A true story of “Stanford University”:

One day a lady faded in gingham and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, walked timidly without an appointment into the “Harvard University” president’s outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such country hicks had no business at “Harvard”. She frowned.

“We want to meet the president”, the man said softly. “He will be busy all the day”, the secretary snapped. “We will wait”, the lady replied.

For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t. And the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president. “May be if they just see you for few minutes, they will leave”, she told him and he sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time to spend with them. Stern faced with dignity, the president strutted towards the couple.





The lady told him, “We had a son who attended “Harvard” for one year. He loved Harvard and he was very happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidently killed. And my husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on he campus”. The president wasn’t touched, he was shocked.

“Madam”, he said gruffly, “we can’t put up a statue for everyone who attended Harvard and died. If we did, the place would look like a cemetery”. “Oh. No” the lady explained quickly, “we don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard”.

The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical plant at Harvard”.

For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. He could get rid of them now.
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is that all it costs to start a University? Why don’t we just start our own”? Her husband nodded. The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.

Mr and Mrs Leland Stanford walked away, travelling to “Palo Alto”. California, where they established the University that bears their name, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about!.


The Bottom Line:

Appearances can of course be deceptive, but most the time that is what we go by. “Is that not true?” "I feel it is absolutely true and people often make it. Be careful friends, don't fall in this trap. It is my humble request to you all".

Its eBAY's Story Friends:

eBAY's Story:

“Ebay” started as an online company in September, 1995. It was created by “Mr. Pierre Omidyar”, who was a resident of “San Jose”. At first his site was named as the ‘Auction Web’ and it was intended to be an online marketing store and was one of the first websites of this kind in the world. Ebay was the domain name used by Omidyar for the site. His company was named as the “Echo Bay”, which comes from the domain used for his site. Echo Bay and the Ebay Auction Web was just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing sold by the site was a broken laser point for $14.




The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for Auction Web's expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, which headed the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.



















In 1997, Omidyar changed Auction Web's - and his company's - name to 'eBay', which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

Then, in 1998 -the peak of the dot com boom - eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

1999 eBay has spread worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. EBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 - the same year it introduced Buy it now - and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal web blog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay - that's a lot of laser pointers




The Bottom Line:

I think eBAY has practically proved that “An Idea can change our Life” because it had made Mr. Pierre Omidyar a billionaire. Friends why don’t we get these types of ideas? I have an answer for this – “Because we don’t use our brain to think” am I correct? “I think so, I am extremely sorry if I am wrong.”

For Love of water but not “Sick Water”:

Friends realize that we are just 1/4 but water is 3/4 of the world:

The United Nations reminded all countries on March 22, World Water Day, that humanity continues to impose a staggering burden on rivers, lakes, and deltas each year in the form of pollution. What the UN has highlighted in its report titled “Sick Water?” should stir the conscience of people everywhere. “Pollutants dumped in key water sources annually are estimated to weigh as much as the global population – which is close to seven billion people.”
“This disturbing truth should encourage everyone starting with national governments to do more to protect the broth of life.” The first step is to plug the sources of the millions of tonnes of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste that are pumped perennially into water ways and other fresh water reserves.











Action taken to improve water quality pays rich dividends – the UN Environment Programme and Habitat estimate the return to be between $3 and $34 for every dollar spent, depending upon the region and technology employed. Such investments are really important for India.

India’s response to pollution has been atrociously slow. In 2008, the country had the capacity to treat only about 18 percent of the sewage produced in cities and towns, and the increments since then have been insignificant. The rest of the sewage flows into water ways and lakes, contaminating ground water and spreading disease. The problem is linked to the national issue of insufficient of housing, sanitation, and sewage. The most infamous example of India’s failed attempts at river cleansing is that of the Ganga, which has over the millennia been revered as a holy water.






It is listed by the UN as severely polluted, with its basin receiving billions of liters of waste water every year. Clearly, governments are abdicating their responsibility towards citizens by allowing the positioning of meager and dwindling fresh water. Some are keen set up expensive desalination plans, without making a parallel affect to protect surface and ground water and recover waste water. The way forward is to enforce the well recognized “Polluted Pays” principle. Industries and municipal authorities should lead the clean up. When will rising India realize it must go all out to ensure clean water for its people?


The Bottom Line:
I am talking only about India because I knew it and it is my country. I think almost all the countries are suffering with the same problem. “Don’t be selfish friends, Please show some mercy towards water otherwise it will wipe you out of this beautiful world, because we are occupying just ¼ of the world, but it is covering 3/4 just realize it friends.”

Google and its digital future:

Do we need it or not:

Google’s hopes of creating the world’s largest digital library remain uncertain after New York district court declared it needed more time to rule on this controversial project. Announced in 2004, the $200 million projects began by scanning and digitalizing the entire libraries of four major universities, including “Harvard” and “Oxford”, and the New York public library.
In written for permission to digitize these works and make excerpts available through its search engine, the libraries were promised a digital copies of books and journals. The case, which has implications not only for authors and publishers but also for anti-trust practices and copyright law, has been snagged in the legal quagmire since 2005.

The author’s guild and the association of American publishers filed a class action suit against “Google Inc”. For resorting to what they regarded as a massive copyright in infringement for commercial use. Google claimed that use of “snippets” and “excerpts” of copyrighted works were exempted under the principle of “fair use.”

The case assumed a wholly new dimension when authors, publishers and libraries entered into an agreement with Google in 2008 to put in a place in a business model to compensate the former for use of copyrighted work through Google’s digital platform.















The agreement included out-of-print works and “orphan works” (where copyright is unknown) for free previews. A revised agreement was filed in court the following years after the U.S justice department held that original agreement could be violation of anti-trust laws.
It would benefit all the final ruling strikes an equitable and fine balance – one that protects the rights of authors and publishers that addresses concerned about Google acquiring a monopoly over a vast digital library, and that does not hinder a possible revolution in public access to knowledge.

Under the terms of revised settlement, millions out-of-print works will be available to reaches and readers in a searchable online database. There can be little doubt that Google’s digital project that vastly improves public access to books. Some countries claim that the settlement violates the “Berne Convention” for protection of literary and artistic works. “France” is even preparing its own rival to Google’s book.




















The Bottom Line:

Given such developments, the view that too much is to be decided by a settlement before a court has gained ground. What is really needed in a comprehensive legislative framework for book digitization. "I think it will be really useful to all of us and it is up to you, you can decide yours."

When hope is born anew:

"Good Friday" wishes to my friends all over the world, as a gift of "Good Friday" a small story for you:




Story Introduction:

When Samuel left his home that night, everything seemed to be going wrong. But a chance meeting on a hill far away and a story told, charges him with renewed hope. Read the story and understand what has happened on the hill.

Samuel was dejected. Everything he thought precious was gone. His parents were fighting again. Things were not too good at school. He seemed to be always in trouble. The thing was he just couldn’t think straight because all the time he was troubled.
He thought “May be I should just run away, and I can run away from all the problems. He packed few things and, in the dead of night, he crept out. It was a dark night, and Samuel was happy for that because he thought he could escape in the darkness. He walked and walked with no idea of where he was going.

He found himself climbing a hill. He was hungry, but he continued. Soon, he was on the top of the hill. He sat down and took out the bread he had packed. As he sat munching it and thinking about what he was to do, he heard a voice.

“What is the matter with you, son?”
The clouds had cleared and the moon was out. He saw an old man; his clothes were in tatters and seemed to be hanging on a rather thin frame. But his face was aglow with happiness. “What do you care?” answered Samuel rather uncharitably. “My troubles are aplenty and if you have a month’s time I can tell you all about it!”

The old man was not put out, but instead laughed. “I have seen many like you, my friend. They all find their way to this place. I don’t know how but they do. But a quite time spent here refreshes them. They always live with hope in their hearts.” “Hah! It’s easy for you to say this, old man. Look at you. You don’t have a care in the world. Do you wonder why?”

Samuel was getting interested now. He felt that the old man has some secret. “I live on this mountain. It is my mountain of hope. Do you know the history of this site?” Samuel could only shake his head in ignorance. “This is where my friend, my savior laid down his life for me.”
“I don’t understand. If he was your friend and savior, why would he have to die for you?” “He died so that I could live.” “Oh this is too confusing for me” shouted Samuel. “Be gone, you old man, with your stories and riddles.” But the old man refused to go. He sat there beside Samuel and started telling a story.




Story Begins:


“A long time ago, in a little town in Bethlehem was born a Messiah. He was Christ. He came into this world to save the people. But the people in authority could not accept his teachings. They found fault with his messages. They were threatened, you see. They decreed that he should die and one night with the help of one of his disciples called “Judas” they caught him. They beat him, whipped him, and spat upon him.”

“If he was your Messiah, your savior, why did he allow himself to be subjected to such treatment?”

“It was written that the son of God would come down to earth and suffer for our sins. He did this because he loved us. His only crime was that he loved his people. They made him carry the cross up this mountain and they crucified him.”
“A cross? But I thought only criminals were crucified!”
“Yes! They turned him like a criminal, but though he died on the cross he rose again.”

“How did that happen?”

“They hung him on the crass to die. And in the afternoon, a sudden darkness fell upon the land. And his spirit was taken. Later, one Joseph of Arimathea claimed his body and took it away to be buried. It was laid in a tomb and guards were placed there, so that the disciples would not take away the body. But on the third day, when Mary came to his grave she found that the stone that blocked the entrance had been moved and there was no one in the tomb. She felt a presence beside her, and thinking that it was the gardener asked him where their lord was. The answer they received was startling. They were told that their savior had risen. He was the risen lord.”

Thus he fell asleep after listening to the story and woke up in the morning with new hope. Then he remembered the previous night. He remembered the old man. He remembered the story. He looked around and there was no sign of anyone. Could it have been a dream? He shrugged and walked off. Whatever it was, it was good and that the story he had heard had given him reason to continue.

The Bottom Line:

How pity that he was punished and suffered on behalf of us. We are committing sins and he is being punished because of us. Imagine how beautiful the world would be if "Jesus" is still there and taking care of us.

Yet “India” has reached another milestone:

As a citizen of “India” I am very happy today. Today i.e. April 1, 2010 we have reached a historic milestone in our country’s struggle for children’s “right to education.” The constitution (86th Amendment) act, 2002, making elementary education a “Fundamental Right”, and its consequential legislation, the right of children to free and compulsory education (RTE) act, 2009, comes into force today. “The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100 year struggling for universalizing elementary education.


Over the years, the demand for children’s education has grown by leaps and bounds, everybody from the poorest of the poor to the well off, acknowledges the value of education in the overall development of children. The enforcement of the “Fundamental Right” to Education provides us a unique opportunity to mount a mission encompassing some unsolved discourses, to fulfill our goal of universal elementary education.






What is RTE Act?

The right to education goes beyond free and compulsory education to include Quality education for all. Quality is an integral part of the right to education. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the “Right of Children to free and compulsory education Act, 2009 will directly benefit close to one crore children who do not go to school at present. As per the Act, private educational institutions should reserve 25 percent seats for children from the weaker sections of the society.

The Centre and the States have agreed to share the financial burden in the ratio of 55:45, while the finance commission has given Rs.25,000 crore to the states for implementing the act. The centre has approved an outlay of Rs.15,000 crore for 2010-2011 for the purpose.












The Bottom Line:

The Act is not historic now; it will be historic when it is implemented perfectly. It is the duty of every citizen of “India” to enforce the Act. “Quality education comes only from Quality schools, infrastructure and “Trained Teachers”. As far as I concern only 50 percent of the teachers are well qualified “Mr. Kapil Sibal”. So it is our duty to take qualified teachers. “Mr. Sibal” you also said that it is a major task to bring some of the children to schools and retain them. “You know there are some children and parents who don’t even know what “Education” is and what is the purpose of it, we should take the initiative to bring awareness in them and it should become one of the clauses in the Act. I am ready for doing any kind of work to enforce this act in a proper manner and I request all the citizen of “India” to play an active role in this Act. Then we can see a prosperous “India”. Make sure that the funds to this educational rights is not misutilized.

Where is God?

A Beautiful short story:

Disciple: Where is God?

Guru: “Everywhere, in everyone and everything God is there.

Later, as the Disciple was going home, he saw an elephant charging towards him. “Get out of the way, get out of the way”, shouted the mahout, “he has gone mad!”

But the Disciple thought: “God is everywhere. He is in the elephant and he is in me. Would God attack God? No, therefore the elephant will not attack me.” He stood where he was. The elephant picked him up in his trunk and flung him aside. Fortunately, he landed in a haystack and was not too badly hurt. But he was terribly shaken and confused.

When the Guru and the other disciples came to help him and take him home, he said, “You said
God is in everything, but see what the elephant did to me?”




“It is true that God is in everything,” said his Guru. “He is in the elephant, but he is also in the mahout who kept telling you to get out of the way. Why didn’t you listen to him?”

The Bottom Line:

I read the story and liked this and that is the reason I am posting this, but one thing I learnt from this story is “Every observation should be keen and properly justified.”