Chronicles of Nikhil Baliga

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Half knowledge and extrapolating with that is extremely dangerous " We like to think of ourselves as modern. We like to think of ourselves as people who have a scientific bent of mind. The problem is that, we have reached great levels of complacency in this area - of our confidence to extrapolate our minuscule knowledge to areas that we don't even understand and even go to levels of judging them. I recently happened to stumble across a post where a man goes on rambling about the Vedas, saying that they are merely literature that have no value per se, saying that they are terribly flawed and are books that can be read by anyone. He goes on to say that the religious people are actually creating a blockade by saying that only enlightened people under enlightened gurus can understand them, and ordinary people can't. He rubbishes all this, and explains his version of what he thinks is right. He also goes on to say that there is nothing deep hid

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " It's human to be fickle... which is why we end up in a pickle " This is a story from the great epic Mahabharata that I heard when I was a child, and remember it very well. One morning, Karna was applying oil to his body. He held a golden bowl containing oil in his left hand, and was applying oil with his right hand, when a poor Brahmin came begging for alms. "Please give me something, oh kind Sir" he begged. Karna who was known for his great charity ( daana shoora Karna ) immediately gave him the golden bowl that he held in his left hand to the Brahmin. The Brahmin on receiving the bowl, looked a little surprised, and said "One must always hand out things with their right hands. Why are you giving me alms with your left hand?" At which Karna said "By the time I take the bowl from my left hand and transfer it to my right hand, and then give it to you, I might change my mind." ----- This is a beautiful story that te

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " Try out Joli OS :-) " My netbook has Windows XP (Pre-installed) and Ubuntu which I installed subsequently. Both of these work really well on my netbook - no lag, very good speed, and both are very powerful operating systems. But still, I wanted to try out a web os to see what's so cool about it. So I decided to experiment with the much awaited Chrome OS. I went for the sister project Chromium OS. ( Do you want to install it? Read here ) However, I was facing a lot of issues while trying to install any apps, perhaps because it was a live run from my USB drive. Of course, you can't expect me to install it to my hard drive, since it will use the entire disk. So I was very disappointed with it, since it is useless if I can't install any apps. Joli OS Along came Joli Cloud - a really good web OS. I came across this when I was looking for a nice one. Installing it was a cinch. I just downloaded the Windows installer from their website . It&

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " Chrome rhymes with loam, foam and Rome. Heh! I hope it is successful for its own good :-) " There has been a lot of hype and buzz around Google's Operating System called Chrome OS, which is supposed to be a web OS - an OS in a browser. Apparently you can place order for your Chromebooks with Chrome OS pre-built. Place an order from Amazon or Bestbuy or visit Google's Chrome OS site for more into. [ What's a Web OS? Learn more ] Since I am not sure about it, I thought it would be better for me to try it out. I already own a netbook [ Read review here ] and Chrome OS was supposed to be released for netbooks. Since no words are out there, I thought it is better to try out Chromium OS, the sister project of Chrome OS. In fact, there is also a browser called Chromium which is Chrome's sister browser. To try out Chromium OS without modifying your system, follow the instructions below. You can also install it subsequently on your hard dr

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Evangelism with lure of money is cheap and underhanded " This is a very interesting topic - You will find it interesting only if you read this with a completely unprejudiced mindset. Go ahead, comment and post your views. Christianity as a religion has been very aggressive in its spread. I have had several experiences of attempted conversion and have heard a lot of talk from these evangelists as well. You can see them here . Modus Operandi Now, in this post, I would like to talk about christianity trying to spread its tentacles by using money as a bait or lure. How does this work? Simple. There are thousands of people who donate millions of dollars worldwide for the spread of christianity to some missionaries. These missionaries come to places like India, and target poor people. Now, assume there is a destitute who has no money - These people come there and tell them, " We will give you money, you convert to our religion ". So what? Now

Hey, This is regarding a small initiative that we have started off. It's non profit and for a social cause - It would be great if you can read till the end. We found a gap We found that there is a growing gap between poor children and rich children in terms of exposure that they have, by the time they complete schooling. On one hand, we have a bunch of kids from well-to-do families who own iPods, computers, Nintendo Wiis and have used microscopes, telescopes, and study in schools that can show them experiments such as titration and acid-base neutralisation using chemicals, reagents, beakers, test tubes and burettes. On the other hand, we have children from poor backgrounds who only hear and read about these things, but never see them happening and only have to visualise, and have no idea about iPods. Did you know? They don't even know what a beaker looks like! Some government schools have computers, and nobody knows how to operate them! What we thought Our idea is

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " The chances of me knowing Brahman is higher than me understanding girls " A very funny story that happened in real life, and reminds me a lot of a particular scene from Friends involving Chandler. But let me narrate it to you as it happened. Let's call the guy as Raj and the girl as Ria. Raj and Ria go to a coffee place, and are sipping coffee... and Raj is having a pleasant conversation with Ria about something, when suddenly Ria tells Raj - " Look at that girl, she looks so pretty ". Raj instinctively turns around, looks at the girl for a second, turns back and says " Yeah, she's nice... so as I was saying...... " and stops looking at the smouldering glare coming out of Ria's eyes. " Ummm something wrong? " he asked, and she said - " You looked? I can't believe you looked!! ". And Raj said - " Uh didn't YOU ask me to look? I wasn't even looking in that direction til