comprise the vision of the IIMs over the next five years, composition of the boards (the current size of the IIM boards with 25 members is considered large), performance-related incentive scheme and a common admission process that would prove more suitable for the students. The other talking points consist of better collaboration among the IIMs and guidelines to set up campuses abroad besides inducting foreign students.
http://www.business-standard.com
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sibal asks varsities to make tech colleges autonomous
Monday, January 11, 2010
Biometric identity must for faculty recruitment in colleges
Friday, January 8, 2010
Happy Family : 4 Keywords
The home should be the happiest spot we can ever know on earth. In it we have the very closest and dearest relationships, and it can be the constant source of strength and inspiration. But to create and preserve the happiness of the home requires certain qualities and attitudes which may be designated by four key words.
The first and most important of these is LOVE.
Ideally it is an unselfish love that brings a man and woman together to form a home, and ideally, it is love which increases that happiness of the home with children. The love which binds a family together is partly an impulse of nature, but in the Christian home, it is far more unselfish than a mere natural impulse. In Ephesians 5:25-31, the Apostle Paul says, "husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but it should be holy and without blemish. Even so ought husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherished it, even as Christ also the church . . . For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh". This kind of love would lead a man to sacrifice his own pleasures, even his life, to assure the happiness and welfare of his wife. And who can doubt that the same unselfish love which a man should have for his wife, the wife should also have for her husband, and the parents should have for their children.
Unfortunately, however, love can wither and die. To keep it alive and warm requires close association, attention and care. When parents both work and have little time for their children, they become in a measure strangers to them. By nature, children love their parents and long for their parent’s love in return. Two teenagers, whose parents after work and the evening meal usually sat glued to the television till bed time, have testified that they felt so frustrated and bitter that they even wanted to put a bomb under the TV; yet they could not tell their parents how they felt. Warm personal love which expresses itself in affectionate association, care, and attention prevents such estrangement’s and bitterness, and is the single greatest source of happiness in the home. No amount of money, fast cars, gifts, and gadgets can substitute for it.
The second key word to happiness is FAITH:
Faith, in all its aspects trust, confidence, reliance brings happiness. If a home is to be happy parents must conduct themselves in such a way that they can have implicit faith in each other and inspire such faith also in their children. The basis of such mutual trust, however, is a faith in God and in all the attributes we associate with Him truth, integrity, fairness, compassion, mercy. If parents by their lives show their loyalty to God and his nature, they instinctively win the confidence of their children, and children likewise hold the confidence of their parents. They believe in one another.
The third key word to happiness is SELF-DISCIPLINE:
Self-discipline is acquired only gradually and sometimes painfully through external discipline. A generation ago we entered the age of permissiveness, when children were allowed to make their own decisions, do their own thing. Today psychiatrists are almost universally agreed that instead of making children happier, this permissiveness has been a tragedy for both children and parents. It has led to drinking, drug abuse, crime, broken homes, and an alarming increase in teen-age suicides. Until children reach enough maturity in judgement and character to administer self-discipline, they must be guided by their parents. In Ephesians 6:1-3, the Apostle Paul says, "Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother (which is the first commandment with promise) that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth". Obedience implies definite restrictions. Parents must emphasize with children that some things are right and some things are wrong, and must see that their children observe the limitations. But when instruction fails and discipline seems necessary, it must never be done through frustration or anger, but always with love. The apostle says in Ephesians 6:4, that -fathers are not to provoke their children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. If this is done right, children actually love and respect their parents more, for they realize their parents love them enough to worry over and correct them. As the writer of Hebrews says in Chapter 12:9, our fathers chastised us, and instead of being estranged we "gave them reverence". Thus, chastening one in the right way may for the moment seem "grievous", yet the writer says it "yields peaceable fruit to them that have been exercised" by it (Chapter 12, verse 11).
The fourth, key word to happiness is RESPONSIBILITY:
Responsibility grows naturally out of the first three. If a home is filled with love, with mutual confidence and trust, and has had the guidance and correction necessary to develop self-discipline, the natural result is a recognition of responsibility. Each member of the family feels a responsibility to the others, a responsibility to merit confidence and truth, a responsibility to keep one’s promises, to carry out duties and assignments. As this sense of responsibility becomes a habit, it carries over to those outside the family, to employers, associates, and friends.
When the members of a family have little or no confidence in each other, when they can seldom depend on their doing what they are supposed to do, you have the making of inevitable unhappiness and tragedy. But when the members of a family have full confidence in each other, and when through self-discipline they have formed the habit of responsibility, you have the sure foundation, not only of a happy family, but of successful lives.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
UPSC announces Engineering Services Exam 2009 results
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Science and Religion
Modern western empirical science has surely been the most impressive intellectual development since the 16th century. Religion, of course, has been around for much longer, and is presently flourishing, perhaps as never before. There is the thesis of secularism, according to which science and technology, on the one hand, and religion, on the other, are inversely related as the former waxes and the latter wanes. Recent resurgences of religion and religious belief in many parts of the world, however, cast considerable doubt on this thesis. The e relation between religion and science is characterized by conflict and concord. conflict along certain dimensions- concord along others. The nature of religion, the nature of science, the epistemologies of science and, in particular, of religious belief etc, to be considered while discussing about religion and science.
There is an intimate connection between the nature of science and its aim, the conditions under which something is successful science.There are varoius versions about the aim of science. It is explanation for some, is to produce true theories, and is to produce empirically adequate theories for others. Some say science can’t deal with the subjective, but only with what is public and sharable and thus reports of consciousness are a better subject for scientific study than consciousness itself. Some say that science can deal only with what is repeatable; others deny this. In the furor over the teaching of “Intelligent Design” (ID) in public schools, some have said that scientific theories must be falsifiable, and, since the proposition that living things (rabbits, say) have been designed by one or more intelligent designers. Others point out that many eminently scientific claims—for example, there are electrons—aren’t falsifiable in isolation: what is falsifiable are whole theories about electrons. And while the proposition living things have been designed by an intelligent being is not falsifiable in isolation, the proposition an intelligent being has designed and created 800 lb. rabbits that live in Cleveland is clearly falsifiable (and false). The first group may reply that this proposition about 800 lb. rabbits is really just equivalent to its empirical implications, i.e., to the proposition that there are 800 lb. rabbits that live in Cleveland, so that the bit about the designer really drops out. The second group may then retort that if so, the same must hold for theories about electrons; but then theories about electrons are really just equivalent to their empirical implications, so that electrons drop out.
Still others claim that science is constrained by ‘methodological naturalism’ (MN)—the idea that neither the data for a scientific investigation nor a scientific theory can properly refer to supernatural beings (God, angels, demons); thus one couldn’t properly propose Accordeing to Creationists the world started miraculously. But miracles lie outside of science, which by definition deals only with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law”. By definition of the term ‘science’ one supposes. But others then ask: what about the Big Bang: if it turns out to be unrepeatable, must we conclude that it can’t be studied scientifically? And consider the claim that science, by definition, deals only with that which is governed by law—natural law, one supposes. Some empiricists argue that there aren’t any natural laws (but only regularities): if they are right, would it follow that there is nothing at all for science to study? Still further, while some people argue that MN is an essential constraint on science.
The concept of science is as one of those cluster concepts called to our attention by Thomas Aquinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Perhaps there are several quite different activities that go under the name ‘science’; these activities are related to each other by similarity and analogy, but there is no one single activity which is just science as such. There are projects for which the criterion of success involves producing true theories; there are others where the criterion of success involves producing theories that are empirically adequate, whether or not they are also true. There are projects constrained by MN; there are other projects that are not so constrained. These projects or activities all fall under the meaning of the term ‘science’; but there is no single activity of which all are examples. (In the same way, chess, basketball and poker are all games; but there is no single game of which they are all versions.) Perhaps the best we can do, with respect to characterizing science, is to say that the term ‘science’ applies to any activity that is
- a systematic and disciplined enterprise aimed at finding out truth about our world, and
- has significant empirical involvement.
Still, we do have many excellent examples of science, and excellent examples of non-science.
To cite the furor over intelligent design , some say the proposition that there is an intelligent designer of the living world is religion, not science. But not just any belief involving an intelligent designer, indeed, not just any belief involving God, is automatically religious. According to the New Testament book of James, “the devils believe [that God exists] and tremble”; the devils’ beliefs, presumably, aren’t religious. Someone might propose theories about an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good being as a key part of a metaphysical system: belief in such theories need not be religious. And what about a system of beliefs that answers the same great human questions answered by the clear examples of religion: questions about the fundamental nature of the universe and what is most real and basic in it, about the place of human beings in that universe, about whether there is such a thing as sin or an analogue, and if there is, what there is to be done about it, where we must look to improve the human condition, whether human beings survive their deaths and how a rational person should act? Will any system of beliefs that provides answers to those questions count as a religion? These are the questions difficult to answer. . The truth here, perhaps, is that a belief isn’t religious just in itself. The property of being religious isn’t intrinsic to a belief; it is rather one a belief acquires when it functions in a certain way in the life of a given person or community. To be a religious belief, the belief in question would have to be appropriately connected with characteristically religious attitudes on the part of the believer, such attitudes as worship, love, commitment, awe, and the like. Consider someone who believes that there is such a person as God, all right, because the existence of God helps with several metaphysical problems (for example, the nature of causation, the nature of propositions, properties and sets, and the nature of proper function in creatures that are not human artifacts). However, this person has no inclination to worship or love God, no commitment to try to further God’s projects in our world; perhaps, like the devils, he hates God and intentionally does whatever he can to frustrate God’s purposes in the world. For such a person, belief that there is such a person as God need not be a religious belief. In this way it’s possible that a pair of people share a given belief which functions as a religious belief in the life of only one of them.
It is therefore extremely difficult to give (informative) necessary and sufficient conditions for either science or religion. If it is difficult to give an account of the nature of science, it is not much easier to say just what a religion is. Of course there are multifarious examples: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and many others. What characteristics are necessary and sufficient for something’s being a religion, how does one distinguish a religion from a way of lifeare questions not easy to say. Not all religions involve belief in something like the almighty and all-knowing, morally perfect God of the theistic religions, or even in any supernatural beings at all.
(Rohith.M
