the Tibetan Plateau
Posted by sk Gaur on 11:04 AM · Leave a comment
Trying to understand place names across the Tibetan Plateau can often be difficult. Nearly every town has both a Tibetan name and a Chinese name (ex. Shigatse/Rikaze and Jyekundo/Yushu) and some places even have a Mongolian name (ex. Golmud and Kokonor). In this post I will try and give the Tibetan and Chinese name for various places across the Tibetan world (this is NOT an exhaustive list) in both Chinese characters, Tibetan script and the roman script that is most often used for each place. With this, it should make traveling in Tibet a little easier, especially for those who are traveling independently through the Amdo and Kham regions. Public buses across the Tibetan Plateau usually list the destination in both Chinese characters and in Tibetan script. I have done a lot of research on this, but there still may be a few mistakes, particularly with the Tibetan script. If you read Tibetan and notice a mistake, please let me know and I will look into it more and correct it if necessary. Most of these place names and their spellings in "English" are based on either the Lhasa or Kham pronunciation. Speakers of Amdo (roughly 20% to 25% of the total Tibetan population) will pronounce many (if not most) of these place names differently.
trade indo pak trade
Posted by sk Gaur on 10:55 AM · Leave a comment
Indo-Pak trade
Dr Farrukh Saleem
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Someone intelligent once said, “People who begin trading goods, stop trading bullets.” Pakistan and India traded bullets in 1965 and then again in 1971. As a consequence of trading bullets there was very little trading of goods up until 1996 when India granted MFN status to Pakistan. Over the past eight years, Indo-Pak trade has, however, risen 10 times from $344 million in 2003-04 to a current level of nearly $3 billion a year.
Consider this: Ten percent of the Pakistanis live in Karachi and is prosperous because it has a port and trades with the rest of the world. Between Karachi and the Indus River Valley, a distance of some 800 km, is the Thar Desert and the Cholistan Desert – inhabitable, inhospitable and arid. Then comes the Indus River Valley, where two out of every three Pakistanis live in and around the arc formed by Lodhran, Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. This arc is Pakistan’s core-population core as well as the industrial heartland.
To be certain, no country over the past hundred years has prospered without indulging into international trade. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s core has no one to trade with but India. That is divine-imposed geographical reality and some 12 crore Pakistanis cannot escape it.
Trade and welfare are twin brothers. Welfare – as measured by a country’s producer and consumer surplus – is always higher when borders are open for trade. It is true that the impact of open trade between Pakistan and India will be different on Pakistani consumers and producers. In the first phase, Pakistani consumers stand to gain while some Pakistani producers will be challenged. Overall, Pakistani exports to India are largely textile related while Indian exports are largely non-textile.
For Pakistani exporters, a total of 1,650 items – including woven fabrics, garments, bed linen, footwear, dates and chickpeas – have already been identified that India could potentially import from Pakistan. For Indian exporters, a total of 3,286 items – including automobiles, diesel trucks, black tea, pneumatic tires, antibiotics and reactive dyes – have already been identified that Pakistan could potentially import from India.
Currently, India imposes high non-tariff barriers on Pakistani textile, agriculture and leather related exports. Plus, there are severe “infrastructure constraints related to rail, road and sea routes” on both sides of the border (that tend to increase transaction costs). India does not allow Pakistani banks to open branches – neither does Pakistan (a potent non-tariff barrier). There are several Indian banks that do not recognise Letter of Credit from Pakistani banks and both countries continue to practice restrictive, city specific, reporting visa regimes.
As per the gravity model of trade “bilateral trade is proportional to the product of GNP of the trading partners and inversely related to the distance between them.” According to a 2007 study titled ‘India Pakistan Trade Possibilities and Non Tariff Barriers’, “there is a large untapped trade potential between the two countries. Using the Potential Trade Approach, the study finds that the export potential from India to Pakistan is to the tune of US$9.5 billion while that from Pakistan to India is US$2.2 billion.”
Indo-Pak trade - Dr Farrukh Saleem
Dr Farrukh Saleem
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Someone intelligent once said, “People who begin trading goods, stop trading bullets.” Pakistan and India traded bullets in 1965 and then again in 1971. As a consequence of trading bullets there was very little trading of goods up until 1996 when India granted MFN status to Pakistan. Over the past eight years, Indo-Pak trade has, however, risen 10 times from $344 million in 2003-04 to a current level of nearly $3 billion a year.
Consider this: Ten percent of the Pakistanis live in Karachi and is prosperous because it has a port and trades with the rest of the world. Between Karachi and the Indus River Valley, a distance of some 800 km, is the Thar Desert and the Cholistan Desert – inhabitable, inhospitable and arid. Then comes the Indus River Valley, where two out of every three Pakistanis live in and around the arc formed by Lodhran, Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. This arc is Pakistan’s core-population core as well as the industrial heartland.
To be certain, no country over the past hundred years has prospered without indulging into international trade. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s core has no one to trade with but India. That is divine-imposed geographical reality and some 12 crore Pakistanis cannot escape it.
Trade and welfare are twin brothers. Welfare – as measured by a country’s producer and consumer surplus – is always higher when borders are open for trade. It is true that the impact of open trade between Pakistan and India will be different on Pakistani consumers and producers. In the first phase, Pakistani consumers stand to gain while some Pakistani producers will be challenged. Overall, Pakistani exports to India are largely textile related while Indian exports are largely non-textile.
For Pakistani exporters, a total of 1,650 items – including woven fabrics, garments, bed linen, footwear, dates and chickpeas – have already been identified that India could potentially import from Pakistan. For Indian exporters, a total of 3,286 items – including automobiles, diesel trucks, black tea, pneumatic tires, antibiotics and reactive dyes – have already been identified that Pakistan could potentially import from India.
Currently, India imposes high non-tariff barriers on Pakistani textile, agriculture and leather related exports. Plus, there are severe “infrastructure constraints related to rail, road and sea routes” on both sides of the border (that tend to increase transaction costs). India does not allow Pakistani banks to open branches – neither does Pakistan (a potent non-tariff barrier). There are several Indian banks that do not recognise Letter of Credit from Pakistani banks and both countries continue to practice restrictive, city specific, reporting visa regimes.
As per the gravity model of trade “bilateral trade is proportional to the product of GNP of the trading partners and inversely related to the distance between them.” According to a 2007 study titled ‘India Pakistan Trade Possibilities and Non Tariff Barriers’, “there is a large untapped trade potential between the two countries. Using the Potential Trade Approach, the study finds that the export potential from India to Pakistan is to the tune of US$9.5 billion while that from Pakistan to India is US$2.2 billion.”
Indo-Pak trade - Dr Farrukh Saleem
Oscar news
Posted by sk Gaur on 9:22 PM · Leave a comment
* The Artist on Sunday won five Academy Awards, including best picture, becoming the first silent film to win Hollywood's highest honours since the original Oscar ceremony 83 years ago..
* The Artist is the first silent winner since the World War I saga Wings, which was named outstanding picture at the first Oscars in 1929..
* Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure Hugo also won five Oscars, all in technical categories..
* Streep's win was her first Oscar in 29 years, since she won best actress for Sophie's Choice. She had lost 12 times in a row since then. Streep also has a supporting-actress Oscar for 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer..
* Streep, the record-holder with 17 acting nominations..
* Streep is only the fifth performer to receive three Oscars, including Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman and Walter Brennan, who won three, while Katharine Hepburn won four..
* The biggest surprise may have been the length of the show, which clocked in at about three hours and 10 minutes, brisk for a ceremony that has run well over four hours some years..
* The 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest acting winner ever for his role as an elderly widower who comes out as gay in Beginners..
* Plummer : “You're only two years older than me, darling,” Plummer said, addressing his Oscar statue. “Where have you been all my life? I have a confession to make. When I first emerged from my mother's womb, I was already rehearsing my Oscar speech..”
* The previous oldest winner was best-actress recipient Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy. She won at the age of 80..
* Dujardin became the first Frenchman to win an acting Oscar. French actresses have won before, including Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche..
* Woody Allen earned his first Oscar in 25 years, winning for original screenplay for the romantic fantasy Midnight in Paris, his biggest hit in decades.Allen also is the record-holder for 15 writing nominations, and his three writing Oscars ties the record shared by Charles Brackett, Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola and Billy Wilder..
* Pakistan wins its maiden Oscar for documentary on acid victims.. Pakistan scarce to come by, the nation basked in the spotlight that fell on documentary film maker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, who on Monday morning became the country's first Oscar awardee..
* Iranian family drama A Separation defeated films from Israel, Belgium, Poland and Canada to win the country’s first Academy award in the foreign film category..
human brain
Posted by sk Gaur on 11:34 AM · Leave a comment
Attempting to calculate the memory capacity of our brains is somewhat of a slippery slope. First of all, we do not know how to measure the size of a memory exactly, and secondly, the degrees of permanence among memories varies. Many are retained for most of our lives, some gradually fade over time, and still others are lost almost immediately..!
Fortunately, we do know that the brain contains approximately one billion neurons, with each forming about a thousand connections with other neurons. This synaptic cross-wiring increases the brain’s storage capacity exponentially because it allows each neuron is able to handle several memories at once instead of one or just a few. Scientific American equates this to around a million gigabytes of storage, in computing terms. Drawing a comparison, they say that if our brains worked like a DVR, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You’d have to spend over 300 years glued to the couch nonstop in order to watch that much television..!
SPORTS & TERMS
Posted by sk Gaur on 11:30 AM · Leave a comment
----------------------
CRICKET : LBW[LEG BEFORE WICKET], HATTRICK,BOUNDARY,OVER,SIXER,FOLLOW ON, WICKET, DUCK, CREASE,LEG BYE,BOWLING,RUN OUT, SILLY POINT.
FOOTBALL: PENALITY KICK, CORNER KICK, OFF SIDE, FOUL THROW IN, ARIBBLE, GOAL KICK, FREE KICK.
HOCKEY : PENALTY CORNER, STICKS, OFF SIDE, BULLY, SCOOP, TIE BREAKER.
BOXING : DEFENCE, JAB SECOND OUT, HOOK , PUNCH
BASEBALL : STRIKE, PULL OUT , PITCHER, HOME BOUNTING
CHESS: BISHOP, CHECKMATE , GAMBIT
GOLF: ROUGH, TEE, LINKS, DORMI
BADMINTON : DROP,LET,SMASH, LOVE ALL , DECREE
BASKET BALL : BOXING, LOVE, SERVICE BLOCKING, POINT
TENNIS : SMASH, LYTE, VOLLEY, FAULT
(((_RTP_)))
first commercially successful portable microcomputer,
Posted by sk Gaur on 11:29 AM · Leave a comment
Developer -- Adam Osborne
Type -- portable computer
Release date -- 1981
Introductory price -- USD$ 1795
Discontinued -- 1983
Operating system -- CP/M
CPU -- Zilog Z80 at 4.0 MHz
Memory -- 64 kB
The Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable microcomputer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighed 10.7 kg (23.5 lb), cost USD$ 1795, and ran the then-popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. The computer shipped with a large bundle of software that was almost equivalent in value to the machine itself, a practice adopted by other CP/M computer vendors..
Its principal deficiencies were a tiny 5 inches (13 cm) display screen and use of single sided, single density floppy disk drives which could not contain sufficient data for practical business applications..
Read more: http://dn4u-gs.blogspot.com/#ixzz2ALjFvlpL
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