Love elephants - help this organization

African Parks.org is all about saving this precious species from poachers and relocate them to sustainable locations.

"African Parks is a non-profit conservation organisation that takes on direct responsibility for the rehabilitation and long-term management of protected areas in partnership with governments and local communities. We currently manage ten parks in seven countries: Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia – covering an expansive six million hectares"

https://www.african-parks.org/donate

Prince Harry spent his summar vacation in Africa and assisted in relocating elephants recently together with African Parks. What better was to spend a summer vacation. He is truly compassionate and a true animal lover.

The Prince should also take up the issue of cruelty to animals used in entertainment like circus and animal parks.

http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_21025752,00.html

Human cruelty know no bounds - Bandung Zoo

The recent death of Yani, the Sumatran elephant is a shame and the zoo officials should be taken to task. Even better close the zoo. Total disregard for other animals is also reported. I heard a giraffe was found dead with lots of plastic as it could not get the food from zoo keepers.

Here is a picture of Yani in death throes from dailymail.co.uk.

The Mayor of Bandung, Ridwan Kamil should investigate and close the zoo till minimum conditions are met for the zoo animals. It is a shame he does not look into it. It is better to close the zoo.

Travel companies like TripAdvisor.com should not advertise the zoo on their sites and discourage tourists visiting Bandung. Governments of France, Italy and Netherlands should reconsider their involvement with developing Bandung.

Discourage tourism to Bandung!
Bandungtoruism.com email address  dispar@bandungtourism.com

Human cruelty know no bounds - Bandung Zoo

The recent death of Yani, the Sumatran elephant is a shame and the zoo officials should be taken to task. Even better close the zoo. Total disregard for other animals is also reported. I heard a giraffe was found dead with lots of plastic as it could not get the food from zoo keepers.

Here is a picture of Yani in death throes from dailymail.co.uk.

The Mayor of Bandung, Ridwan Kamil should investigate and close the zoo till minimum conditions are met for the zoo animals. It is a shame he does not look into it. It is better to close the zoo.

Travel companies like TripAdvisor.com should not advertise the zoo on their sites and discourage tourists visiting Bandung. Governments of France, Italy and Netherlands should reconsider their involvement with developing Bandung.

Discourage tourism to Bandung!
Bandungtoruism.com email address  dispar@bandungtourism.com

Human cruelty know no bounds - Bandung Zoo

The recent death of Yani, the Sumatran elephant is a shame and the zoo officials should be taken to task. Even better close the zoo. Total disregard for other animals is also reported. I heard a giraffe was found dead with lots of plastic as it could not get the food from zoo keepers.

Here is a picture of Yani in death throes from dailymail.co.uk.

The Mayor of Bandung, Ridwan Kamil should investigate and close the zoo till minimum conditions are met for the zoo animals. It is a shame he does not look into it. It is better to close the zoo.

Travel companies like TripAdvisor.com should not advertise the zoo on their sites and discourage tourists visiting Bandung. Governments of France, Italy and Netherlands should reconsider their involvement with developing Bandung.

Discourage tourism to Bandung!
Bandungtoruism.com email address  dispar@bandungtourism.com

Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu 1 : Introduction to Structured Query Language

The above course will be offered again for the fourth time (Oct 4 - Nov 3, 2016) as a non-credit course by the Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training.

Course summary:

Databases, organized repositories of information, have become indispensable. Knowledge of databases is a must for professionals and in fact even more relevant since the emergence of Big Data in today's world.

In this introductory course you will learn about relational databases and the basics of Structured Query Language (SQL) including sorting; grouping result sets; using DDL, DML, DCL, and TCL. All SQL statements will initially be written for one table. Most practical, modern and relational databases will include a large number of tables and SQL queries have to access information from several tables. This course will then introduce you to querying more than one table. With this skill you will be able to query two or more tables in a database. This is a hands-on course which will take you from installing SQL Server 2012; learning the ins and outs of SQL Server Management Studio and of course a full dose of SQL. You will be both coding as well using Graphical Userr Interface during this training.


During each meeting the students will be assessed for their knowledge, competency and proficiency in SQL.


New this session:

Microsoft SQL Azure Database: SQL Server in Microsoft Cloud
Windows PowerShell for SQL Server
SQL Server 2016

My sincere thanks and best wishes to my students in the previous meets of this course.

Best Wishes - 70th Anniversary of Independence

My very best wishes to my readers from India and Korea on this important day.

My best wishes to my family members in India on this special occasion. I was too young at that time but I did participate in the events that lead to the return of GOA from Portugal.

We should never forget the sacrifices made by the founding fathers who fought on non-violent, moral grounds to wrest the country from Britain.

We have done well, although it was a long haul and democratically too. Democratic institutions may look fragile but they are stronger than strongest of the materials. I sincerely hope we remain secular and keep looking outwards to the rest of the world. Let us not forget that all life matters just not humans.


Jai Hind

Here is a video about the Indian celebrations:


Here is a video about Korean Independence:
 

Bernie Sanders in the news again

Not for his great ideas this time, but for a reason not liked by many (read link below). It is sort of disappointing that he has hung his hat and gone to seed.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/08/socialist_bernie_sanders_spends_more_than_his_reported_net_worth_on_his_emthirdem_home.html

It would have so nice to see a guy fighting for his ideas. But damn the politics and he could not rise above the politics of our times.

What a shame?

How can we fight corruption?

This is a trillion-dollar question and in our life time we may not find a solution to fight corruption. It is a universal scourge and believe me rampant. However, we should be able to track corruption, if it has taken place. Some form of non-governmental, non-profit organization is required to track corruption and make it public so that people are aware of the fact and that individual/group can be held accountable.

WikiLeaks and such have provided insider information although obtaining of such information has been criticized, but a legal means of getting similar information should be favorably viewed.
Judicial Watch is one such organization which has done yeoman service in bringing up issues related to the coming election in November 2016. It is important that the citizens should help and bolster such an organization.

Here is a recent National Ballot Proposition sent by Judicial Watch explaining their commitment:
'transparency in government and holding government officials accountable under the law to American people'

Please consider a tax-deductible contribution to Judicial Watch.

More information here:
http://www.judicialwatch.org

Meet Pepper, he can read your emotions...

Another 6 days to go, Pepper the humanoid robot that can sense emotions will be in Palo Alto store b8ta between August 11 and 18.

  Pepper2.png
Robot developed by SoftBank and a robotics company Aldebaran Robotics  was unveiled in 2014 and it can read human emotions and respond to them accordingly. For all the sophisticated features, it sells cheap, about $1900+. Pepper still needs battery and needs a charge after every 12 hours of use. It uses programming languages like C++, Python and Android.

It is a hot sell in Japan after it started selling in 2015, but may not come to USA any time soon as the local demand is high.

Because of its ability to read and respond to emotions it appears to be ideal for customer facing situations and has even gone on cruise ships to assist passengers.

The images are from Aldebaran's site.

Pepper.png

Read more about Pepper here:

https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/robot-invasion-softbanks-pepper-lands-in-the-us/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/softbank-aldebaran-launch-pepper-an-emotional-robot/

Seagulls have a thing for Indian Curry...

It looks like they go all the way to get the curry and even drown in them. Well, Wales has a lot of seagulls and I did not know that folks at Wales liked Indian Curry although Indian Takeouts are very popular in U.K.

Here is the first bird that fell into a vat of tikka masala and came out royal yellow.

Read from here from which this photo is copied:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/10/europe/seagull-curry-uk/index.html

This is his friend who obviously heard from his friend about the goodness of the curry and the bits and pieces of another bird.

Read from here from which this photo is copied:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/09/seagull-curry-rescue-indian-food-wales/88484976/

Let the show begin...

Rio 2016 Opens..