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AlokeKumar

Last seen: 9 hours ago

Aloke is a 53 year old guy from Calcutta(kolkata), WB, India

We live in a fantasy world. I know this because I live in that world, and I actually receive my e-mail there.And, sometimes when I don't ,I think I am having a bad dream.......

  • General Motors | Corporate Information | GM

    Rated Jun 12 • 1 review • gm.com

    GENERAL MOTORS

    (1908-2009)

    General Motors (GM) was founded in 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant. It acquired Oldsmobile later that year. In 1909, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, Oakland (later known as Pontiac) and several others.

    William Durant (December 8, 1861-March 18, 1947) was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, the founder of General Motors and Chevrolet who created the system of multi-brand holding companies with different lines of cars.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he was the grandson of Michigan governor Henry H. Crapo.

    In 1909, General Motors also acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessors of GMC Truck. Durant lost control of GM in 1910 to a bankers' trust, because of the large amount of debt taken on in its acquisitions coupled with a collapse in new vehicle sales. A few years later, Durant started the Chevrolet Motor car company and through this he secretly purchased a controlling interest in GM.

    Durant took back con- trol of the company after one of the most dramatic proxy wars in American business history. Shortly after, he again lost control, this time for good, after the new vehicle market collapsed. Alfred Sloan was picked to take charge of the corporation and led it to its post war global dominance. This unprecedented growth of GM would last into the early 1980s when it employed 349,000 workers and 150 assembly plants.

    In late 2008 GM, along with Chrysler, received loans from the American, Canadian, and Ontario governments to avoid bankruptcy resulting from the late-2000s recession, record oil prices, mismanagement, and fierce competition . On February 20, 2009, GM's Saab division filed for reorganization in a Swedish court after being denied loans from the Swedish government. On April 27, 2009, amid ongoing financial problems and restructuring efforts, GM announced that it would phase out the Pontiac brand by the     end of 2010.

    13 views
    General Motors | Corporate Information | GM

  • Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in drowning accident-...

    Rated Jun 08 • 1 review • google, biography, internet language, death, infotech • indiatimes.com

    RAJEEV MOTWANI

    (1962-2009)

    Google mentor, Rajeev Motwani is dead. Computer science professor from India, who mentored Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and was instrumental in the search engine's creation was reportedly found dead in the swimming pool of his California home on 5th.of June 2009.

    Rajeev Motwani, the Stanford professor of computer science known best for advising Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, passed away today unexpectedly. Widely praised for his investing acumen -- having backed both Google and PayPal early on -- he will be remembered for his genuine passion for teaching and technology.

    Motwani was born in Jammu and Kashmir, India in 1962, and grew up in New Delhi. His father was in the Indian Army. The boy from St Columbus School wanted to become a mathematician and went on to get his bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur, India in 1983.Senior faculty members who had taught him recalled Motwani was an exceptionally bright student. "We expected a lot from him.... We could see a lot of potential when he was a student and he lived up to it," said Harish Karnick, a professor.

    Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. He co-authored a book titled Randomized Algorithms, as well as produced numerous technology patents. For his work, he received a list of awards, including the prestigious Godel Prize, the Okawa Foundation Research Award and the Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship.

    The Google mentor continued his association with the tech school. He was a member of the advisory board of the institute's Research Foundation.

    "His legacy and personality live on in the students, projects and companies he has touched," Brin of Google writes : "Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it."

    This is for Analepisis who likes to use Google.

    11 views
    Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in drowning accident- Internet-Infotech-The Economic Times

  • Ernst Haeckel - New World Encyclopedia

    Rated Jun 03 • 1 review • environment, biographies • newworldencyclopedia.org

    ERNST HAECKEL

    (1834-1919)

    The German biologist and natural philosopher Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was famous for his work in evolutionary theory, and expounder of the term, 'ecology'.

    Ernst Haeckel was born in Potsdam, Germany, in 1834, to Carl and Charlotte Haeckel. His father was the chief administrator for religious and educational affairs in Merseburg, while his mother was the daughter of a privy councillor in Berlin. Haeckel thus had the social advantage of growing up in an educated and cultured family. He was publicly educated at the Domgymnasium in Merseburg, graduating in 1852. He then, on the advice of his parents, studied medicine at Berlin, later at Würzburg and Vienna, before returning to Berlin to earn his medical degree in 1857.

    In 1858 he passed the state medical examination, but he did not practice medicine. In fact, he had never been truly interested in being a physician, only pursuing that degree for his parents' sake. Yet he discovered, after initial reluctance, that medical school would provide him with the most solid foundation on which to build a scientific career. It was in this medical training that Haeckel met many of the most important biologists of his day. At Würzburg he studied under Albert von Kölliker and Franz Leydig, learning embryological and comparative anatomy as well as perfecting his skills in microscopical investigations - later to prove essential for his research in ontogeny and phylogeny.

    It was also at Würzburg that Haeckel's philosophical views began to develop, confronted as he was by mechanistic and materialistic views of life developed by Rudolf Virchow and Carl Vogt and expressed by young scientists and physicians with whom he came into contact. In response to such strongly asserted materialism Haeckel's own Christian beliefs began to be transformed, and though he never relinquished the idea of god, his own god was eventually so radically changed that it seemed scarcely personal, perhaps nothing more than the principle of causality in the universe. Meanwhile, his medical education continued. At Berlin in 1854-1855 Haeckel studied under Johannes Müller, whom he greatly respected as the paradigm of the great scientist. Under Müller, he increased his understanding of comparative anatomy and he was introduced to marine zoology, one of Müller's specialties.

    35 views
    Ernst Haeckel - New World Encyclopedia

  • http://family.phelpsinc.com/bios/mary_phelps_jacob.asp

    Rated May 29 • 1 review • biographies • phelpsinc.com

    MARY PHELPS JACOB

    (1891 - 1970)

    The inventor of the first modern bra, was a poet, publisher, peace activist, and a New York socialite.

    Born in 1891, in New York, "Polly" as she nicknamed herself was the daughter of a prominent New England family. She was the oldest daughter of William Jacob and Mary Phelps Jacob. Her family divided its time between estates in New York, Watertown, Connecticut, and Long Island. She enjoyed the advantages of an upper-class lifestyle, including private school, formal balls, Ivy League school dances, horse riding school, and a garden party hosted by the King of England in 1914. Her ancestry included William Bradford, the Plymouth Colony's first governor, and Robert Fulton, developer of the steamboat.

    In 1910, at age 19, Mary Phelps Jacob had just purchased a sheer evening gown for her New York society debut. At that time, the only acceptable undergarment was a corset stiffened with whalebone. Polly found that the whale bones visibly poked out around the plunging neckline and under the sheer fabric.

    Dissatisfied with this arrangement, she worked with her maid to fashion two silk handkerchiefs together with some pink ribbon and cord.Polly's new undergarment complemented the new fashions introduced at the time. Family and friends almost immediately asked Polly to create brassieres for them, too. One day, she received a request for one of her contraptions from a stranger, who offered a dollar for her efforts. She knew then that this could become a viable business.

    In 1914, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Mary P. Jacob for the 'Backless Brassiere'. The modern brassiere was invented and popularized by Paris couturier Herminie Cadolle as early as 1889 and was a sensation at the Great Exposition of 1900. Jacob's patent was the first to be filed in the new category "Brassiere", derived from the old French word for 'upper arm'. Polly's design was lightweight, soft, and naturally separated the breasts (or more accurately, did not force them together). While a definite improvement in terms of lightness and visibility, her brassiere did not offer breasts any support.

    15 views
    http://family.phelpsinc.com/bios/mary_phelps_jacob.asp

  • D.H. Lawrence Biography - Biography.com

    Rated May 18 • 1 review • biographies, writer • biography.com

    D-H-LAWRENCE

    (1885-1930)


    The English novelist, poet, and essayist David Herbert Lawrence took as his major theme the relationship between men and women, which was regarded as disastrously wrong in his time.

    Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in 1885, D. H. Lawrence was the son of a little-educated coal miner and a mother of middle-class origins who fought with the father and his limited way of life so that the children might escape it or, as Lawrence once put it, "rise in the world." Their quarrel and estrangement, and the consequent damage to the children, became the subject of perhaps his most famous novel, Sons and Lovers (1913). Critics immediately regarded it as a brilliant illustration of Sigmund Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. Lawrence was trained to be a teacher at Nottingham University College and taught at Davidson Road School in Croydon until 1912, when his health failed.

    The great friend of his youth, Jessie Chambers, who was the real-life counterpart of Miriam in Sons and Lovers, had sent some of his work to the English Review. The editor, Ford Madox Ford, hailed him at once as a find, and Lawrence began his writing career.

    Lawrence eloped to the Continent in 1912 with Frieda von Richthofen Weekley, a German noblewoman who was the wife of a Nottingham professor; they were married in 1914. During World War I the couple was forced to remain in England; Lawrence's outspoken opposition to the war and Frieda's German birth aroused suspicion that they were spies. In 1919 they left England, returning only for brief visits. Their nomadic existence was spent variously in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Australia, the United States (New Mexico), and Mexico. Lawrence died at the age of 45 of tuberculosis, a disease with which he had struggled for years.

    Lawrence believed that industrialized Western culture was dehumanizing because it emphasized intellectual attributes to the exclusion of natural or physical instincts. He thought, however, that this culture was in decline and that humanity would soon evolve into a new awareness of itself as being a part of nature. One aspect of this "blood consciousness" would be an acceptance of the need for sexual fulfillment. His three great novels, Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), and Women in Love (1921), concern the consequences of trying to deny humanity's union with nature.

    16 views
    D.H. Lawrence Biography - Biography.com

  • Edgar Degas Biography

    Rated May 15 • 1 review • biographies, paintings, arts, edgar degas • notablebiographies.com

    EDGAR DEGAS

    (1834-1917)

    The French painter and sculptor is classed with the impressionists because of his concentration on scenes of contemporary life and his desire to capture the transitory moment, but he surpassed them in compositional sense.

    Edgar Degas was born in 1834, in Paris, the son of a well-to-do banker. From an early age Edgar loved books, especially the classics, and was a serious student in high school. His father hoped his son would study law, but Edgar enrolled at the école des Beaux-Arts in 1855, where he studied under Louis Lamothe, a pupil of J. A. D. Ingres. Degas always valued his early classical training and had a great and enduring admiration for Ingres, a painter with a decisively linear orientation.

    In 1856 Degas went to Naples, where his sister lived, and eventually he settled in Rome for 3 years. He admired the Early Christian and medieval masterpieces of Italy, as well as the frescoes, panel paintings, and drawings of the Renaissance masters, many of which he copied. Back in Paris in 1861, he executed a few history paintings (then regarded as the highest branch of painting). Among these was the Daughter of Jephthah (1861), which is based on a melodramatic episode from the Old Testament. He copied the works of the old masters in the Louvre, a practice he kept up for many years.

    From 1862 until 1870 Degas painted portraits of his friends and family. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, he served in the artillery of the national guard. Between 1873 and 1883 Degas produced many of his paintings and pastels of the racecourse, music hall, café, and ballet. He had no financial problems, and even prior to 1870s he had established his reputation. Although he was associated with the impressionists, his draftsmanship and composition was not characteristic of the group.

    On the surface Degas, operating in this candid-camera fashion, fits easily within the confines of impressionism as an art of immediacy and spontaneity. But these scenes of contemporary Parisian life are not at all haphazardly composed: the placement of each detail is calculated in terms of every other to establish balances which are remarkably clever and subtle and which are frequently grasped by the viewer only after considerable study.

    Degas conceived of the human figure as operating within an environmental context, to be manipulated as a prop according to the dictates of greater compositional interest.

    22 views
    Edgar Degas Biography

  • Francesco di Marco Datini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Rated Apr 27 2009 • 1 review • business, biographies, globalization • wikipedia.org

    FRANCESCO di MARCO DATINI

    (1335 - 1410)

    The inventor of Globalization

    Narrow-minded and blinkered? 1,40,000 letters passed through his desk in his 60 years of business, each demanding foresight and quick decision-making: if London was celebrating a victory over France, gems and jewels would surely need to be rushed there; a royal wedding in Barcelona could call for a quick delivery of silks, velvets and ornaments. An agent from Bruges reported a flooding in Flanders-2,000 men drowned-and his boss immediately responded: " Padre, expect a rise in the price of woolen cloth."

    Yet, how stressful it all was: he seldom slept more than four hours, working late into the night till he collapsed with exhaustion. At times he did not leave his desk for days on end, even skipping morning mass. He did nothing but write letters, make plans, finalise contracts, take risks, book profits and losses, and worry.No, no one could have convinced Francesco di Marco Datini, Florentine merchant, social upstart, imperious egoist and generous philanthropist, that his century, the 14th, was a cautious and slow one, let alone backward-looking. For him it was a time of exhilaration, a period of tremendous change. And he was alone.

    Datini was a typical product of his times: a self-made man. But more than anything else, he represented a new type of individual, a social product of commercial momentum-the upstart, the social climber.

    He was born the son of a poor bar-keeper in Prato, Tuscany, probably in 1335 (we are not sure about the date but then neither was he): in those days the birth of children of people belonging to his social class was not registered. He had not been gifted with much apart from his enormous ambition. In 1348 he lost his father and mother and two siblings to the plague. At 15 he went, all on his own, to Avignon in France, to the magnificent, and yet run-down, seat of the Pope.

    It is not known how he raised the money to start his business. But a few years he became an independent merchant, initially dealing primarily in weapons. He had no scruples and supplied to all sides: basinets and chest armour to the riders of the Pope, coats of mail and leg armour to the marauding mercenaries.

    His business grew rapidly, he constantly added new products: salt, jewels, holy pictures, spices, ivory, metal wares, dyes from Romania and textiles-most particularly, textiles. This range of goods was nothing out of the ordinary; merchants of the Middle Ages were often generalists.

    67 views
    Francesco di Marco Datini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • rejoinder

    Rated Apr 24 2009 • 1 review • writing, biographies, review, stumble upon, rejoinder • die.net

    Rejoinder to an Extraordinary Review

    Am I leaving SU ?

    Sir, I am also on Sabbatical, like you , but not from life. But from the glare of fame, publicity and limelight. I have pondered over your request to quite SU and look for greener pastures like contributing to the `black-book' of publications or `biography services'.........to the front page of any leading newspaper ........ the `gem', which many of (my) SU friends talk of.

    You see, I have seen it all. I have launched a newspaper and many a periodical, created a heritage park, started the first internet content company in India, revived industries. Now launching a TV News Channel. ..........during the course, also published articles in newspapers including The Times of India and The Telegraph. Oh! ...I have also written obituaries, the most important is that of the French industrialist Jean Riboud , the then Chairman of Shulemberger , which was published in the front page of a leading publication.

    However, due to quark of fate, my wife, a poetess in her own right, whom I married after a romantic love affair, lost her mind. I quit my job and started taking care of my wife and parenting my son who was then getting affected and left the glare of life. I say I am on sabbatical, as I am a human being and I do not know, if I might be again lured in to the limelight as my son grows up.

    However to be very honest I am very satisfied with what I am doing......leading a so called very sedate life....taking care of my son, taking care of children of the lesser gods, taking to the streets for causes like environment and in the spare time writing biographies in SU, as I am interested in humanity.

    Within this, even if one of my friends in SU reads the bio and reverts to me I am happy. For the second reader, of most of my posting, is my son Rahul, who is always encouraging.

    Within this when my friend Aline tells me, "What will SU be without you ! " I am touched. When Christine messages me, "Aloke! What's up?" I am happy. When Pearl tells me that she is moved by my writing, I would like to plant a kiss on her cheek. When Sebastian yells that he is grateful for the Share, otherwise he would have missed the spot, my day is made. When Maria tells me that she misses me, there is a voltage fluctuation. When Meg adds power to her voice by adding all her friends to the number, to cajole me not to leave SU, it is front page news. When Isaac offers me the alternative to start a dual Blog in Word press like Jane, to increase readership, it indicates that he is going to miss my writings. When Robert tells me that my Blog is an inspiration, I aspire to do better. When Roby wants to visit India and consults me, I run to the rooftop to welcome her. When Serina messages that she has learned something new about Sign language from my post, I am elated. When Gwen says you are like our new President Obama setting new standard, I raise my benchmark. When Ellie says I actually enjoy your Blog, it brings a smile to my face. When Janine asks if I have posted anything on Geneva Convention, I think I am creating a reference point.

    Continued........

    121 views
    rejoinder

  • Focus on kindness, fire victims urged

    Rated Apr 17 2009 • 1 review • biographies, kindness, gillian hicks • watoday.com.au

    GILLIAN HICKS

    (1968 - present )

    You're going to love Gill Hicks. She lost both her legs when the suicide bombers struck the London Underground , yet she speaks of kindness. An Amazing women.

    On July 7th, 2005, 26 people died and many were severely injured and maimed on London Underground's Piccadilly line tube train between Kings Cross and Russell Square stations. A suicide bomber was responsible. Australian born Gill Hicks miraculously survived but lost both her legs due to the explosion.

    Born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1968, Gill Hicks moved to London in 1992 where she now lives with her husband Joe. Following the London bombings, she left a career of 12 years as a Design Consultant to dedicate her life to building peace and reconciliation and is now Ambassador for the charity Peace Direct.

    She survived -- just. At that moment, death would have been easier, but somehow, as she waited for the rescuers, Gill willed herself to live. She was traveling in the London Underground when the bombs exploded. As she lay waiting, trapped in what resembled a train carriage - but was now a blackened, smoke filled indescribable 'room' of destruction and devastation - she was able to think. This period of time, some 40 minutes, was to prove to be the most insightful and blessed gift that she was yet to receive, apart from the ultimate gift of a second chance at life. As the blood poured from my body she felt incredibly weak, fighting to hold on, to survive.

    Help did come and the person who 'saved' her did so not knowing who she was. It didn't matter if she was rich or poor, black or white, female or male, muslim or jew, religious or not - what mattered to each of them - the police, the ambulance, the paramedics, the surgeons, the nurses -was that her life hung in the balance, a life they were so desperate to save.

    Gillian says : "When I awoke I was euphoric to be alive and to have survived I am able to appreciate life - but a different life than I had before, one that is rich and fulfilled and not consumed by anger and hatred.

    In December 2005 she walked down the aisle, in her newly- fitted legs to get married to Joe. An absolute inspiration.

    Photobucket. This spot is for my dear friend

    67 views
    Focus on kindness, fire victims urged