Sampath-Musings

  From Sampath’s Desk:     MARY W JACKSON (1921-2005) (The first non-white space-scientist to enter NASA!)   The naming of the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) headquarters building in Washington D.C. after its first African-American female engineer  Ms. Mary W Jackson (born Mary Winston)  was a heartening and befitting gesture. A welcome step, it is certainly a confidence-booster sure to be a source of strength and encouragement to the non-whites living in the U.S. It is a great recognition of her long and meritorious service in NASA. Even though one can't and doesn’t expect the measure to set everything right 100 percent in the U.S. in the matter of equality, it's a good harbinger. After all, even a journey of thousand miles starts with a single step. The U.S. authorities deserve appreciation for this.    A mathematician and aerospace engineer, Ms. Jackson officially became NASA’s first non-white woman engine...

From Sampath’s Desk :       SAXOPHONE MAESTRO  KADRI GOPALNATH (8 Dec.1949-11 Oct.2019)   Very few would have tamed and exploited up to the hilt what were essentially western stringed musical instruments to be used in Indian music, especially the Carnatic and Hindustani classical with marked success. Undoubtedly, the legendary Saxophone maestro Kadri Gopalnath was one among them.  Kadri Gopalnath  was born in Sajeepa Mooda village in the Bantwal taluk of Dakshina Kannada in the year 1949. His first music teacher was his father. From a very young age, he was interested in music. His passion and ardour made him opt for a Saxophone and played it with a flair of his own. By dint of hard work and practice, he became a renowned musician and recorded with a lot of big labels. He recorded Southern Brothers with jazz flutist James Newton. He had another production called 'East-West'. As the name suggests, the album was a fusion between Western and...

From Sampath’s Desk:   CITIZENS AND CIVIC SENSE   The study of civics generally relates to government and governance. It also refers to the study of citizenship vis-à-vis government, more so with the role of citizens and their responsible and dutiful behaviour in society. In a way, it can be called ‘Public Education’.  That Government is the best one which rules the least. A modern welfare state is one that cares for its citizens, from cradle to grave.   Just like the government or the administration has the responsibility for good governance and is supposed to take care of the welfare of all its citizens, the citizens also have corresponding duty and responsibility towards the governing bodies, the rules and laws of the land, the fellow-citizens and the society at large. Schools, besides promoting academic excellence, innovative thinking, positive knowledge expansion, analytical tool updates, best practice models, etc., should infuse and  inculcate ...

From Sampath’s Desk :             WORLD ELEPHANT DAY  (AUGUST 12)     Every year, World Elephant Day is celebrated on August 12. Let us have a stock-taking of the status of the pachyderms.   August 12 is the day to honour the jumbos, spread awareness across the globe about the critical threats they are facing, and to support positive solutions that will help ensure their survival.   While the elephant habitats included mainly dense forests, open and closed Savanna grasslands and arid deserts, key threats to them are poaching for ivory, habitat loss and fragmentation due to human population expansion and land conversion, and human-elephant conflicts. Human-elephant conflict can be categorized into – ultimate causes including growing human population, upcoming large-scale infrastructure/development projects, and poor top-down governance, and proximate causes including hab...

From Sampath’s Desk :   RED-HERRING and RED-LETTER DAY:   RED-HERRING:   Meaning:   Something deliberately misleading to divert your attention from the main subject – something irrelevant that confuses an issue – an opinion, idea, or subject that takes people’s attention away from the central point being considered – it is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question or issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion – an irrelevant or out-of-context clue to mislead people.   உண்மையைத் திரித்தி தவறாக புரிந்து கொள்ள செய்தல்.       Example sentences:   The Police investigated many clues, but they were all  RED-HERRINGS .   The story trotted out by the speaker was a RED-HERRING only to divert public attention from the main issue in the campaign.   Whenever he got into any difficulty, he woul...