He was the world’s greatest consulting fictional detective His deductive reasoning, meticulous observation and cunning wit proved fatal for some of the biggest criminals of late 19th and early 20th century. He used his ultimate logical reasoning and forensic science skills to solve very difficult cases. Today we will explore the world of Sherlock Holmes. First appeared in publication in 1887, Holmes was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. The first novel, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 and the second, The Sign of the Four, in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. You can judge the popularity of Sherlock holmes by the fact that it is the 3rd most read publication on the planet behind the Bible and the Dictionary.

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Now a days, a heated debate is going everywhere on the issue of censorship of social media. The Indian Government has not forgotten the Anna Hazare movement which made brilliant use of social media to spread its anti-corruption messages. Now to curb the voice of people like Anna Hazare, the government it trying to censor the Internet. Some Government and Congress supporters have already filed the case against leading internet companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook in Delhi High Court. They have produced some web contents, published on these websites, which might hurt religious sentiments of common people.

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Once again Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel has become the hot topic of discussion across the nation. It all started when the vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic school in India, issued a demand that Rushdie be denied a visa for his scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The vice-chancellor claimed that Salman has played with the sentiments of millions of Indian muslims through his blasphemous novel, Satanic Verses. Finally, Rushdie decided not to attend the festival due to fear of his possible assassination attempts. Such controversies are not new for Salman Rushdie. Way back in 1989, when this novel was published, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the erstwhile supreme leader of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Let’s see why muslims hate this novel?

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Mr. Yogi was a popular Doordarshan TV serial of the 1980s. It was a story of an US return young Indian MBA graduate trying to arrange his marriage in India. Ketan Mehta was the director of this serial. Mohan Gokhale played the role of MBA graduate, Yogesh Ishwarlal Patel, aka Y.I. Patel, aka Mr. Yogi. He meets 12 girls and tries to select one of them as his bride in India. Om Puri plays Sutradhar who directs the story of Yogi. The story revolves around Yogi and his search for a perfect bride. The serial was hugely popular in north India during the late 80s. The movie named What’s Your Raashee?, which was released in 2009, was based on this TV serial.

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To protest against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), right now, Wikipedia is completely dark. Online users who are visiting English Wikipedia, are not be able to read the encyclopedia. Instead, messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA are coming. Visitors are diverted in seconds to a dark page that asks people to “Imagine a world without free knowledge.” I have just found some ways to bypass the blackout screen and get to Wikipedia’s pages. The best one is to use Wikipedia’s mobile version, which is not being blacked out. You need to point your browser at en.m.wikipedia.org. Another option is to visit Simple English version of Wikipedia.

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A few days back a Chennai based rich couple has placed an online advertisement seeking a sperm donor preferably an IITian for artificial insemination. The compensation for this donation will be Rs 20,000. They are looking for IITian as the donor as they desire to have a child with very high IQ and intelligence.  The advertisement reads “The donor should be an IIT student, healthy, no bad habits, tall and fair, if possible”. Most of us will take this advertisement as utter nonsense and ridiculous. One IIT Madras student has commented “This is insane. How can sperm from an IITian make any difference? Intelligence cannot be measured. You can only identify intelligence in a person, but one cannot measure intelligence by the institution he comes from.”

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Recently there has been spate of comments and discussions on how the women should dress in India to avoid sexual harassment, rape and embarrassing situations. According to Director General of Police of Andhra Pradesh, one of the main reasons for rising number of rape cases could be the provocative clothes being worn by women. The women must dress decently otherwise indecent clothes may provocate men sexual instincts. Three years back, Chief Justice of Karnataka, Cyriac Joseph also suggested that immodest dressing was one reason for increasing crimes against women. He added “Nowadays, women wear such kind of dresses even in temples and churches that when we go to places of worship, instead of meditating on God, we end up meditating on the person before us,” Not only in India, you can hear similar comments in developed countries, for instance few weeks back Toronto police officer said that to remain safe Women should avoid dressing like sluts.

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IBPS is going to conduct Common Written Exam (CWE) for Specialist Officers Cadre. IBPS is an autonomous body which has been authorised by the IBA and has received mandates from 19 Public Sector Banks to conduct the recruitment of Specialist Officers. A Common Written Examination (CWE) will be conducted on 11/03/2012 by the IBPS as a pre-requisites for selection of personnel for Specialist Officers Cadre posts in the following 19 Public Sector Banks. Those will be successful in the Common Written Exam (CWE) will be given a scorecard (like CAT or MAT score card) and may apply to any of the participating bank when they come up with their job vacancy and then these successful candidates have quote their personal details and their CWE scores.

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Dear readers, its 2012, a new year. Last year was very difficult year not only for the India but also for the whole world. It was an eventful year full of unexpected political and economic developments in India and across the world. Last year many scams, scandals and corruption were exposed. Issues like the 2G scam, Commonwealth Games scam, Lokpal bill, Mullaperiyar dam issue and weak and unstable governance by UPA dominated headlines throughout the year. For the first time entire nation united for the war against corruption. Anna Hazare emerged as the new leader of this war. He gave a new hope to the nation.

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Twenty one years ago, Salman Rushdie, one of the greatest novelists of our times, was a most wanted man with a million pound bounty on his head. His novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked riots across the Muslim world. The ailing religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had invoked a little-known religious opinion – a fatwa – and effectively sentenced Rushdie to death. Never before had a novel created an international diplomatic crisis on such a scale, and never before had a foreign Government publicly called for the killing of a private citizen of another country. I am sharing a video of a film which looks back on the extraordinary events which followed the publication of the book and the ten year campaign to get the fatwa lifted.

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