Worth watching.
Good attempt.
Watch Tamil Nadu Election 2011 Short Film directed by Renga
Dialogues written by Renga, Chkara Sampath
Music : jay Krishnan
Camera: Prakash and Karthik Raja
Graphics: Karthik Raja
http://www.kollytalk.com/video/tamil-nadu-election-2011-short-film/
Couple of days ago, my neighbor’s son informed me that he was confused about the selection of good Colleges for Higher Studies in US.
Different Agencies award different ratings.
I am providing the List of such sites at the end of this blog.
The best way is to go the College site.
Go to Alumni.
Find out people who have passed out from the Institution between 5-10 years earlier and know where and how they are placed.
If necessary you may contact them by email.
You go to Faculty.
Check the qualification of Faculty members,their published works, their reputation, their Academic standing in the subject.If required you may also check with their previous employer.
You may also get a List of good schools in US from the US embassy.
Collate all the details and decide for yourself.
Never go to an Education Consultant for they have their own interests.
Rankings of universities in the United States.
Top 40 “National Universities” according to US News & World Report, 2007
Referred to as the “granddaddy of the college rankings”,America’s best–known American college and university rankings have been compiled since 1983 by U.S. News & World Reportand are widely regarded as the most influential of all college rankings.
The US News rankings are based upon data which U.S. News collects from each educational institution either from an annual survey or from the school’s website. It also considers opinion surveys of university faculty and administrators outside the school. The college rankings were published in all years thereafter, except 1984.
The National Research Council ranks the doctoral research programmes of US universities, most recently in 1995.Data collection for an updated ranking began in 2006.
The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index by Academic Analytics ranks 354 institutions based on faculty publications, citations, research grants and awards.
The Center for Measuring University Performance has ranked American research universities in the Top American Research Universities since 2000. The methodology is based on data such as research publications, citations, recognitions and funding, as well as undergraduate quality such as SAT scores. The information used can be found in public–accessible materials, reducing possibilities for manipulation. The methodology is generally consistent from year to year and changes are explained in the publication along with references from other studies.
sue. It offers American university and college rankings based upon how well it enhances social mobility, fosters scientific and humanistic research and promotes an ethic of service.
In 2008, Forbes.com began publishing an annual list of “America’s Best Colleges. “The Forbes rankings use the list of alumni published in Who’s Who in America, student evaluations from ratemyprofessors.com, self-reported salaries of alumni from payscale.com, four-year graduation rates, numbers of students and faculty receiving “nationally competitive awards,” and four-year accumulated student debt to calculate the rankings.[94][95] The 2009 rankings included less familiar colleges and higher rankings of US military academies. They were criticized due to reliance on subjective sources (50% of the rankings depend on Who’s Who in America and ratemyprofessor.com)[96] as well as for the lower rankings of many nationally recognized institutions, including Ivy League schools.[citation needed]
Forbes also published “Top Colleges For Getting Rich”, partly based upon anonymous readers’ votes.[citation needed] It ranks schools based on figures obtained by payscale.com, which in turn collects data through self-reported earnings.
In 2009, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) began grading colleges and universities based on the strength of their general education requirements. They assign a letter grade ranging from “A” to “F” to more than 700 four-year colleges and universities based on how many of seven subjects are required of students: composition, mathematics, intermediate-level foreign language, science, economics, literature and American government or history.This rating has been endorsed by Mel Elfin, founding editor of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings. New York Times higher education blogger Stanley Fish, while agreeing that universities ought to have a strong core curriculum, disagreed with some of the subjects ACTA includes in the core. As of 2010, only 16 universities had earned an “A”.
Avery et al. pioneered the use of choice modelling to rank colleges. Their methodology used a statistical analysis of the decisions of 3,240 students who applied to college in 1999. MyChances.net adopted a similar approach starting in 2009, stating that its method is based on this approach. The study analysed students admitted to multiple colleges. The college they attended became the winner, and the others became the losers. An Elo rating system was used to assign points based on each win or loss, and the colleges were ranked based on their Elo points. A useful consequence of the use of Elo points is that they can be used to estimate the frequency with which students, upon being admitted to two schools, will choose one over the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings#United_States
Myriad of evidence is piling up about ISI’s collusion with Al_Qaeda.
Even Pasha would not have had access to the wealth of material found in the Book.
But Pakistan’s propensity for ignoring what is destroying their Nation is well-known.
It will take action ,it seems, only if the Sal himself proclaims the Truth about ISI.
The Book , a good read, lays bare the skeletons in Pakistan’s cup board.
A myriad of authors, journalists, academics and analysts have attempted to analyze what drives Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and fighters. Syed Saleem Shahzad is the only one to have gone to their strongholds and asked them. Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter, has a level of access to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that Western journalists can only dream of. He has interviewed many top-level strategists and fighters in both movements on multiple occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jordan. In Inside Al-Qaeda and the Talibanhe uses first-hand accounts and his own local knowledge to build up a convincing picture of the aims and motivation of the leaders and fighters in radical Islamic movements. This is a version of the “war on terror” that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movements….
Syed Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter, has a level of access to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that Western journalists can only dream of. He has interviewed many top-level strategists and fighters in both movements on multiple occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jordan. In Inside Al-Qaedaand the Taliban he uses first-hand accounts and his own local knowledge to build up a convincing and compelling picture of the aims and motivation of the leaders and fighters in radical Islamic movements.
This is a version of the ‘war on terror’ that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movements…
“With Ilyas Kashmiri’s immense expertise on Indian operations, he stunned the Al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that expanding the war theatre was the only way to overcome the present impasse. He presented the suggestion of conducting such a massive operation in India as would bring India and Pakistan to war and with that all proposed operations against Al-Qaeda would be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda excitedly approved the attack-India proposal.”
“Ilyas Kashmiri then handed over the plan to a very able former army major Haroon Ashik, who was also a former LeT commander who was still very close with the LeT chiefs Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and Abu Hamza. Haroon knew about a plan by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months with the official policy to drop it as it was to have been a low-profile routine proxy operation in India through LeT.”
“The former army major, with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri’s men in India, hijacked the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating attacks that shook Mumbai onNovember 26, 2008 and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a war (a detailed account of this is presented in the next chapters). “
The book contains important correspondence and all other details that former Kashmiri Jihadi and former armed forces officials changed Al-Qaeda/Taliban’s strategic perception in South Asian war theatre….
“There has never been a full picture shown before of Al-Qaeda to a western audience. Whatever was portrayed was misleading. Thus all the decisions taken after 9/11 were wrongly directed. Intelligence services around the world pre-9/11 visualized Al-Qaeda simply as a disorganized group of mercenaries, not a sophisticated organization capable of orchestrating consequential attacks on the United States . Even when the new awareness of al-Qaeda’s capabilities dawned, the organisation’s true nature and intentions were a mystery. What remains a fact, however, is that the defeat of the United States has become an obsession with Al-Qaeda’s and it prepares its game plans accordingly.
Ideas play pivotal role in wars. But ideas alone do not provide results. A fusion of ideas and resources are necessary for success. Absence of either one can lead to failure. Al-Qaeda came into existence in late 1980s. But it took its real shape when ideas fused with resources in the middle of 1990s: with the alliance of Dr Zawahiri’s ideas and Osama bin Laden’s resources.
Six feet three inches tall, rich, and close enough to the Saudi royal family to be counted a family member, Osama was as an ‘angry young man’. 14 years ago in his native Saudi Arabia he spoke out against the kingdom for allowing western forces to use its territory after the first Gulf War. The Bin Laden family conglomerate was influential in business and highly respected in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the world business community. Family members finally persuaded Osama to appear personally before King Fahd for a royal pardon. Many important members of the Saudi royals, including Prince Turki and Prince Abdullah, tried their best to settle the dispute. But it was all to no avail.
That was the beginning of the false impression presented about bin Laden and his supporters. US intelligence agencies reported him as a Saudi dissident who had fought bravely in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, but who was no more than a political nuisance in Saudi Arabia . In fact, Osama Bin Laden had become anti-American to the core – and anti Saudi monarchy soon after they invited the Americans troops in the first Gulf War. But he did not have an ideology nor a strategy. Most political analysts believed his initial sloganeering against America would not amount to anything. And, had he not been met up with Al-Zawahiri in 1997 it may not have. But Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri indoctrinated Osama Bin Laden’s with the idea of armed opposition to America and gave such a spin to it that Bin Laden’s uncertain security threat for America turned into a deadly reality.”
What is Al-Qaeda upto without Bin Laden?…
“The next step was ideological fusion: to spawn Al-Qaeda’s ideological genes in Ibnul Balad (Sons of the Soil) transforming them into `Blood Brothers’. The whole of the future war was to be fought by the Ibnul Balad from which Al-Qaeda aimed to produce a new generation of Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiris, with each and every segment of their lives committed to a life-long struggle. They were to live for the movement and die for it. But before they died they were to leave another generation behind to continue the war against America . This was Al-Qaeda’s arsenal.”..
So far A-Qaeda has introduced a few leaders for example Ilyas Kashmiri and his highly sophesticated guerrilla 313 Brigade who espoused the global Jihad.
Born in Bimbur (old Mirpur) in the Samhani Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir on February 10, 1964, Ilyas passed the first year of a mass communication degree at Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad. He did not continue due to his heavy involvement in jihadi activities.
The Kashmir Freedom Movement was his first exposure in the field of militancy, then the Harkat-ul Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI) and ultimately his legendary 313 Brigade. This grew into the most powerful group in South Asia and its network is strongly knitted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. According to some CIA dispatches, the footprints of 313 Brigade are now in Europe and capable of the type of attack that saw a handful of militants terrorize the Indian city of Mumbai last November.
Little is documented of Ilyas’ life, and what has been reported is often contradictory. However, he is invariably described, certainly by world intelligence agencies, as the most effective, dangerous and successful guerrilla leader in the world.
He left the Kashmir region in 2005 after his second release from detention by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and headed for North Waziristan. He had previously been arrested by Indian forces, but he broke out of jail and escaped. He was then detained by the ISI as the suspected mastermind of an attack on then-president Pervez Musharraf, in 2003, but was cleared and released. The ISI then picked Ilyas up again in 2005 after he refused to close down his operations in Kashmir.
His relocation to the troubled border areas sent a chill down spines in Washington as they realized that with his vast experience, he could turn unsophisticated battle patterns in Afghanistan into audacious modern guerrilla warfare.
Ilyas’ track record spoke for itself. In 1994, he launched the al-Hadid operation in the Indian capital, New Delhi, to get some of his jihadi comrades released. His group of 25 people included Sheikh Omar Saeed (the abductor of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002) as his deputy. The group abducted several foreigners, including American, Israeli and British tourists and took them to Ghaziabad near Delhi. They then demanded that the Indian authorities release their colleagues, but instead they attacked the hideout. Sheikh Omar was injured and arrested. (He was later released in a swap for the passengers of a hijacked Indian aircraft). Ilyas escaped unhurt. On February 25, 2000, the Indian army killed 14 civilians in Lonjot village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir after commandos had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the two Kashmirs. They returned to the Indian side with abducted Pakistani girls, and threw the severed heads of three of them at Pakistani soldiers.
The very next day, Ilyas conducted a guerilla operation against the Indian army in Nakyal sector after crossing the LoC with 25 fighters of 313 Brigade. They kidnapped an Indian army officer who was later beheaded – his head was paraded in the bazaars of Kotli back in Pakistani territory.
However, the most significant operation of Ilyas was in Aknor cantonment in Indian-administered Kashmir against the Indian armed forces following the massacre of Muslims in the Indian city of Gujarat in 2002. In cleverly planned attacks involving 313 Brigade divided into two groups, Indian generals, brigadiers and other senior officials were lured to the scene of the first attack. Two generals were injured (the Pakistan army could not injure a single Indian general in three wars) and several brigadiers and colonels were killed. This was one of the most telling setbacks for India in the long-running Kashmiri insurgency….
With the surprisingly strong $41.5 million box-office opening of “Paranormal Activity 2,” which is being touted as the biggest 3-day streak ever for a horror film, Paramount Pictures has a remarkably successful new franchise on their hands.
Made for only $3 million, in line with the original film’s low-budget frights, “Paranormal Activity” and its sequel will go down in movie history books as among the industry’s most profitable films ever.
Related:
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. “Paranormal Activity 2,” $41.5 million.
2. “Jackass 3D,” $21.6 million.
3. “Red,” $15 million.
4. “Hereafter,” $12 million.
5. “The Social Network,” $7.3 million.
6. “Secretariat,” $6.9 million.
7. “Life as We Know It,” $6.2 million.
8. “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” $3.2 million.
9. “The Town,” $2.7 million.
10. “Easy A,” $1.8 million.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainment/20101024/ent-box-office-101024/
Movie Review.
It’s that time of the year again. That time when movie theaters are stocked with sequels from countless franchises that we trust will chill our bones as we devote our hard-earned money in return.
But out of the ashes from the demise of some horror series (such as the Saw movies; 3D = Desperate) emerges a new franchise, one that shocked audiences only a year ago on a modest budget of $15,000. From one surveillance camera in a bedroom, Paranormal Activity crawled into the psyche of what exactly goes down after we fall asleep. And as the torch is passed to Paranormal Activity 2, it’s needless to say that yet another real-estate agent forgot to mention some small details when giving the open-house tour.
When we last left Katie and Micah, the young couple who moved into a haunted house in Paranormal Activity, things ended on a rather sour note. The two moved into a new home, things got a little weird, demonic spirits possessed Katie to murder her boyfriend, you know, the usual scary movie plot. Paranormal Activity 2 takes on the role of a prequel to the first movie, with the events taking place before Katie and Micah’s relationship became just a little stale.
The premise of the film remains pretty much the same in this newest installment. Newlyweds Dan and Kristi, who is Katie’s sister, Dan’s daughter Ali, and their newborn son Hunter move into a new home, where life just seems perfect. But soon, their maid, Martine, notices the presence of restless spirits in the house, and she is eventually fired for her paranormal assumptions. This only leads to more unexplained events that raise the age-old haunted-house question, “Why don’t you move after the second time the house locks you out?”
You basically know what to expect in the film, but that’s where all the fun lies. You know that the first 30 minutes will be very subtle, with the occasional door opening by itself or a loud noise to lure you in. You know that the next 30 minutes will feature slightly more haunting experiences, with the development of a plot to maintain cinematic structure. And you should also know that the last 30 minutes will be pure insanity and the one person whom you don’t want to see die will end up disappointing you in the end.
The plot is pretty much the stereotypical haunted-house flick, but that’s besides the point. You get your money’s worth with the last 15 minutes, including the climactic scene shot entirely in nighttime vision, which involves Dan trying to get Hunter from the demon-possessed Kristi. But half of the terror and suspense in Paranormal Activity 2 is waiting for all this to happen: the anticipation of what the camera will capture at 3:33 a.m. is arguably more terrifying than what actually happens at 3:33 a.m.
I did like that the movie takes place before the timing of the first and that the main characters of this second installment share a relationship with the main characters from the first film as well. The bottom line is that Paranormal Activity 2 does its job of getting audience members to jump out of their seats, bite their nails, and shout abruptly in terror every time a door slams shut. And that’s all that really matters this time of year.
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