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What is it about bacon that we love? It seems the food world has had an obsession with it lately, from bacon vodka, to Bacon Salt, to the infamous Bacon Explosion. But have you ever thought of pairing bacon with something on the sweeter side? What about bacon in candy?
I dared to go there when I purchased the Mo's Bacon Bar. I had read about it before on the trusty food porn sites that I peruse and salivate over daily, but had never seen it in stores. "Bacon and chocolate?", I thought, "What a great combination!" I love the pairing of sweet and salty in food – like SnoCaps and popcorn at the movie theater – and I am a bacon fanatic. This was also the item that spawned the idea for my Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes. I was bound and determined to find this candy bar.
Read the rest of this entry


text:
Evolution Hoax
Allah is very gentle with His servants. He provides for anyone He wills. He is the Most Strong, the Almighty. (Surat ash-Shura, 42:19)
As mentioned earlier, there are two kinds of people: those who submit to Allah and those who rebel against Him. Among humanity, He made a very few of them truly submissive to Him. In many verses, Allah relates that the majority of people will not have faith and will not attain the straight path. These people deserve Hell, for they adhered to Satan's path, failed to remember Allah, and denied His existence despite their own certainty. People who submit themselves to Allah and live for His good pleasure, on the other hand, lead a beautiful life both in this life and beyond. No doubt, Allah's sending His Messengers and Books in order to guide humanity is one of His favors. In the Qur'an, Allah's kindness to believers is stated, as follows:
Allah showed great kindness to the believers when He sent a Messenger to them from among themselves to recite His Signs to them, purify them, and teach them the Book and Wisdom, even though before that they were clearly misguided. (Surah Al 'Imran, 3:164)
Allah, Who is Gentle, also shows His kindness to His faithful servants by helping them. In the Qur'an, He gives many examples of His help and support to His sincere servants. One of these concerns Prophet Musa's (as) people, who were saved from Pharaoh's violence and made inheritors of the land. This fact is related in the following verses:
Pharaoh exalted himself arrogantly in the land and divided its people into camps, oppressing one group of them by slaughtering their sons and letting their women live. He was one of the corrupters. We desired to show kindness to those who were oppressed in the land, to make them leaders, and to make them inheritors. (Surat al-Qasas, 28:4-5)
As the sole protector and helper of believers, Allah will help them in the Hereafter, transform their evil into good, and show them great kindness:
They will say: "Beforehand we used to live in fear among our families. But Allah was gracious to us and safeguarded us from the punishment of the searing wind. Beforehand we certainly used to call on Him because He is the All-Good, the Most Merciful." (Surat at-Tur, 52:26-28)Does He Who created not then know? He is the Subtle, the All-Aware. (Surat al-Mulk, 67:14)
Eyesight cannot perceive Him but He perceives eyesight. He is the Subtle, the All-Aware. (Surat al-An'am, 6:103)
2009-08-19 00:08:16
Do you not see that Allah sends down water from the sky and then, in the morning, the land is covered in green? Allah is All-Subtle, All-Aware. (Surat al-Hajj, 22:63)
"My son, even if something weighs as little as a mustard-seed and is inside a rock, or anywhere else in the heavens or Earth, Allah will bring it out. Allah is the Subtle, All-Aware." (Surat al-Luqman, 31:16)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
US Defense Department Enter Enterprise License Agreement for Microsoft Products ($617 million)January 3, 2013 1 Comment
The US Defense Department has recently announced via press release that they have entered a joint enterprise license agreement for Microsoft products worth $617 million. The deal is for over a 3 year span and includes MS products like Microsoft Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Windows 8.
Press Release:
OD Awards First Joint Licensing Agreement
By Amaani Lyle American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2012 – The Defense Department has leveraged the buying power of more than two million information technology users to award a three-year, $617 million joint enterprise license agreement for Microsoft products, defense officials announced.
The deal, led by the Army Contracting Command in collaboration with the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Army and the Air Force, demonstrates the best pricing DOD has received to date for Microsoft desktop and server software licenses, officials said.
"There's a move afoot throughout the department to bring about efficiencies in the [information technology] world," David L. DeVries, DOD deputy chief information officer, told American Forces Press Service. "We took a long, hard look at it … realizing that the Department of Defense relies upon the network and upon information technology to do its business."
Under the agreement, the Army, Air Force and DISA can begin using the newest versions of Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Windows 8, officials said, adding that Office 2013 provides enhanced security and content management tools.
The package has been customized to meet the specific security needs of the Defense Department.
"How do we bring about better effectiveness for the warfighter, better improved security on the networks … while reducing the cost of ownership?" DeVries asked. "We are the largest corporation out there, comprised of four military services. … No one comes close to our scale, so when we talk about something that produces a standardized way of buying, installing and maintaining [enterprise software], that's a huge deal."
Department officials estimate savings could run into tens of millions over the course of several years through lower license and software assurance costs, officials said.
"This effort is a significant pathfinder on how to do major contract awards for the Department of Defense," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael J. Basla, Air Force CIO and chief of information dominance. "This contract award culminates over a year's worth of great teaming between the Air Force, Army and DISA, and ultimately the Air Force will see a cost avoidance of about $50 million a year."
Michael E. Krieger, Army deputy CIO, said the Army will save more than $70 million each year for the span of the agreement.
"The Army Contracting Command negotiated terms that met the complex technical and security requirements for Army, the Air Force and DISA in a single agreement," Krieger said. "The spirit of collaboration between the services enables unprecedented opportunities for improvements in efficiency and productivity for DOD and the Army is proud to have led the effort."
Navy Rear Adm. David G. Simpson, DISA's vice director and senior procurement executive, also expressed confidence in the joint venture, noting overall
avings of more than 10 percent for the life of the agreement.
"[The agreement] gives us a good way of bringing the volume of the government's purchase to bear and reducing the time and effort that Microsoft needs to spend negotiating across the government," Simpson said. "Bottom line: lower price for greater value."
The admiral also explained that the license advances DOD's continued focus on mobile computing.
"[The agreement] recognizes the shift to mobility," Simpson said. "Microsoft is committed to making sure that the technology within the agreement has a mobile-first focus, and we expect to begin to take advantage of Microsoft's mobile offerings as part of our enterprise mobility ecosystem."
Officials said the agreement also provides software assurance benefits which will offer Army organizations additional training and consulting services.
DeVries said standardization and predictability have been vital to reducing and controlling costs and ultimately improving DOD's ability to securely share information.
This deal and future ventures will enable DOD to work with a variety of vendors to develop products that meet acceptable security standards while enabling the organizations to have as much flexibility and capability as possible, he said.
"Improved effectiveness for the warfighter [and] improved security of our networks and information systems while reducing the total cost of ownership … these tenets are the basis of what the department is under way on now to achieve the joint information environment," DeVries said.
Source: Defense via MS News Thanks JP for the tip


text:
Mids come up short against Holy Cross
Navy falls to 6-12 on season
Dave Dudzinski had his second double-double of the season and Malcolm Miller posted his first as Holy Cross cruised to a 62-47 win over Navy on Wednesday night in Patriot League action.
Dudzinski finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds while Miller had 13 points and 13 boards for the Crusaders (9-8, 1-1), who have won two of their last three games.
Holy Cross, which pulled ahead early, led 31-27 at intermission before opening the second half with a 9-2 burst.
After the Midshipmen (6-12, 0-2) closed the gap to five, at 43-38 with 11:53 remaining, Jordan Stevens answered with a 3-pointer. Holy Cross pushed the lead into double figures with 5:48 to go en route to its fifth straight win over Navy.
The Crusaders had a 36-23 advantage on the glass.
Worth Smith scored 17 points to lead the Midshipmen, who have lost six games in a row.


text:
18 HRs, 57 RBI return to Herd
The Buffalo Bisons today announced that they have activated INF MIKE HESSMAN from the disabled list. The slugger will be active for the team's game against the Rochester Red Wings on Monday night.
READ: Full team release on Hessman's return.
Hessman was the International League's top slugger for the first two months of the season. He was placed on the disabled list on June 10 and missed 33 games with a stress fracture in his right hand. Prior to going on the DL, Hessman lead all of baseball with 57RBI and was tops in the International League with 18 home runs.
On the season, Hessman has hit .287 (62-216) with 17 doubles, 18 home runs and 57RBI in 56 games with the Bisons. His 18 homers still rank tied for 3rd most in the IL while his .616 slugging percentage is just five plate appearances shy of qualifying as the league's best.


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Brass Delaware State Blank, 24g
Model: BM845
Brass Delaware State Blank, 24g
- Height: 40.3mm (1.6")
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- One side now has a peelable plastic film on it to protect from scratching.
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- Made in the USA.
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This item does not have any reviews yet.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will encourage its two million members to take part in a national protest against the e-tolling system, it said on Tuesday.
"[Cosatu] is mobilising its two million members for the mother of all protests against the act of highway robbery set to be committed from 30 April 2012 — the Gauteng e-tolls," spokesperson Patrick Craven said in a statement.
"We are confident that we will be joined by many thousands more angry residents and motorists who support our demand for the scrapping of these tolls."
Cosatu is planning several rallies, marches, demonstrations and night vigils at the offices of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) and the transport department across the country from April 23.
These would lead up to a large "national stay-away or socio-economic strike" on April 30.
Craven said opposition to the tolls was "overwhelming", especially to the new punitive rate which will be applied to motorists who do not get windscreen-mounted e-tags.
"These threats will have the exact opposite effect. They will infuriate people and make them even more determined to follow Cosatu's advice not to register and not to buy an e-tag," he said.
"In the end, however, it is the pressure of the masses which will force government to back down. People power has brought down governments in North Africa; it can surely stop this assault on our living standards."
Recovering costs
On March 7 thousands of people participated in Cosatu's nationwide march against the tolls.
Sanral gazetted the new tariffs on Friday.
Alternate users (people without e-tags) will be charged R1.75/km, compared to the standard tariff of 30c/km for registered users.
It said the higher fee was because of the need to recover costs, including invoicing and debt collection.
On Tuesday, several organisations and political parties raised concerns about the tariffs and asked Sanral to postpone the launch.
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry said it was "concerned by the uncertainty" surrounding the fee system and the exemptions for public transport.
"This makes a clear case for delaying implementation until there is clarity on the toll fees and exemptions for certain road users," it said.
Public concerns
Business Unity South Africa (Busa) called for a delay in implementation until the public's concerns had been fully addressed.
"Unless these serious practical problems can be timeously resolved, Busa sincerely believes that the magnitude of challenges facing the e-toll system in Gauteng justify delaying its implementation … to a later date."
Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum instructed its lawyers on Tuesday to urgently prepare court papers in an attempt to stop the launch.
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The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the tariffs would severely impact its ability to rescue animals.
"We do not receive any funds whatsoever from national or local government and exemption from Sanral was denied … [we are] now in a position whereby we shall have no option but to use public funds to pay for our vehicles to be allowed onto freeways as we go to assist animals," it said.
On Monday, national consumer commissioner Mamodupi Mohlala said she would look into a complaint by the Democratic Alliance about the punitive rate. — Sapa


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The Academy issued the longlist on Friday (2), adding that some of the titles have not yet executed their Los Angeles qualifying runs.
At least eight eligible animated features must be released theatrically in Los Angeles County within the calendar year for this category to be activated.
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Films submitted in the animated feature film category may also qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including best picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories.
The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Jan 10 and the show itself will take place on Feb 24.


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View Other Items in this Archive |
View All Archives
City Council Agendas - 2010-07-22 City Council Agenda - Special Meeting, Budget Presentation
Brief Description -
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Elle's Joe Zee, Kate Lanphear, and Anne Slowey Sound Off on Bloggers
Elle's Joe Zee, Kate Lanphear, and Anne Slowey Sound Off on Bloggers
>> Elle's fashion news director Anne Slowey has sounded off on bloggers — particularly Style Rookie's Tavi Gevinson, before — which then prompted her to take to Elle's blog to further expound on her comments. Last night at ELLEvated, a forum of six Elle editors hosted by WFIT (the Fashion Institute of Technology's radio and television broadcasting network) in New York, the subject came up again, and creative director Joe Zee and style director Kate Lanphear, too, put forth their views on bloggers.
When asked his feeling on the Tavi phenomenon, Zee replied:
"The Internet has allowed people to be 'couch critics.' You could sit anywhere in the world, you could sit in Oklahoma, look at a fashion show on the Internet, you could post your thoughts . . . the Internet has made fashion a lot more democratic in this way. You know, Tavi, like her or don't like her, she's 13 — whether she even really writes it herself, the idea that she has gotten all this attention, it's because of the Internet, not because of anything else. [At Elle] we're talking about people who have really done this their entire lives, who've really covered fashion, who really understand fashion . . . understand the history of fashion, can critique it from a point of view, [can] actually relay it back to something they've experienced and understand. I don't think Tavi even knows what happened five years ago. She has every right to [post] on the Internet, she has every right to have the following she has . . . everybody can follow her and find her creative or funny or quirky or inspiring, but the idea is there are people here [at Elle] who do know the history and I think that Anne [Slowey] stresses this. It's absolutely true: if you don't know what you're talking about, then do you really have the credibility to talk about it?"
Lanphear disagreed » Lanphear disagreed:
"But there's also something beautiful about these fresh voices that can say something that maybe sometimes someone who does have a lot of credibility misses, or they see it through a really fresh eye. I think that's the debate that is going on in our industry full-stop, because we don't want to discredit years and years of experience and hard work and paying your dues and learning about what we do day to day, but there is something really beautiful about all of these really fresh perspectives that come out of the Internet."
Slowey then piped up:
"Well I think it's really subjective, blogs — they're not holding themselves up to the same standards that a journalist would, they're really just an expression. It's entertainment and it's fun. I think that you just have to judge people according to what they're setting out to do. Tavi's a unique situation because she's put herself — first of all, she's been 13 for like, the last 4 years — but she's put herself in the center of the cyclone. She swore she'd never sell out and now she's being paid by Target to do video . . . It's like, her father's an English professor, I don't know. Her editor at Harper's [Bazaar] said
<product target="_blank" href="http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-articles/tavi-gevinson-fashion-review">her copy</product> comes in clean . . . I work with New Yorker writers, their copy doesn't come in clean. You can punch holes in that. But case in point, BryanBoy, he's the sweetest kid out there and he's just so excited about fashion that it's contagious. I love finding myself sitting next to him at a fashion show and listening to him just bubble over with enthusiasm. Maybe what he's saying isn't groundbreaking prose, the writing's not that great, but it's how he talks. So, I think there's room for both."
Lanphear added: "We're in the midst of an evolution, all these people that were outsiders are now sitting first, second row. They have fashion advertisers on their sites, or their blogs . . it's really changed the way that they've reported on fashion. So it's really interesting to see how this whole thing is happening so quickly."


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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Education officials in most of the states that have adopted Common Core standards say they will go forward with the benchmarks for reading, writing and math despite objections, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The independent nonprofit Center on Education Policy at George Washington University said 37 of the 40 states that responded to its survey this spring considered it unlikely that they would reverse, limit or change their decision to adopt the Common Core education standards during the upcoming school year. The center didn't identify the states that participated but noted that some of the states that didn't respond were dealing with pushback — a factor that could affect the results.
The new Common Core standards replace a hodgepodge of educational goals that had varied greatly from state to state. The federal government was not involved in the state-led effort to develop them but has encouraged the project. The only states not to adopt the standards are Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia. Minnesota adopted the reading but not the math standards.
While proponents say the new standards will better prepare students, critics worry they'll set a national curriculum for public schools rather than letting states decide what is best for their students.
Efforts to slow down or derail the standards sprung up this year in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Utah. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution calling the standards an "inappropriate overreach."
Maria Ferguson, executive director of the Center on Education Policy, dismissed the efforts against the standards. "School districts and states are practical," she said. "The resources that have been put into this are pretty profound. And you have to think about, if not this, what?"
Most states described overcoming resistance to the Common Core as either a minor or nonexistent challenge, the survey found. Only two states found that that overcoming resistance from colleges and universities was a major challenge. And only five felt that overcoming resistance from outside the education system was a major challenge.
The opposition, however, wasn't convinced.
"I still think there are lingering questions, to say the very least," said Jonathan Butcher, education director for the Phoenix-based conservative Goldwater Institute, which has opposed the standards. He said the big issue is the rollout of new tests designed around the new standards. The tests are electronic, and one concern is that states lack the bandwidth and enough computers to administer them.
Two upcoming reports from the Center on Education Policy will look specifically at testing issues, Ferguson said.
People who say the federal government has gone too far point to the money provided to consortiums developing Common Core tests. They also note that the Education Department encouraged states to adopt the standards to compete for "Race to the Top" grants and seek waivers around some of the unpopular proficiency requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law.
Given that controversy, the survey asked states whether they wanted federal help — both financial and through an update to the federal education law — implementing the standards. Thirty states said they'd like federal help with the rollout of new tests tied to the Common Core and teacher and principal training.
The survey noted that lawmakers had started work on reauthorizing No Child Left Behind.
"To date," the report concluded, "the federal government has played an indirect but significant role in states' adoption and implementation of the Common Core ... A key question is whether the opponents of the Common Core in Congress will use the reauthorization to curtail the current federal role or whether supporters will expand federal assistance for this major new national education policy."


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Leadership Series, September 17, 2011
The flagship event of Symbiosis Institute of International Business (SIIB), Leadership Series, was held on the 17th of September 2011 with the theme 'Social Entrepreneurship – A Fulfilling Mission'.
Guest speakers included:
Ms. Rashmi Bansal
The chief guest and key note speaker for the event. She is a writer; all three of her best sellers are based on entrepreneurship - 'Stay Hungry Stay Foolish', 'I Have a Dream' & 'Connect the Dots'. She is also the co-founder and editor of JAM (Just Another Magazine), India's leading youth magazine and writes on one of India's popular blogs – Youthcurry
Dr. P. Namperumalsamy
He is an Indian ophthalmologist and Chairman of Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai. He is known for bringing assembly-line efficiency to eye surgery. In 2010, TIME magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is also a recipient of the Padma Shri award from the Government of India, and under his chairmanship, Aravind Eye Hospital received the 2010 Conrad N Hilton Humanitarian Prize.
There couldn't have been better choice of speakers for the event than the above two. While Dr. Namperumalsamy leads by example by being one of India's leading social entrepreneurs, Ms. Bansal, through her latest book, 'I Have a Dream', has brought to light twenty of the leading social entrepreneurs in India. The students were greatly inspired to get cognizant of the selfless deeds Aravind Eye Care Center has been doing for the country. This reaffirmed the belief that a successful business organization 'can' and 'has' to be socially conscious and socially relevant – which underlines 'SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP'.
The pre-events day, 16-09-2011, kicked off in the afternoon with the B-plan competition. There had been an overwhelming response with as many as 48 teams participating, sending their business plans. The top 5 made it to the finals. Teams shortlisted were from IIM-A, IIT-Kgp, TAPMI and SIIB. The event presented an opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to add a social angle to their business plans, which thereby contributes to what the country is striving to achieve, inclusive growth. The panel of judges found themselves in a tight spot when it came to selecting two winners. The teams from IIM-A emerged the best among the finalists. Although winning and losing are two sides of the same coin, what really bridges them is the desire to improvise. Yes, it was a pleasing sight to notice participants, in an attempt to improvise, further discussing their business plans with the judges and the faculty members of SIIB. The latter was more than happy to offer valuable suggestions. Visiting students were appreciative of the hospitality provided. One such participant went beyond word-of-mouth appreciation and expressed her delight publicly on Facebook.
"Thanks a lot for the wonderful experience I had in SIIB during the Leadership Series 2011. It was truly a pleasure and honour being there!!! :)" - Shubhra Singh (MHRM, IIT KGP)
The B-plan event was followed by other pre-events like Survival, Tambola, Koffee Relay and Leadership Series Quiz. It was absolute fun and the campus reverberated with joy, joy and only joy. Even the so-called losers felt that the joy of participating completely overshadowed the fleeting disappointment loss evoked. Cash prizes worth Rs. 25000 were distributed. Things wrapped up with the screening of the Hindi movie, 'Ye Saali Zindagi'.
The D-day arrived. The main event commenced at 1100 hrs on 17th September. Dr. Namperumalsamy, Chairman, Aravind Eye Hospitals, along with Dr. Rajani Gupte, Director, SIIB, lit the traditional lamp. The latter presented the welcome address, elaborating on the relevance of the theme of the event in Indian context. This, she said, shall pave way for budding entrepreneurs in the audience to add a social angle in analysing and solving business situations and complexities. Dr. Namperumalsamy delivered an inspiring speech igniting the social spark in one and all. He shared the journey of his organization's growth path, from a humble beginning in 1976 to the position it holds in Indian ophthalmology today. He stressed that Aravind always cares for its patients and that profits were a by-product of the services rendered to the society. It's worthy to mention that case studies on Aravind have been analysed in the Harvard, IIMA, IIMB and other leading Business schools in the world. He mentioned that as part of its outreach programme, in the year ending March 2010, 2148 camps had been conducted through which 455378 patients were screened and 76081 patients underwent surgery.
Much to the delight of the audience, Ms. Rashmi Bansal took the stage following Mr. Namperumalsamy's talk. She appreciated the idea to have a theme as thought-provoking as social entrepreneurship. She provided an insight into her latest book, 'I Have a Dream', which narrates the story of 20 social entrepreneurs in India. To the students, it was an opportunity to identify 20 businessmen/businesswomen they could look up to. The stories of Mirakle Couriers and Akshaypatra Foundation were moving. While the former provides employment to the visually and the aurally challenged, the latter provides nutritious and delicious mid-day meals to school going children. Akshaypatra foundation is an excellent collaboration of the corporate and ISKCON Bangalore. The latter adds a unique spiritual dimension to the social initiative by providing nutritious prasadam to children studying in Government schools in Bangalore. This, she said, ensured fall in drop-out rates in schools and improved participation of students in academic activities. The Q&A session followed with students posing Ms. Bansal with questions on MBA, IIM-A, writing, social consciousness and entrepreneurship. Students were appreciative of the frankness associated with her answers. She made her fans' day by signing on their copies of her latest book.
Following a brief lunch break was a panel discussion, members being an eclectic mix of corporate and social activists. The discussion emphasized that one could work for a corporate and still make a difference to the society. This, students realized, was corroborated by the work done by one of the panellists, Ms. Majula, Associate Vice president, Infosys. She also manages an NGO – 'Sparsh- A Healing Touch' – formed by the employees of Infosys Pune Development Centre. Sparsh has 300+ volunteers working with more than 15 NGOs in and around Pune. The relevance of CSR was discussed at length and there was great emphasis on the need to create a separate department for it at the organizational level. This, panellists believed, would do justice to what really is intended. Valuable inputs were added by Mr. Umesh Malhotra, Founder, Hippocampus. Mr. Umesh, an IIT Madras alumnus, along with his wife, Ms. Vimala, set up Hippocampus in 2003 to promote reading amongst children. Hippocampus runs 'for profit' children's libraries in Bangalore and Chennai and has inspired many others to start such similar ventures. Their program, 'Grow By Reading', he said, has been implemented in more than 250 libraries reaching out to more than 100000 children annually. Candidness personified, he stressed on the need for one to follow his/her heart and do what one strongly believes in. This, he said, was the driving force behind his setting up of Hippocampus. Mr. Pradeep Bhargava, MD, Cummins Generator Tech India Ltd, played an able moderator and kept the discussion lively with his good sense of humour. Other panellists included Mr. Arbind Singh, leading social activist and Managing Director of Nidan Swachdhara Private Limited (NSPL), Mr. Yogendra Saxena, the Chief of Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) and Sustainability at Jubiliant Life Sciences Ltd., and Kishori Gadre, Director of Janwani, an initiative of Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture.
The distribution of the SIIB Excellence award followed. The award is part of SIIB's efforts to recognize the outstanding contributions its alumni offer to the society. From a list of more than 25 nominations, Mr. Mukesh Kumar, batch of 1997, was chosen for the award. He reminisced his association with SIIB and took Dr. Rajani Gupte down memory lane on a nostalgic trip. They shared the humble beginning SIIB has had and were in awe of the progress it has made over the years in terms of international presence, academic excellence and contribution to society at large. Mr. Mukesh shared a few of the many interesting incidents during his times. He offered valuable tips to students and emphasized on the need and suggested ways to leverage the stay at SIIB. This was followed by distribution of prizes to the rank holders across the three courses – MBA (IB), MBA (AB) and MBA (E&E).
All good things have to come to an end. Likewise, Leadership Series 2011 drew curtains after screening of the 'Making of the Leadership Series' video. The video reflected the assiduous efforts put in by students that were well guided by the faculty members. The many funny moments and crazy ideas that had been part of the execution process in the lead up to the event formed the vivid moments. What really was evident in every moment of the video was the intensity with which the team had worked – being as creative as they could and making no compromise on the efforts put in, by putting the heart and soul into it. Undoubtedly, a standing ovation was a befitting mode of appreciation and the same followed as everyone in the audience was floored by the commitment of the students and faculty members in making Leadership Series 2011 a grand success.
SIIB Leadership Series team expresses its sincere thanks to the sponsors and media partners – Business Standard, Pagalguy, Radio Mirchi, Planet M, Freecharge.in, Café Chokolode - the participants from other B-schools, Dr. Rajani Gupte, Director, Ms. Asmita Chitnis & Ms. Soumi Rai, Faculty Co-ordinators, and the students for the inspiration, the sweet memoirs and for scripting the scale of success achieved.
Rajesh Sridhar
Public Relations
Batch 2011-2013


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text: Show Hide image Culture 29 March 2012 Slings and arrows In a meritocracy, winners deserve to win or think they do, and they reward themselves accordingly. Sign-up It sounds crazy, given how often we refer to it in everyday life, but the idea of luck has been under attack. Denying the importance of good fortune is central to the way we like to talk about success. In a meritocracy, the winners deserve to win, or at least they think they do. That was one of Michael Young's central objections to the concept when he coined the word in his satirical book The Rise of the Meritocracy, first published in 1958. Young predicted that vast social problems would follow the central logic of meritocracy, which he described as "talent plus effort equals merit". But how would life's losers feel about justified failure? And how would the winners behave, as they celebrated their justified success? Later, writing for the Guardian four years in to Tony Blair's government, Young felt that history had proved him right: . . . the rich and the powerful have been doing mighty well for themselves . . . If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug . . . The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited. Salaries and fees have shot up. Generous share option schemes have proliferated. Top bonuses and golden handshakes have multiplied. Those perceptive paragraphs have even more power a decade later, in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the scandal over MPs' expenses. For all its lip-service to meritocracy, this generation's officer class has a very strong sense of entitlement. The irony, of course, is that real meritocracy - which implies a decreasing correlation between privilege and achievement - appears to have gone into reverse. Astonishingly, that decline applies even to the supposedly open world of professional sport. On the 1987/88 cricket tour to Pakistan, England selected only one privately educated player. In contrast, about two-thirds of today's England team attended a private school. That means that 7 per cent of the population is supplying two-thirds of the cricket elite. In probabilistic terms, being privately educated (as I was) makes it about 20 times more likely that you will play for England (as I did). The same trend applies to England rugby players and British Olympians. Sport, in this instance, reflects society. In 2009 the former health secretary Alan Milburn chaired a government-appointed panel to investigate social mobility in the UK. "Birth not worth has become more key to life chances," Milburn previously said. Social luck, the philosopher John Rawls's phrase for privilege, shows no sign of loosening its grip. Worst of all, our fortunocracy insists on a meritocratic pretence. Mockney accents, dumbing down, pressing meritocratic buttons, covering your privileged tracks: it's all passed off as modesty, as the Everyman touch. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Pretending to have fewer advantages than you did is not only a form of deceit, it is also form of conceit - an attempt to deny your good luck in order to claim more credit for yourself. This discrepancy between myth and reality is equally relevant to those who are less fortunate. The language of self-determination has increased - social mobility, self-help, making your own luck. But that aspiration is not reflected in reality. So we are obstructed, in language and in thought, from bridging the gap between the mantras of modern society and self-help and the realities of modern life. A most uncomfortable question follows. Must there not be a point at which the philosophy of self-help and positive thinking borders on cruelty? Might it not be that believing in "making your own luck" is serving only to make us unhappy and confused? There is a second, separate strand to anti-luck. Those who deny the existence of innate talent also set out their stall against luck. People whom we once called geniuses must now be rebranded as normal folk who dragged themselves towards brilliance through work and an effort of will. Blessed freaks Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, published in 2008, popularised the idea that practice and intensely hard work, not talent, ultimately determine success. Matthew Syed's Bounce proposed that geniuses - from Mozart to Roger Federer - are "made" rather than "born". And Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code argued that talent was a myth, a hoax, an old wives' tale; even worse than that, talent was a conspiracy. Syed, a Times colleague whom I admire even when I do not agree with him, put it like this: "It is Federer's regular practice that has given him his advantage, not his genes . . . Top performers are not born with sharper instincts; instead, they possess enhanced awareness and anticipation . . . The key thing to note is that these cannot possibly be innate skills [my italics] . . ." Why not? Surely it is inevitable that some people have a genetic predisposition to become great athletes, and that this talent must then be honed by many thousands of hours of practice. Almost everyone who has played sport, amateur or professional, knows that "natural sportsmen" exist. As Rafael Nadal said of Federer (and Nadal would know): "His physique - his DNA - seems perfectly adapted to tennis. You get these blessed freaks of nature in other sports, too." How perverse that agreeing with Nadal has become almost taboo, that talent has been turned into a topic of reproach. One of the central pleasures of watching sport, or taking in the performing arts, is recognising God-given talent (or luck-given talent, for the secular-minded), and not only admiring guts or determination. Often, it is when pure talent takes over, producing a performance that no coach or training regime could orchestrate, that sport makes the soul sing. Writing genetic good fortune out of the script does not enhance life. It obscures the obvious truth that true greatness will always depend on a mysterious compound of genetic blessings and hard work. How did I become obsessed by luck? As a professional sportsman, I was conditioned to deny its existence, telling myself that my destiny was always in my own hands. But I learned the hard way. In 2008, when I was captain of Middlesex, my team was on the brink of its fifth consecutive win when inexplicably I broke my ankle during a routine passage of play. I never played professional cricket again. The silver lining of that moment of bad fortune was that it taught me about luck in a much broader sense. I might never have examined properly how my education had stacked the odds in my favour if I hadn't first cursed the bad luck of having my ankle in a cast. While I was hobbling around Lord's, a thoughtful Middlesex fan gave me a copy of Fooled by Randomness, the book that made the trader-turned-author Nassim Nicholas Taleb into the world's best-known scourge of the banking system. The previous summer I had been asked to review Taleb's subsequent book, The Black Swan (2007), but I'd been flat out captaining Middlesex and was obliged to decline. Now, a year on and with my ankle in plaster, I had more than enough time on my hands. You could say it took my black swan to find Taleb's. I arranged to meet up with Taleb, and the day we chose, weeks in advance, was 10 October 2008. That turned out to be Black Friday. As the banking system tottered on the brink of collapse, Taleb's stock rose. I was interviewing a theorist of chance and randomness on the very day, randomly selected, that he described, only partly exaggerating, as "the most important day of his life". Over the following 18 months, as I researched my own, very different inquiry into luck, I found myself increasingly drawn to the financial crisis. First, because it was - is - the story of our times. Second, because many of the books that already existed about luck are dominated by finance. If you try to understand luck, you can't help but follow the money. Event horizon Luck is not something to which financiers like to admit, any more than sportsmen do. Indeed, one of the finest financial books ever written, Against the Gods by Peter L Bernstein, casts luck as the villain of the story, the bad guy on the wrong side of history. Luck, according to him, is gradually being supplanted by a better, more scientific understanding of the world. Luck is the gloomy fog slowly being burned away by the light of human progress, embodied by the concept of risk. "The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men are not passive before nature. Until human beings discovered a way across that boundary, the future was the murky domain of oracles and soothsayers who held a monopoly over knowledge of future events." The useful concept of risk, according to Bernstein, has helped to free society from the shackles of fate and superstition. His heroes range from Renaissance gamblers to the inventors of modern financial models. Their urge to predict, to calculate and to quantify has beaten back the forces of rogue chance. One of the greatest of Bernstein's heroes is still alive - Kenneth J Arrow, professor emeritus at Stanford University and joint winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics. In the spring of 2009, I visited Arrow at Stanford to ask him about the ascent of the idea of risk (or descent, given the financial turmoil at the time). Though he was 87 years old, he wanted to meet in the hurly-burly of the campus café. He is still famous, and undergraduates edged towards him, hoping to catch snippets of conversation from the great man as he ate his sushi. Small, neat, casually dressed in a beige shirt and above all unfailingly humble and polite, he is nothing like the big players in the testosterone-driven world of high finance. Yet Arrow is one of the fathers of modern economic theory. In particular, his work opened the way for the explosion of derivatives - or "financial weapons of mass destruction", as Warren Buffett has called them. So, as we chatted about the financial crisis in the Californian sunshine, it felt a little like interviewing a disinterested scientist who had pioneered nuclear science only for him to watch in horror as it evolved into the atomic bomb. After all, according to Arrow's work, derivatives ought, in theory, to have worked for the public good. As he wrote in a blog responding to the 2008 financial crisis: "In the 1950s, it was shown . . . that increasing the number and coverage of risk-bearing instruments [derivatives] would improve the running of the economy." So, what happened? "The real question is why banks like Bear Stearns and Lehmans didn't see the risk," he said. "Surely these people were capable of evaluating the risk? Well, I was wrong. And I still don't understand what caused them to be so wrong. There was deregulation; that's part of the story. But you would have thought even without regulation, the self-interest - the greed, if you like, the cautionary greed - would have prevented this from happening." In truth, as we now know, the idea that risk had mastered uncertainty, the Apollonian ideal envisaged in Against the Gods, brought with it new risks. Remember Matthew Rothman, the quantitative risk expert at Lehman Brothers when it collapsed? As he infamously said, reacting to the turmoil: "Events that models only predicted would happen once in 10,000 years happened every day for three days." To some extent, the crash was a reprise of a familiar story. According to the financial wizards behind Long-Term Capital Management in the late 1990s, investing was no longer subject to chance at all: it was pure science. Mastery of probability and risk meant we were too clever to need to be lucky. "In a strict sense, there wasn't any risk," said Merton Miller, another Nobel economics prizewinner, of LTCM's celebrated Black-Scholes model, "if the world behaved as it did in the past." This model was a mathematical formula, devised by two Nobel laureates, that traders believed they could use to hedge against any bet on share options. When the world unhelpfully failed to behave accordingly, LTCM went spectacularly bust. Even then, Miller conveniently wondered whether "the disaster was merely a unique and isolated event, a bad drawing from nature's urn". Quite the reverse: it was the idea that there couldn't be a bad drawing from nature's urn. The problem wasn't bad luck. It was the vainglorious refusal to believe that the idea of luck had any relevance. Denying the existence of luck appeals to the basic human urge to control everything - a neurosis that affects almost every aspect of our lives. It is difficult to accept that we are all, to some degree, victims and beneficiaries of circumstance. It may be difficult but it is surprisingly practical. Our understanding of evolution shows that success relies on the interaction of chance mutation and natural selection. The point here is that we cannot say the successful evolution of an organism is caused by 60 per cent chance mutation and 40 per cent selection. They do not "mix"; they interact to produce something quite new. Chance is a crucial ingredient that goes into making an end product that may be unrecognisable from its constituent parts. I would make the same argument about an individual life. We are misled by the autobiographies of great men and women who claim, after the fact, to have planned their ascent meticulously, to have converged on success like soldiers finding a flag in an army training exercise. The origins of success are usually much more subtle and complex. Successful people, by being open to opportunity and exposing themselves to chance, take new directions that prove more fruitful than anyone could have predicted. A life does not "follow a course". We change in many ways as we grow. A missed opportunity represents the failure to evolve into a different, better person. Believing in luck does not imply fatalism, as many people mistakenly believe. But it does demand openness - and humility. Ed Smith's "Luck: What It Means and Why It Matters" is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99) Ed Smith is a journalist and author, most recently of Luck. He is a former professional cricketer and played for both Middlesex and England. Subscribe For more great writing from our award-winning journalists subscribe for just £1 per month! This article first appeared in the 02 April 2012 issue of the New Statesman, France is my enemy SUBSCRIBE More