Bangladesh – the new base

The Discovery Times Channel had a program on Al Qaeda and one of the points mentioned was that Bangladesh is becoming the new haven. One of the incidents mentioned in the documentary was that of a ship, MV Mecca pulling into the Chittagong Port in Dec 2001.

That night the Bangladeshi military intelligence had apparently cleared off the place all of the schedule has been changed. No ship was really berthing in. Until dock-workers spotted a mysterious ship: the MV Mecca?pulling into port. Indian intelligence later learned about the secret mission of the MV Mecca, and the people who came ashore.
The few dock workers who were that in that area, who then told us that these were people, big tall people, many of them wearing the traditional Afghan shalwar but some of them were in battle fatigues as well which made them look like any other army. After two hours the group had gone ashore.
They had weapons, they had large number of assault rifles, standard AK series assault rifles, they had ammunition boxes and some of them had bigger weapons they were lugging in. At this point the trail goes cold, but there are accounts of fighters disappearing into the Bangladesh countryside. [Script of Al Qaeda 2.0]

Bangladesh is a problem for India since it is hosting many anti-Indian groups there. But it is just not the Indians who are worried.

The Germans are so anxious they bluntly told Bangladesh

Fibonacci or Hemachandra Numbers

Manish at Sepia Mutiny has an interesting entry on Fibonacci numbers which in fact should be called Hemecandra numbers.

The Fibonacci series is the set of numbers beginning with 1, 1 where every number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The series begins with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. They were known in India before Fibonacci as the Hemachandra numbers. And the ratio of any two successive Fibonacci numbers approximates a ratio, ~1.618, called the golden section or golden mean.

It’s long been known that the Fibonacci series turns up freqently in nature. The numbers of petals on a daisy and the dimensions of a section of a spiral nautilus shell are usually Fibonacci numbers. For plants, this is because the fractional part of the golden mean, a constant called phi (0.618), is the rotation fraction (222.5 degrees) which yields the most efficient and scalable packing of circular objects such as seeds, petals and leaves.

But Bhargava points out that the series also shows up in the arts. Sanksrit poetry, tabla compositions and tango, to name a few examples, use the series to find the number of possible combinations of single and double-length beats within a stanza.[Sepia Mutiny: Hemachandra numbers everywhere]

Fibonacci himself wrote that he had studied Indian numbers and did not come up with the number series. Donald Knuth also wrote about this

Before Fibonacci wrote his work, the sequence Fn had already been discussed by Indian scholars, who had long been interested in rhythmic patterns that are formed from one-beat and two-beat notes. The number of such rhythms having n beats altogether is Fn+1; therefore both Gospala (before 1135) and Hemachandra (c. 1150) mentioned the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, … explicitly.[Who was Fibonacci?]

More on Stem Cells

After Nancy Reagan, one more Republican has broken ranks. The Governor of my home state of Kaa-Lee-Fawn-Ya is endorsing Proposition 71, a $3 billion dollar bond measure to fund human embryonic stem cell research.

The endorsement will also put him at odds with the state Republican Party, which officially opposes Proposition 71, and perhaps even the Bush administration – which has limited funding of the research. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger has said he supports the technology. His father-in-law, Sargent Shriver, is in the early grips of Alzheimer’s disease, which Proposition 71 supporters say could someday be treated by stem cells.

Stem cells are created in the first days after conception and are the building blocks of life. Some researchers hope to turn stem cells into replacement tissue to treat a variety of disease and injury. But many social conservatives oppose the research because it involves destroying microscopic embryos.[Governor endorses controversial stem cell proposition]

The Times Of India had an editorial on this issue and rightly points out

With such interest in stem cell research, it’s a matter of time before the European Union or even the Koreans become leaders in this field. Earlier this year, in a major breakthrough, a team of Korean scientists was able to create a line of human embryonic stem cells in a lab. Traditionally, Koreans are not seen to be at the cutting edge of research in science and technology. The US government’s involvement is not crucial to stem cell research. There are plenty of other countries which are more than willing to take the lead in this area[

USA 1 Minute

The Indian base in Tajikistan

Looks like Tajikistan is becoming the outsourcing capital for military bases. They have now granted a base for Russia, which will be Russia’s largest base on foreign soil.
India too has a military base in Tajikistan and will be operational by the end of this year.

Although Indian officials are not willing to discuss the importance of the Farkhor military base, foreign analysts have noted that the acquisition of the military base in Tajikistan would certainly give the Indian armed forces a longer strategic reach.

Defence sources describe it as a “modern” military base where 95 per cent of the infrastructure is in place. The runway, the blast pans and the control tower are ready. The Army is also into this exercise, having operated a military hospital there, basically to nurse the Northern Alliance soldiers who fought the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan between 1997 and 2001.

It was to this hospital that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the last of the anti-Taliban resistance leader, was brought dead after Al-Qaida’s emissaries, posing as TV journalists, killed him in an explosion three years ago.

The base is the outcome of considerable behind-the-scene work by the MEA, clinched after the US, which marked a big military presence in Central Asia in the wake of 9/11, preferred not to establish a base.

Now with Indians active in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the policy of encircling Pakistan is going on.

Archaeologists back in Afghanistan

Afghanistan, the land of confluence of Greek, Persian, Buddhist and Islamic cultures is a goldmine for Archaeologists. Years of war have destroyed many of the symbols of its cultural heritage, but now efforts are on to discover things which are underground.

Afghanistan was a crossroads for the major powers of the ancient and modern world. Cyrus the Great of Persia founded Bagram. Alexander the Great founded a town in his own honor near the edge of the Registan Desert, now called Kandahar. Alexander lived in Bagram (Cyrus’ Kapissa) for two years and married Roxanne, a young woman from the area west of modern Mazar-I Sharif. Ghengis Khan would later ravage the country, purposefully destroying the elaborate waterworks which lined the Helmand River. Those waterworks have still not been rebuilt more than a millennium later, but their remains are extant.

Afghanistan’s past is part of the world’s cultural treasure. This land was the limit of Alexander’s Hellenistic empire. These mountains and valleys are where London and Moscow played “the great game” for control of central and south Asia. Here Babur built lavish gardens, splendid shrines and magnificent Islamic schools and mosques, some of which still sparkle in the brilliant sunshine.[Afghan Archaeology on Road to Recovery]

The Truth about education

Tom Friedman brings up one point which none of the anti-outsourcing people talk about

The second group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they’ll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid’s idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way. [number is reducing. The bright minds + VC money created employment for many, but may not be in the future.

Laxman Temple at Sirpur

Sirpur was the happening place about 1300 years ago. It had a Shaivite king Mahashivagupta who entertained Huen Tsang and philosopher Nagarjuna. Mahashivagupta’s mother Vasata built a Laxman temple which is the first temple in India to be built using bricks. This temple was completed in 650 AD and is located on the banks of the river Mahanadi.
Now Archaeologists have unearthed a floor below the the ancient floor pushing the age of the temple back by 150 years, making its time of completion around 500 AD. (Same time as Aryabhata)
Also see our new Indian History Timeline

Ancient Economic Giants

During the late 17th century China and India were economic giants in manufacturing. This article by Philip S Golub has many interesting facts

Before 1800, trade flows between Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Javanese and Arabs were much greater than those within Europe. The level of scientific and technical knowledge was high – more so in many fields than that of Europe. Joseph Needham, an authority on Chinese science and technology, emphasised that in terms of technology China was in a dominant position both before and after the European Renaissance (7). Its lead was apparent in fields such as iron and steel, mechanical clocks, engineering (suspension bridges), firearms and deep drilling equipment.

It is not surprising that Asia had a preponderant place in world manufacturing at the time. According to estimates by economic historian Paul Bairoch (8), in 1750 China

One more for Ireland Solution

It was few days back that Salman Khurshid suggested a serious study of the Irish peace process to see if that can be applied to solve the Kashmir problem. Now the moderates in Hurriyat have suggested the same too.

Talking to the Daily Times, the former chairman of a moderate faction of the APHC said there was no harm in seeing the Irish model as a viable option, claiming also that it was an idea once supported by former US President Bill Clinton and it was now being backed by a couple of Indian leaders.
“We feel that among other options it can become the basis for talks aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute,” the paper quoted him as saying.
“Kashmiris are the main party to the dispute,” he added. But Ansari said any model for the resolution of the dispute must be adopted after considering the pros and cons of that idea. No idea can work if we pick the plus points and ignore the minus,” he said. He said the Irish model must be adopted as a whole and that Pakistan-occupied Kahsmir should not be excluded from the solution to the dispute.[Hurriyat favours Irish model for Kashmir]

Earlier they had come up with the Andorra model solution for the problem. I don’t think the General will be happy with this as his solution is much more simpler