Blog@GraceJunction

This is how the 63rd session of the General Assembly began this year. The Secretary General, as usual, addresses the gathering.

“Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: Welcome to the opening of the general debate of the 63rd session of the General Assembly. It is customary for the Secretary-General, on this occasion, to assess the state of the world and to present our vision for the coming year. We all recognize the perils of our current passage. We face a global financial crisis. A global energy crisis. A global food crisis. Trade talks have collapsed, yet again. We have seen new outbreaks of war and violence, new rhetoric of confrontation. Climate change ever more clearly threatens our planet. We often say that global problems demand global solutions. And yet … Today, we also face a crisis of a different sort. Like these others, it knows no borders. It affects all nations. It complicates all other problems. I refer, here, to a challenge of global leadership.”

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(Re-post from March 17th, 2008)
Read carefully. I wrote ‘Great Suppression’ and not ‘Great Depression’.

1929 is etched in world history as the year that caused a great and dramatic meltdown or downturn of the world economy. The depression had devastating effects in both the industrialized countries and those which exported raw materials. International trade declined sharply, as did personal incomes, tax revenues, prices, and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by 40 to 60 percent. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most. Though the slump started in many countries much before 1929, it was the US downturn that really brought it down. (more…)

Three boys aged six ran a “sex club” at a Brisbane state school demanding and receiving sexual favours from girls one year their seniors! The Brisbane father said his son was one of a trio seen performing various sex acts in a toilet block.

His revelations came as uproar was sparked by another story, which told how the sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl by a young classmate was dismissed as a “childhood experiment” by a country school principal. The young victim was forced to perform oral sex on the boy who had threatened her with violence.

Meanwhile, on the Sunshine Coast, a gang of nine-year-old boys has been accused of “grooming” children as young as five to engage in sex acts. Investigators were told victims were rewarded with candies. (more…)

Ten thousand years ago the agricultural revolution launched a slow wave of change. The industrial revolution, starting roughly 350 years ago, triggered a second – faster – wave of change. In the mid-1950s the United States started on the path to a completely new kind of economy – one based on knowledge rather than muscle power. This is part of a gigantic wave of technological, social and cultural change. What we’re living through now is history’s third great wave of change – one that is arriving at hyper-speed and is global in extent.

This new way of life – it’s really a new civilization or, for that matter, a “super-civilization” – is spreading out from the United States and has cells in many other parts of the world, from Japan and Singapore and China to India and Brazil.

The first phase of this current upheaval is the digital revolution and its social and cultural effects. The next phase is the fusion of the digital revolution with the genetic and biological revolution. (more…)

Some of Antonio James’ classmates laugh when they learn the 15-year-old has pledged not to have sex until he marries. It’s not just male bravado that puts pressure on the 6-foot-1, 219-pound football player to be sexually active. “There’s so much temptation around here with girls,” he said.

It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America’s most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaeton beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and nipple rings. (more…)

(Re-post from March 26th, 2008)

The papers today reveal a quest of science that started several decades ago. Physicists from all over the world are getting together in Europe and are racing to prove the existence of a particle that’s surmised to be at the heart of the matter!

Dubbed the “God particle“, the Higgs Boson, which “it” is otherwise called, is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other particles. Scientists are hoping to discover traces of its presence in Fermilab’s Tevatron, a 17-mile-long circumference particle accelerator (also called the Hadron’s Collider) that smashes opposing beams of protons and antiprotons around a circular track, sifting through the debris with two immense detectors. This experiment is supposedly expected to bring back Europe as the leaders in Physics and not the USA! (more…)

“Money is everything in life”, said a really bullish young man, who had made some good money in his careful investments spread across diverse investment options. He was willing to diversify it further into more riskier options to increase the chances of multiplying the returns. He was confident because, at a 9%, the GDP growth looked robust and increasingly improved ratings coming over from various global rating agencies only proved as an icing on the cake. Also pouring in were the news of increasing interest of more and more global players in India. IT, BT, BPOs, pharma, retail, telecom, infrastructure all looked big! He was glad that he was living in such a significant time in history and at the right place. His cousins in the west were thinking hard about coming back, while he was glad that he had a lead over thousands of such young and talented people in other nations of the globe! He had money and loads were going to come his way in the coming days! (more…)

“If we can have BMW and Mercedes Benz as two separate companies, why can we not have the Indian Premier League and the Indian Cricket League”, a beleagured Kapil Dev!!

Poor Kapil Dev, one of the best cricketers India has seen, is fondly remembered for his 175 not out against Zimbabwe. That innings probably was a turning point in the way batsmen approached the One Day game ever since. Kapil’s face is always recollected, lifting up the Prudential Cup, with a Haryanavi smile that reflected his Indian Soul! (more…)

Usain Bolt is “too” tall to be a world class sprinter, Mike Friedman “too” fat to be an elite world class cyclist, Stefan Holm is “too” short to be a champion high jumper, and Erin Donohue is “too” short and stocky to be a star middle-distance runner. Yet all of them are Olympians, athletic anomlies, bucking conventional wisdom and somehow rising to the same arenas as Michael Phelps and Dara Torres.

Its amazing, how much man relies on statistics to make decisions, be it the vital or the numerical kind. But these wonderful people have attained that which has made experts revolve in their chairs and just confess, “It’s a mystery“!! (more…)

Ahsaas Channa, 9 year old, and having just finished working on Phoonk, the much awaited Ram Gopal Verma horror flick, insists that she’s a regular kid who likes to go out shopping with her mom and throws tantrums so that her mom buys her a doll. But as soon as cameras roll, she becomes a professional!

I would like to work with Aamir sir and Amithabh(ji). No more suffixes like ‘uncle’ intended. She praises Darsheel’s work in Taare Zameen Par but feels that she would have done that role better! She goes on to say that Aamir Sir and Yash Chopra are the best movie makers in the industry and that they can bring out the best in her! Ramuji is an amazing director, she adds. She has found that she likes challenges and she would like to do a role that challenges her skills, like Rani Mukherjee in Black. She has concluded that boys are big time losers and that she can easily bully them around. (more…)