Veenai - the 4000 years old string instrument

"Nobel Prize-winning physicist C.V. Raman has described the veena as having a unique construction. The string terminations at both ends are curved and not sharp. Also, the frets have much more curvature than any other instrument. This design produces more harmonics than any other instruments." - source: Wikipedia

be Blessed, if you can't get one..

1. The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you who must raise your sails.
2. A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
~ Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize in Literature 1913), author of India's national anthem.

1st Amendment to the US Constitution

RELIGION: Freedom to believe what you want to believe
SPEECH: Freedom to speak what you want to speak
PRESS: Freedom to write what you want to write
ASSEMBLY: Freedom to gather how you want to gather
PETITION: Freedom to protest what you want to protest

Sourcing sources!

"An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information."
~ Albert Einstein

Kitaro-Caravansaray

[Copyright belongs to LiveVideo.com]

Hurricane shines...(Ike, Sept. 13, 2008)

The 9th storm of the Atlantic hurricane season (2008) made a gentle trip to Bryan, TX too...

Our Destiny - ordered randomness

A beautiful composition by Vasanth Vaseegaran and thoughtful lyrics by Prashanth Nair.
"Are we destined to have a destiny? Who is the master of the plot? Is Karma a working model? Why are we here? Well this song won't answer all these questions but the better truth is 'Life is not predestined and ordered, it is chaotic rather. Perhaps living every moment and following your instinct is the best way of playing it.'"

{Vasanth & Prasanth, congrats on the superb rendition. Thanks for the permission too. All the best guys!}
[Photo credit: IR picture from cinesouth.com]

A dedication to human rights

The Internet has brought incredible gifts of self-expression to many people in the world, but as we celebrate and defend online freedom, we should remember that this is a very special condition of our circumstances. Not everyone in the world enjoys the freedom we are sharing right now. Many people in the world have to endure the indignity of forced silence, the fear of violence, the dread of arrest, the despair of imprisonment, the pain of torture, or the destruction of their natural environment.
Will history record the Internet revolution as the beginning of a new age of human freedom and human rights, or as the beginning of an irreversible global inequality in access to information and discourse? The choices we make now will determine the answer.
[from the official website of the String Theory]

our contributions, ignored?

"The children of the migrants of yesteryears have done no sin for their fundamental rights to be so questioned and they be decreed to the level of second-class citizens. We would have expected that after 50 years of independence we would have overgrown such suspicions and be capable of acting with a greater degree of maturity"
~ Human Resources Minister (Malaysia), Dr. S. Subramaniam

What the heck about being normal?

"Lately I have become nostalgic for the 'normal times'. I'm not sure how to define that except to say that those were the times when we Malaysians hung out with each other without things like race and religion constantly hanging over our heads. I don't understand the constant air of suspicion that arises these days, especially among the young."
~ Marina Mahathir

the Right for Trial

The fight for justice transcends racial boundaries. Nice to see the spirit I always wanted to in what I call my home country! ("since 1960, an estimated 10,000 Malaysians have been detained without being allowed their right to a fair trial in an open court")