We...bow to him ...with the manly, unbroken pride of the ancient Norsemen who stand upright before their Germanic feudal lord. We feel that he is greater than all of us, greater than you and I. He is the instrument of the Divine Will that shapes history with fresh, creative genius." The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich---William L Shirer Narendra Modi will either win or lose Gujarat elections. But win or lose, he will surely be there to influence what India thinks today. Many think, Modi has ideas and Modi has vision. These are attributes often absent in many leaders. At the National Development Council in New Delhi Modi was very clear that India knocking on 2008 should talk about economic criteria not religion. His presentation was that of a man who knows his economics. He was hitting out at Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's plans to earmark 15 per cent of funds under the 11th plan for minorities. He saw it...

If you are a nerd, you probably know why, this year, it's cool to celebrate April 15 in Basel town of Switzerland. Not that if you are not a nerd, you do not celebrate the birth of mathematician Leonhard Euler in Switzerland, 300 years ago. Euler according to some is the Mozart of mathematics. Another group might just think he's the Elvis. So what did Euler do? It's the dumbest question to ask. It's almost like asking so what did Elvis do/or say Mozart did or say what did Einstein do or what does Naomi Campbell do? Opinion polls across the world on Physics' greatest equation ranks Einstein's e=mc2 to be the number 1 on the charts. Always. In Mathematics, it's Euler's beautiful equation, which is always either number 1 or number 2. Please google his equation. According to some his equation reaches down to the very depth of our existence. In mathematical analysis, Euler's identity, named after Leonhard Euler, is the equation ...

Remember the Tebbit Test? In 1990 British Politician Norman Tebbit proposed the Cricket test that told the ethnic minorities in United Kingdom they wouldn't be considered truly British until they supported the English cricket team when it played the country of their origin. So if you are a "Paki" ( Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshi) you have to cheer for Michael Collingwood over Inzamam or Rahul Dravid. HRD Minister Arjun Singh's grand idea to celebrate 100 years of Vande Mataram reminds me in strange ways of the Tebbit Test. The BJP wants everyone to sing. The Congress says it's not compulsory. What's the difference? Can anyone tell? First one proposes this grand idea of singing a song and then says it's not complusory. That in no way helps anyone. Because by that time everyone has hijacked your idea. People at the receiving end are those who hardly have a voice--economically challenged and nowhere in any power equation. And then you have everyone from so-called rockstars...

Children in Holland do not put their finger in a dike to save their town anymore but talk about the land of death. This March a Dutch girl at a school in Enschede, committed suicide. Enschede is a city in the northeastern province of Overijssel on the German border. And the suicide and the town would have probably gone unnoticed if not for some friends of the girl. All of them were taking part in a game of suicide. The report first came out in a newspaper in Holland. All these girls, 12 to 15 year olds were texting each other in a game of dare, urging each other to commit suicide through their cellphones and on the internet. The vicious cycle of this suicide game was broken when one of the girls who was being egged on to commit suicide got scared and informed her parents. The panic spread in the city and the Dutch are worried about why and how could the urge...