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The little spaceships that could - Nasa's twin Voyagers - celebrate their 25^th year on Tuesday by speeding towards the very edge of our solar system, carrying messages from Mozart, Bach and Chuck Berry. The first Voyager was launched on August 20, 1977, and was expected to take a quick four-year tour of Jupiter and Saturn, send back some data and retire. The other was launched on September 5, 1977 with a similar mission, but through a different route. Instead, the doughty robotic probes have kept going and going, snapping never-before-seen images of the outer planets, discovering volcanoes on Jupiter's moon 'Io' and a massive atmospheric storm on Neptune.

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During the last two decades, physicians and mental health professionals have begun to discover the limitations of Western allopathic medicine. The focus is on pathology and disease rather than on prevention. The destructiveness of so many pharmaceutical and surgical remedies, the separation of physical and emotional problems, the assumptions of an asymmetrical relationship between an all powerful physician and a submissive patient have led clinics and researchers to look for answers in other cultures.

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But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries . . . . It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

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Thomas Alva Edison lit up the world with his invention of the electric light. Without him, the world might still be a dark place. However, the electric light was not his only invention. He also invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and over 1,200 other things. About every two weeks he created something new.
When he was 12 years old, he got his first job. He became a newsboy on a train that ran between Port Huron and Detroit. He set up a laboratory in a baggage care of the train so that he could continue his experiments in his spare time. Unfortunately, his first work experience did not end well. Thomas was fired when he accidentally set fire to the floor of the baggage car.
Thomas then worked for five years as a telegraph operator, but he continued to spend much of his time on the job conducting experiments. He got his first patent in 1868 for a vote recorder run by electricity. However, the vote recorder was not a success. In 1870, he sold another invention, a stock-ticker, for $40,000.
Thomas Edison was totally deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other, but thought of his deafness as a blessing in many ways. It kept conversations short, so that he could have more time for work. He called himself a “two-shift man” because he worked 16 out of every 24 hours.

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The tides are enormously more complicated than all this would suggest. The influence of sun and moon is constantly changing, varying with the phases of the moon, with the distance of moon and sun from the earth, and with the position of each to north or south of the equator. They are complicated further by the fact that every body of water, whether natural or artificial, has its own period of oscillation. Disturb its waters and they will move with a seesaw or rocking motion, with the most pronounced movement at the ends of the container, the least motion at the centre. Tidal scientists now believe that the ocean contains a number of 'basins,' each with its own period of oscillation determined by its length and depth. The disturbance that sets the water in motion is the attracting force of the moon and sun. But the kind of motion, that is, the period of the swing of the water, depends upon the physical dimensions of the basin.

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Secondly, science by accelerating man's speed of movement has made the world into a single whole. Hence, any war which broke out anywhere will destroy the whole of civilization and not merely some part of it, the part affected by the war, as has been the case in the past. That is why the new powers conferred upon men by science increasingly demand a world government, if they are not to result in man's destruction.

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The ancients never believed in the noblest and most ennobling ideal of modern science ––that man can change and improve nature. The abolition of disease; the curtailment of labour; the suppression of physical pain; the conquest of distance, planetary and interplanetary; penetration of the heights and the depths, the deserts and the poles; interrogation of nature far beyond the limits of our own senses, and the construction of machinery to continue that questioning and then change the answers into acts –– these magnificent achievements have given modern man a new freedom which raises him higher above the animals, and allows him, with justice, to boast of being wiser than his ancestors.

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But this will require planning, coordination and monitoring by high-powered bodies right down to the district level. The onus for coordinating and implementing the National Plan of Action on Nutrition could be given to the women and child department but, if it is to be effective, it must be given ministerial status. Intersectoral committees will also be necessary at the State level and the district magistrates must be made accountable for the total social development of the area. The success of the adult literacy programme in certain districts has shown that wonders can be achieved by a DM. States should also formulate their own plans on the basis of the national policy to suit their special needs. Rajasthan has already done so by developing a hugely successful two-day village contact drive that informs people of the services available under ICDS, while Orissa is attempting to create grain banks. These are small beginnings but they could go a long way in bettering the nutritional levels of the children and in time of the population as a whole.

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The collapse of the USSR has led many to wonder whether Marxism too may come to the end of its tether. But Marxism, as we have seen, is essentially an interpretation of capitalism in which socialism and its final stage, communism, emerge as the still-unrealized potential within capitalism itself, as a way of resolving the main problems created by capitalism using means that have themselves come into existence during the capitalist era. What failed in the Soviet Union, then, Marxists will argue, is not Marxism but an effort to build socialism without any of the preconditions, such as developed industry, material plenty, democratic institutions, and a literate public, that arise with capitalism and which Marx considered absolutely necessary to the success of this effort.

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The government is reportedly reviewing the subsidy on postal services. The decision has come not a day too soon. With the position of the fiscal becoming more precarious by the day, the Finance Minister urgently needs to seek avenues where he can cut expenditure. Unfortunately, his choices are limited Interest payments, defence expenditure and wages and salaries of government staff together account for more than 50% of government revenue and can't be touched Cutting back on food subsidies is politically a tough act to follow.

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