Communism, an extinct species.

Tell me who murdered Che Guevara- that was his communist comrades, right? And tell me why the Keralite communists uphold the photograph of Che forgetting our own Stephen, Ajitha and Varghese? Com Varghese and Rajan, along with many others, became martyrs for the Keralite proletarians and this soil smells and tastes their blood to this day. Remember, Karl Marx was no proletariat, but the son of a high-profile lawyer and studied Roman Law at the University of Berlin. After all, is not communism an extinct species from the face of the globe? Its not wise to be in that track any more. And, bear in mind that if you are not a socialist before 30 you have no heart, but if your are a socialist after 30 you have no head which points to the time-tested fact that your current political views of revolutionary socialism is nothing more than a hormonal teenage rush that you'll just grow out of. If not, that's when we brand 'mentally challenged'.

How's dat?

Hackers who crippled the CIA website this week have publishedstudent's email logins as well as Facebook and PayPal accounts.

The group known as "Lulz Security" dumped more than 62,000 personal
details on Twitter yesterday, inviting people to try the passwords on
everything from bank accounts to online stores.

It is claimed the passwords were downloaded 2100 times in the first 4
minutes after release.

Twitter was soon flooded with claims from individuals who said they
had used the passwords to gain illicit access to Facebook and PayPal
accounts.

"I chatted with some girl's boyfriend (on Facebook) and told him that
I would never **** him again.
He said "no problem, I understand " wtf" - Twitter user @Pedacitodepan

Lulz: 'Boys with fake girlfriends'

"Cheers for the paypal account with £250 in it! ;)" - Twitter user @Murraaayyy

"Ordered a large pack of condoms for an elderly woman on Amazon" -
Twitter user @RDisher

Emails and passwords of University of Queensland students and a high
school student in central Queensland were also published along with
logins at seven other Australian universities.

Lulz Security took credit for crashing the CIA website for several
hours on Thursday and have also reportedly attacked Sony, Nintendo,
the US Senate, the US Public Broadcasting System and Infraguard, a
private company that works with the FBI.

The hackers said the attacks were "just for kicks" and that the
passwords in the recent leak were "a random assortment from a
collection".

"So don't ask which site they're from or how old they are because we
have no idea," the group said.

"Releasing 62,000 possible account combinations is the loot for
creative minds to scour; think of it like digging a very unique
mineshaft."

James Cook University and Griffith University logins were also
compromised but it is not clear if they were for students or faculty.

Representatives for both universities said there had been no intrusion
of their servers, while UQ's director of IT services Rob Moffatt said
none of the university's email addresses were breached.

Only one of the UQ addresses was still live and the password was
incorrect, he said.

"We have investigated these claims and have ascertained that the group
involved has not breached any active university accounts," Mr Moffatt
said.

"UQ staff and students should not be concerned about the integrity of
their university accounts.

"UQ takes these issues very seriously and will continue to monitor
developments."

Queensland police said they were monitoring the situation.

Fraud Squad Detective Superintendent Brian Hay said the hackers had
"delusions" they were helping people by exposing security flaws.
"They think they're clever and laughing now but they're taking on
organisations like the CIA and the FBI.The most cyber attacks on

Australians was reported last year and this year was set to be worse"

"Queenslanders should regularly change their passwords to their online log ins.
"You almost have to operate with the expectation that you will be compromised," Hay said.

The fascinating reason why it's so hard to quit bad habits.

Bribe, corruption & favoritism- Do these have a scientific base to

refuse indulgence?

There is a fascinating reason why it's so hard to quit bad habits like

smoking and alcoholism; by extension bribe, corruption & favoritism.

If you stop engaging in a bad habit, the habit will gradually diminish

until it disappears from your life - False.

Any time you quit something cold turkey, your brain will make a

last-ditch effort to return you to your habit - True.

You’ve been there, perhaps more than once.

You get serious about losing weight and start watching every calorie.

You read labels, stock up on fruit and vegetables and hit the gym.

Everything is going fine. You feel great. You feel like a champion.

You think, “This is easy.”

One day you give in to temptation and eat some candy, or a doughnut,

or a cheeseburger. Maybe, you buy a bag of chips.

You order the fettuccine alfredo.

That afternoon, you decide not only will you eat whatever you want,

but also will celebrate the occasion by eating a pint of ice cream.

The diet ends in a catastrophic binge.

What the hell?

How did your smooth transition from comfort food to human dumpster happen?

You just experienced an "extinction burst."

Once you become accustomed to reward, you get really upset when you can’t have it.

Food, of course, is a powerful reward. It keeps you alive.

Your brain didn’t evolve in an environment where there was an abundance of food,

so whenever you find a high-calorie, high fat, high sodium source, your natural

inclination is to eat a lot of it and then go back to it over and over again.

If you take away a reward like that, you throw an internal tantrum.

Extinction bursts are a component of extinction, one of the principles of conditioning.

Much of your behavior is the result of conditioning.

It is among the most basic factors shaping the way any organism reacts to the world.

If you get rewarded by your actions, you are more likely to continue them.

If punished, you are more likely to stop. Over time, you begin to predict reward and

punishment by linking longer and longer series of events to their eventual outcomes.

If you want some chicken nuggets, you know you can’t just snap your fingers and wait

for them to appear. You must engage in a long sequence of actions – acquire language,

acquire money, acquire car, acquire clothes, acquire fuel, learn to drive, learn to use money,

learn where nuggets are sold, drive to nuggets, use language, exchange money, etc..

This string of behaviors could be sliced up into smaller and smaller components if we

wanted to really dig down into the conditioning you have endured in order to be able to

get nuggets in your mouth.

Just driving the car from point A to point B is a complex performance which becomes

automatic after hundreds of hours of practice. Millions of tiny behaviors, each one a

single step in a process, add up to a single operation you have learned will payoff in reward.

Think of rats in a maze, learning a complicated series of steps – turn left two times,

turn right once, turn left, right, left, get cheese.
Even microorganisms can be conditioned to react to stimuli and predict outcomes.
For a while in psychology, conditioning was the cat’s pajamas.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Burrhus Frederic Skinner became a scientist celebrity by scaring

the shit out of America with an invention called the operant conditioning chamber –

the Skinner Box.

The box is an enclosure which can have any combination of levers, food dispensers,

an electric floor, lights and loudspeakers. Scientists place animals in the box and

either reward them or punish them to either encourage or discourage their behavior.

Rats, for example, can be taught to push a lever when a green light appears to get food.
Skinner demonstrated how he could teach a pigeon to spin in circles at his command by

offering food only when it turned in one direction. Gradually, he withheld the food until the

pigeon had turned a little farther and farther until he had it going round and round.

Hence my question to you:

Will they kick the habit of bribe, corruption and favoritism, once they are into it and have

accepted it as a reward? Will the thief stop his successful practice?

How far is Anna Hazare from his goal of a corruption-free India?

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week.

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

hush... a secret

George Bernard Shaw once said,

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

It's pretty apparent, isn't it? And every person who discovered this believed that he was the first one to work it out. We become what we think about.

It means that a person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. So I repeat, we become what we think about.

Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing...he has to become nothing.

How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I'll tell you how it works, as far as we know at this point. For this, I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.

Suppose a farmer has some land, and it's good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make that decision.

We're comparing the human mind with the land because the mind, like the land, doesn't care what you plant in it. It will return what you plant, period.

Now, let's say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand - one is the seed of corn, the other is nightshade which is deadly poisonous. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds - one corn, the other nightshade. He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land...and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted in there.

So it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

Remember, the land doesn't care. It will return poison in as wonderful abundance as corn. So up come the plants - one corn, one poison. The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works almost the same way.

It doesn't care what we plant-

Success Vs. Failure.

A concrete, worthwhile goal...

or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on.

What we plant, it must return to us.

See,

the human mind is a great, unexplored continent.

It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams.

It will return anything we want to plant and nurture.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week-end.

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

A British tool!

Sibal gives a spin to college affiliation.

Kapil Sibal, as the chairperson of the Central Advisory Board of Education — the highest advisory body in education, urged states to reduce the number of colleges affiliated to universities.

Sibal as the chairperson of the Central Advisory Board of Education — the highest advisory body in education — urged states to reduce the number of colleges affiliated to universities.

Infact, he said: “ It started way back in 1857, before the Sepoy Mutiny”. Deaffiliation of colleges, however, has not found an all round support among academicians.

Sibal said: “ Affiliation had emerged in the period of colonial India for the rulers to control what was being taught. There has to be a change in the philosophy of affiliation to enable the power of independence, thought to flower in the collegiate system.” He said number of colleges affiliated to universities should be reduced, so that universities could become centres of learning.” According to Indian Council of Historical Research chairperson Basudev Chatterji, this is an “ erroneous view of history.” “ The British had set up colleges such as the three Presidency Colleges in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras and gone onto affiliate colleges to create a robust system.” Chatterji cited the example of Presidency College in Kolkata, which at present is to be upgraded to a university status. “ Deaffiliation,” said Chatterji: “ leads to whole lot of complications.” Reforms in the affiliation system in universities, was one of the crucial recommendations proposed at the VC conference of central and state universities, held in March.

The UGC has now been asked to work on reforms of its affiliation system of colleges to universities, so that institutions of poor quality are not granted affiliation and at the same time, deserving colleges are given autonomy.

Bestowing autonomy to top colleges such as St. Stephens in Delhi and St Xavier’s in Kolkata, and allowing them to give their own degrees has been one of the crucial issues that the ministry has been deliberating for some time now.

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To change the mindset..

A police officer in Toronto made a comment at the York University that 'women should avoid dressing up like sluts in order not to be victimised'.

And two months later on April 3, 2011, the city witnessed a thousand people on the streets protesting against this derogatory remark in the form of Slut walks. The women got down on the streets wearing revealing outfits and T-shirts with the word 'slut' written on them. Soon, people inNorth America, Australia and Britain began organizing slut walks on their own raising their voices against the men who blamed women for being raped.

Slut Walk, Delhi 2011 (to take place on June 25th, 2011 at 1:00 pm IST) aims to alter the definition of the word 'Slut', to eliminate the shame attached to it and restore it with dignity. Words like 'slut' insult a woman, makes her feel ashamed of her act and disgraces her. One does not become a slut if she has more than one sexual partner or wears whatever she wants or has dated a number of men in the past.

Every day we come across a number of news stories about the rape and molestation cases in the country. 'Delhi is unsafe for girls and women' is a statement that has become too common to the ears. Not just Delhi, things are pretty bad in other metros and several other parts of the country. Girls have to deal with harassment in buses/metros, on the roads, in the clubs, in daytime, and at times in full public view. Girls from a very early age are taught how to behave in public, how to dress up, not to laugh out loud, avoid men who stare them, learn 'karate', act in a sophisticated manner and hundreds of other things. Why? To prevent them from getting raped?

The female is blamed for the rape just because she was walking alone on a street, was wearing a dress in the night or wasn't accompanied by her father or brother? What kind of a place do we live in? One where all the girls and women are unsafe and prone to sexual assaults?

The whole idea of the walk revolves around the fact that no woman 'likes' to be raped and hence, would NEVER call for it in any manner. The problem lies in the minds of the rapists and not in what women wear and how they dress up or walk. There is nothing wrong in wearing short skirts or low cut tops and walking in high heels wearing make up. The people who experience such sexual assaults are not to blame. The thought process of this male-dominated society needs to be changed. Not women, but men should be taught not to indulge into the act of sexual harassment and look upon women as independent people and not as mere objects of desire.

This is definitely a bold and strong movement in a nation like India where female victim of rape is often excluded from the society.

Originated in Toronto, Canada in 2011, Slut Walk is a protest against the rigid mindset of people who believe that the women become victims of sexual harassments because of what they wear and do. It is scheduled to take place on the 25th June 2011 at 01:00 pm IST in Delhi.