Small Town

How do you define a small town? And what if that town is in Bihar?

The general description starts with narrow roads crowded with stalls of panipuri wala and chaat wala; ocean of people on road with cycles and motorcycles making their way through them; stray animals feeding on garbage; big hoardings of schools, colleges and coaching institutes with faces of students who seem to have jumped out of ramp at Wills Lifestyle to study at these institutes. Though if the hoarding is of any coaching institute, it will have faces of successful students in JEE/PMT whose photos are collected by luring them for free study materials 2-3 months before exams.

But these small towns are much more than these descriptions. Small towns have big dreams. Small town parents of today or youths of 90's have grown up watching luxuries of engineers and doctors. They suffer with power cuts of 16 hours a day and they have heard about the round the clock power supply in metros. They have suffered due to rickety infrastructure and have watched world class things in big cities. Television have offered them a peek of upper class lifestyle and they are bored of their same day to day life which they have been carrying over decades. They want parks and my town has none which qualifies to be one. They want to take out their family on weekends but alas! my town has no place to offer where you can go. (My town has population of around 3 lakh) They have stopped visting their friend's home because they have pretty much same issues to cry upon. They complain of poor medical facillities and are awed by comfort of Delhi Metro.

So, what to do?

"I have enough of this life, my son will not have the same life" And they found an easy way out.

Study!

Stop! Small town is more than mere dreaming. They offer ambition. They have watched Dhoni rise from neighbourhood school, "DAV, Shyamli", to bright neon lit Pepsi hoardings at every sweet shop. Dhoni lives his dreams with big bikes like Hurleys around. Small town kids are also fond of bikes. "So if dhoni can, why cant we?"

Movies have stopped being common to them. They show malls, frequent flyer hero and an alien open society where boys and girls freely roam around together. Startups are new hot today. They also want to start a company. Tata-Birla are old now; Osama-Gyanesh are new cool.

But where is the way?

Study! What else!

These kids are not scared of labour. They stay up all night to cram diversifiaction in living beings and cracking down H.C Verma. Parents send their children just after class 10 to coaching factories at Kota, Bokaro, Ranchi, Delhi or Hyderabad. I name these palces because my friends went there. 17 years old teens who have not even washed their cloth at home are sent to study far off places.

Sometimes alone.

As one of my friends recalled his journey to kota,"jab gadi station se khulti thi, aisa lagta tha mano sab kuch khatm ho gaya,, main pure raste ek shabd nahi bolta tha..chup chap baitha rehta tha"

I went to Bokaro but i was lucky to have some of the best people on the earth around me. Those friends are real gems. These littile prince of their home are subjected to pressure tretamnet their which surely makes them hard enough to take on the world. Consider 12 lakh people appearing for 40,000 "good" engineering seats. 4 lakh students sit for 4000 medical seats. This pressure of intense competition, combined with pressure of worst tiffin food, super imposing landlords and contaminated water make their battle even more tough. Wait! then ghar ka yaad is the final nail on the coffin. I had fight with my room mate and even we didnt talk for weeks. Now, i laugh at them. But that was what you expect from a 17 years old to do.

Small town does not offer many options. Either you pass or you fail. For now, small towns have either engineering or medical. Kids are often reminded that they have nothing back home; so they have to do the best at whatever cost it comes.

Small town is so different from big town.

In small town jo jeeta wahi sikandar. Someone ought to change the slogan.

-Harshvardhan

Bill Watterson on not licensing Calvin & Hobbes

Comic strips have been licensed from the beginning, but today the merchandising of popular cartoon characters is more profitable than ever. Derivative products - dolls, T-shirts, TV specials, and so on - can turn the right strip into a gold mine. Everyone is looking for the next Snoopy or Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were imagined to be the perfect candidates. The more I thought about licensing, however, the less I liked it. I spent nearly five years fighting my syndicate's pressure to merchandise my creation.

In an age of shameless commercialism, my objections to licensing are not widely shared. Many cartoonists view the comic strip as a commercial product itself, so they regard licensing as a natural extension of their work. As most people ask, what's wrong with the comic strip characters appearing on calendars and coffee mugs? If people want to buy the stuff, why not give it to them?

I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it.

Second, commercial products rarely respect how a comic strip works. A wordy, multiple-panel strip with extended conversation and developed personalities does not condense to a coffee mug illustration without great violation to the strip's spirit. The subtleties of a multi-dimensional strip are sacrificed for the one-dimensional needs of the product. The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life. I don't want some animation studio giving Hobbes an actor's voice, and I don't want some greeting card company using Calvin to wish people a happy anniversary, and I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer. When everything fun and magical is turned into something for sale, the strip's world is diminished. 'Calvin and Hobbes' was designed to be a comic strip and that's all I want it to be. It's the one place where everything works the way I intend it to.

Third, as a practical matter, licensing requires a staff of assistants to do the work. The cartoonist must become a factory foreman, delegating responsibilities and overseeing the production of things he does not create. Some cartoonists don't mind this, but I went into cartooning to draw cartoons, not to run a corporate empire. I take great pride in the fact that I write every word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration myself. My strip is a low-tech, one-man operation, and I like it that way. I believe it's the only way to preserve the craft and to keep the strip personal. Despite what some cartoonists say, approving someone else's work is not the same as doing it yourself.

Beyond all this, however, lies a deeper issue: the corruption of a strip's integrity. All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have a point of view and a serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist is trying to talk honestly and seriously about life, then I believe he has a responsibility to think beyond satisfying the market's every whim and desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as artists while using the strip's protagonists to sell boxer shorts are deluding themselves.

The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize or will admit. Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy. When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become "celebrities", endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance.

My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who would trust the honesty of the strip's observations when the characters are hired out as advertising hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it up to be an ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out my own creation. I have no use for that kind of cartooning.

Unfortunately, the more popular 'Calvin and Hobbes' became, the less control I had over its fate. I was presented with licensing possibilities before the strip was even a year old, and the pressure to capitalize on its success mounted from then on. Succeeding beyond anyone's wildest expectations had only inspired wilder expectations.

To put the problem simply, trainloads of money were at stake - millions and millions of dollars could be made with a few signatures. Syndicates are businesses, and no business passes up that kind of opportunity without an argument.

Undermining my position, I had signed a contract giving my syndicate all exploitation rights to 'Calvin and Hobbes' into the next century. Because it is virtually impossible to get into daily newspapers without a syndicate, it is standard practice for syndicates to use their superior bargaining position to demand rights they neither need nor deserve when contracting with unknown cartoonists. The cartoonist has few alternatives to the syndicate's terms: he can take his work elsewhere on the unlikely chance that a different syndicate would be more inclined to offer concessions, he can self-syndicate and attempt to attract the interest of newspapers without the benefit of reputation or contacts, or he can go back home and find some other job. Universal would not sell my strip to newspapers unless I gave the syndicate the right to merchandise the strip in other media. At the time, I had not thought much about licensing and the issue was not among my top concerns. Two syndicates had already rejected 'Calvin and Hobbes', and I worried more about the contractual consequences if the strip failed than the contractual consequences if the strip succeeded. Eager for the opportunity to publish my work, I signed the contract, and it was not until later, when the pressure to commercialize focused my opinions on the matter, that I understood the trouble I'd gotten myself into.

I had no legal recourse to stop the syndicate from licensing. The syndicate preferred to have my cooperation, but my approval was by no means necessary. Our arguments with each other grew more bitter as the stakes got higher, andwe had an ugly relationship for several years.

The debate had its ridiculous aspects. I am probably the only cartoonist who resented the popularity of his own strip. Most cartoonists are more than eager for the exposure, wealth, and prestige that licensing offers. When cartoonists fight their syndicates, it's usually to make more money, not less. And making the whole issue even more absurd, when I didn't license, bootleg 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books, and obscene or drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only thieves and vandals have made money on 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise.

For years, Universal pressured me to compromise on a "limited" licensing program. The syndicate would agree to rule out the most offensive products if I would agree to go along with the rest. This would be, in essence, my only shot at controlling what happened to my work. The idea of bartering principles was offensive to me and I refused to compromise. For that matter, the syndicate and I had nothing to trade anyway: It didn't care about my notions of artistic integrity. With neither of us valuing what the other had to offer, compromise was impossible. One of us was going to trample the interests of the other.

By the strip's fifth year, the debate had gone as far as it could possibly go, and I prepared to quit. If I could not control what 'Calvin and Hobbes' stood for, the strip was worthless to me. My contract was so one-sided that quitting would have allowed Universal to replace me with hired writers and artists and license my creation anyway, but at this point, the syndicate agreed to renegotiate my contract. The exploitation rights to the strip were returned to me, and I will not license 'Calvin and Hobbes'.

Source: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/2009-March/003015.html

Rural Healthcare in India: The Challenges

India is in a very fortunate situation right now. A young, dynamic population and we have almost everything going for us. But if our country is to achieve its full potential then we must keep our people healthy. We people, the ones who live in cities, have access to excellent healthcare. Even for relatively minor issues like a common cold we have plenty of people to look after us. And even in the area of advanced medicine, the doctors and procedures available in our country are truly world class. But the situation in the rural areas is not so good.

To give you some numbers 700 million people live in 636,000 villages – this is a HUGE number but 66% of them do not have access to critical medicine. 31% of them travel more than 30kms to seek health care. But the fact remains that if we have the right set up in place, majority of the dominant diseases like diarrhoea, measles and typhoid are preventable and curable.

The problems in the field of rural healthcare are very diverse in character. To take a very simple example, some village do not like doctors because they wear white clothes because according to their beliefs, white cloth is used to wrap dead people and hence, they don’t feel very good about it. Some of the other current challenges are –

1) Healthcare resources in India are heavily biased toward the urban areas. The best facilities are concentrated in the cities and rural India has little or no access

2) The doctors to population ratio is 6 times lower in rural areas and the beds to population ratio lower by 15 times

3) 22 Million population pushed below poverty line annually due to healthcare expenditure alone

4) Villagers end up spending 1.5 times more compared to urban counterparts for same illness

5) 40% of hospitalization expenditure funded by borrowed money or sold asset

6) 7 out of 10 medicines in rural areas substandard or counterfeit

This makes things very difficult for the people living in rural India. Apart from these issues, the path to improving rural healthcare in India has numerous roadblocks. Rural healthcare isn’t financially attractive for the private sector and the private health system focuses on secondary and tertiary rather than primary healthcare. The public health is not well funded, under staffed and prone to corruption. The indigenous health system which is often marred by superstition needs supervision and guidance.

The next few years will be times of considerable stress on rural health care, but also times of great opportunity. Rural communities already have to respond to higher burdens of chronic disease, while dealing with workforce pressure and an aging clinic infrastructure. There is an urgent need to mobilize effort and creativity so as to ensure that rural Indians gain access to the care they need. The good news is that across the country there are already impressive examples of innovative new care models providing high-quality care, tailored to the distinctive needs of their local community. The challenge for all involved in rural India is now to build on this track record of innovation and self-reliance, so as to ensure that all Indians wherever they are — can live their lives to the fullest.

* This is an excerpt from the report presented by Team Parivartan of BITS Pilani Goa Campus at Bhagirath, Quark 2012. You can read the full report here -

PDF - http://www.4shared.com/office/sBS2eXF_/Rural_Healthcare_-_Team_Pariva.html

PPT - http://www.4shared.com/file/2Bc3r6Vs/Rural_Healthcare_-_Team_Pariva.html

From IIT to NDA

It took me one marriage (of my own), an interview call from TISS (for my sis-in-law) to be able to fulfill my long standing desire of visiting the National Defense Academy (NDA). I was so excited about this opportunity that I almost sat straight in the car as it entered the gates of NDA. Incidentally, I also visited the IIT Bombay campus in the same week though I did not have to go through this long and arduous route to visit an IIT campus.

Disclaimer 1: The goal of this article is not to compare both these eminent institutes but to contrast the two institutes in light of their goals.

Disclaimer 2: The article does not do justice to describing either IIT or the NDA campus. There is much more to it then what is written below.

A ride to IIT Bombay took us though the crowded and polluted central Bombay. The construction work in front of IIT made it worse, so much that I almost did not notice that we entered IIT. Few days later, a ride to the NDA campus from Pune felt like trekking in the jungles with sign boards leading us to an escape route. The sign board reading “First view of NDA 50 ft ahead” was impressive as if we were to witness a significant architectural wonder. The ambassador taxi, though not intentional, matched perfectly well to the military nature of the academy. Note that most high ranked defense personals still go around in black ambassador cars. The revered NDA campus welcomed us with tight security measures at its entrance. In fact we were even asked “Why are you carrying so much luggage if you were to stay only for a night?”. As we entered the gates at 10 in the night, we could still see cadets marching around the campus. A few of them pleasantly greeted us with the usual “jai hind sir”, mistaking us as officers. Mahatma Gandhi calls out “undeserved honor” as one of the seven professional sins and we seemed to have earned the sin within NDA. Seeing the cadets engage in various sports such as hockey, volleyball at six on a sunday morning seemed like a perfect start that you would want to give to twenty years olds. Contrast this with many IIT graduates who would wake up only during lunch time on a sunday.

The first thing that struck me in the campus is the display of several achievements/accomplishments of the academy. It had real tankers displayed that the Indian Army had captured. A visit to the squadron/hostel would show off the list of things the each of its cadets have done where as the main campus shows accomplishments of academy as a whole. In fact, NDA has an entire museum dedicated for this. I was hard pressed to find any such thing at IIT. Even if they were there, they were lost amidst dust and discard. This of course does not mean that IITs have nothing to flaunt but I am forced to believe that IITs are being modest. While modesty is good as an individual, but as an institute, showcasing the accomplishments goes a long way to instill pride amongst the fellow and aspiring students. For example, I would have loved to see a list of illustrious alumni at the IIT who I am sure are at the helm of their respective fields now and something that each IITian can take pride in.

Besides the sprawling and widespread campus, the other thing that strikes a visitor is the meticulously well maintained facilities at NDA. My brother-in-law jokingly mentioned that the Bombay stadium at NDA is better maintained then the Wankhade stadium in Bombay. The common room, the squadron entrance, the academic facilities were all spotless. All institutes of the cadre of NDA, such as IITs, IIMs and several others, are institutes which represent the country at international level. These attract international visitors and a well maintained campus such as that of NDA goes a long way to create a lasting impression. At IIT I could see constructions all around to cater to the increasing student intake while the existing hostels continued to suffer from lack of sanitation and cleanliness. IITs suffer from continuous government pressure to increase student intake, faculty intake, reservations and several political agendas and thus are hardly ever able to allocate attention to better the existing infrastructure. NDA fortunately do not have to deal with this problem of excessive supply of candidates; in fact they have the reverse of the problem which is too less candidates wanting to get in to the defense services.

For these and several other reasons, IIT failed to provide a strong personality and character as an institute where as NDA came out strong on both. One can feel that he is inside a defense campus when he is in NDA. When in IIT, besides the various department sign boards, its hard to guess if you are in an technology institute or other wise. To me, IITs seem to have a larger charter and agenda to accomplish then the NDA. As institutes for training students, IITs have long deviated from just producing able engineers to producing able graduates who can take the country forward in any field be it engineering, media, healthcare. NDA, on the contrary, have a very focussed goal of producing only military professionals and it does everything that takes to produce and also retain one.

http://writingslate.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/from-iit-to-nda/

The Immortals Of Meluha- A Review

I bow to Amish. Except for his large picture at the back cover of the book, I love everything about this book. When we look at the best-sellers of Indian authors, we are left disgusted with the thought that,” Ohh..our India is that bad. We don’t know that…”. Many of these books portray poverty and hunger in India, which are written, perhaps, keeping in mind the western readers who still envision India as land of snakes and naked people. Amidst all these, Amish has tried a very different approach. Rather than writing sarcasm on India, he writes a fiction draped in our worldwide respected mythology and used it to find solutions to our contemporary problems.


What do we like to read?

Either something we connect to or we fantasize about. This book has both the necessary ingredients of any perfect read. Growing up in a beautiful secular country, most of us idolize or at least know about Shiva. Yes! The same Shiva who used to charm us, as a child, with a fierce snake round his neck. In fact, If ever we get chance to have photo session with a snake, we curl it round our neck. Don’t we? I suspect there is some inspiration from the image of Shiva residing in our mind. Amish uses our connection with Shiva to make us feel for his character. When we go through the book, we want Shiva to be damn good; we want him safe in case of fights. At least, I felt so. Taking a cue from Chetan Bhagat, Amish has used simple English and he succeeds in his attempt to appeal to general mass. This book is a best seller, this proves it.

Shiva’s wife Sati is another important and confident character. She stands for the confidence, strength and power of women. She has been shown strong and one who never compromised with dignity and respect. Perhaps Amish throws an ideal to Indian women and wants them to emulate the character of Sati.

Metaphors are abundant only if you draw parallels to them. Meluha, where state controls everything, resembles to a socialist state. Everyone is equal there. Swadeep, on the other hand, with a big gap between rich and poor resembles to a capitalist state. One starts picturing Meluha as a perfect state until you discover freedom at Swadeep. Amish has not concluded any of them better; rather he argues that no system is perfect and can’t be applied every time.

This book has everything that a classic stories offer: love, action, adventure and virtues. But amongst all, there are many beautiful philosophies, for example, he offers an explanation to why vikarmas (or the impure one) are subjected to some restrictions. He offers through an elegant example of weaved cotton threads, a recipe to win hearts. (try out!! Page no 216 ;)

This is a must read story which ends with a note where readers want more and more. When Shiva says “Har Har Mahadev”( har ek mahadev) he means that God resides within each of us. Its just the matter of realisation. Are we waiting for Neelkanth?

--Harshvardhan

Remembering Steve

From a college dropout to heading an over $350 billion Apple empire, Steve Jobs dramatically transformed the worlds of personal computing, music and mobile phones, ushering in a new digital era
Jobs, who died on Oct 5, 2011 at the age of 56 after a seven-year battle with pancreatic cancer, was also the man behind the stupendous success of the computer animation firm Pixar, makers of Toy Story and Finding Nemo.Though he himself never designed a computer in his life, it was because of him that the Apple products, while largely providing the same services as those from other companies, are perceived to be different.
Born on February 24, 1955 to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, Steven Paul Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Jandali was a graduate student from Syria who later became a political science professor. Paul Jobs, who worked in finance and real estate before moving back to his original trade as machinist, moved his family down the San Francisco Peninsula to Mountain View and then to Los Altos in the 1960s. When asked about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents." He later stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents 1,000%."

From an early age, Steve Jobs was interested in electronics. As an eighth grader, after discovering that a crucial part was missing from a frequency counter he was assembling, he telephoned William Hewlett, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett spoke with the boy for 20 minutes, prepared a bag of parts for him to pick up and offered him a job as a summer intern, according to The New York Times.

Jobs met Stephan Wozniak, with whom he co-founded Apple in 1976, while attending Homestead High School in neighbouring Cupertino.

After enrolling at Reed College in 1972, Jobs left after one semester, but remained in Portland for another 18 months auditing classes. In a commencement address given at Stanford in 2005, Jobs said he had decided to leave college because it was consuming all of his parents' savings. Jobs returned to Silicon Valley in 1974 and took a job as a technician at Atari, the video game manufacturer. But, he left after several months and travelled to India with a college friend, Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment.Jobs left India after staying for seven months and returning to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke,with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.

Jobs returned to Atari and along with Wozniak, then working as an engineer at HP, began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist group that met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California in 1975. Personal computing had been pioneered at research laboratories close to Stanford and was spreading. Wozniak designed the original Apple I computer simply to show it off to his friends at the Homebrew. It was Jobs who had the inspiration that it could be a commercial product. In early 1976, he and Wozniak, using their own money, began Apple in the Jobs family garage in Los Altos with an initial investment of $1,300 before securing the backing of former Intel executive A C Markkula, who lent them $250,000.

Wozniak would be the technical half and Jobs the marketing half of the original Apple I Computer.

In April 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco, creating a sensation. The company went public in 1981, when its sales touched $600 million from $2 million in 1977. By 1983, Apple was in the Fortune 500, an achievement for a new firm. In 1981, Jobs joined a small group of Apple engineers pursuing a separate project, a lower-cost system code-named Macintosh, which was introduced in January 1984.
In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world? Apple president Mike Markkula also wanted to retire and believed that Jobs lacked the discipline and temperament needed to run Apple on a daily basis and that Sculley's conventional business background and recent successes would give a more favorable image.Eventually , the two men became estranged and a power struggle ensued when the Lisa failed commercially and early Macintosh sales proved disappointing, leading to Jobs losing control of the Lisa project.

The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products.Sculley learned that Jobs—believing Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead the company—had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup,and on May 24, 1985 he called a board meeting to resolve the matter. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh division. Jobs resigned from Apple five months later and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.
"I don't wear the right kind of pants to run this company," he told a small gathering of Apple employees before he left, a member of the original Macintosh development team was quoted as saying by NYT.
In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." And added "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.He also established a personal philanthropic foundation after leaving Apple but soon decided, instead, to spend much of his fortune $10 million on acquiring Pixar, a struggling graphics supercomputing firm owned by filmmaker George Lucas.
The purchase, though a significant gamble as there was little market then for computer-animated movies, proved profitable when the company, in 1995, along with Walt Disney Pictures, released 'Toy Story', collecting box-office receipts of $362 million.When Pixar went public in a record-breaking offering, Jobs became a billionaire. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company agreed to purchase Pixar for $7.4 billion, making Jobs its largest single shareholder, with about 7 per cent of the firm's stock.
Meanwhile, Apple, after unsuccessful efforts to develop next-generation operating systems in 1996 with Gilbert Amelio in command, acquired NeXT for $430 million. The next year, Jobs returned to Apple as an adviser and became its chief executive again in 2000.
With his rise, Jobs personal life also became more public. He had a number of well-publicised romantic relationships, including one with folk singer Joan Baez before he married Laurene Powell. Jobs and Laurene had three children -- two daughters Eve Jobs and Erin Sienna Jobs and a son, Reed. Jobs had one more daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a relationship with Chrisann Brennan.
Well Jobs had been batttling with pancreatic cancer since 2003 , he initially refused to undergo proper medical treatment and tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004. He eventually underwent Whipple procedure. in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor. Jobs apparently did not receive chemotherapy or radiation. During Jobs's absence Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company. Jobs announced his resignation as Apple's CEO on August 24, 2011. "Unfortunately, that day has come," wrote Jobs, for he could "no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's CEO" . Jobs became chairman of the board and named Tim Cook his successor.Jobs had worked for Apple until the day before his death.
Jobs died at his California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer resulting in respiratory arrest. He had lost consciousness the day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.
Well … quoting Jobs would be the best way to end this ………. “Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently - they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

How to Read More

How to Read More: A Lover’s Guide

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Reading a good book is one of my favorite things in the world.

A novel is a time machine, a worm-hole to different dimensions, a special magic that puts you into the minds and bodies of fascinating people, a transporter that lets you travel the world, a dizzying exploration of love and death and sex and seedy criminal underworlds and fairylands, a creator of new best friends.

All in one.

I read because I love the experience, because it is a powerful teacher of life, because it transforms me.

I am not the world’s most prodigious reader, but I do read daily and with passion.

Lots of people say they want to read more, but don’t know how to start.

Read this. It should help.

1. Don’t read because you should — read for joy. Find books about exciting stories, about people who fascinate you, about new worlds that you’d love to visit. Forget the classics, unless they fit this prescription.

2. Carve out the time. We have no time to read anymore, mostly because we work too much, we overschedule our time, we’re on the Internet all the time (which does have some good reading, but can also suck our attention endlessly), and we watch too much TV. Pick a time, and make it your reading time. Start with just 10 minutes if it’s hard to find time — even 10 minutes is lovely. Try 20 or 30 if you can drop a couple things from your schedule.

3. Do nothing but read. Clear all distractions. Find a quiet, peaceful space. It’s just your book, and you. Notice but let go of the urges to do other things instead of read. If you must do something else, have some tea.

4. Love the hell out of it. You’re not doing this to better yourself. You’re doing it for joy. Reading is magic, and the magic will change everything else in your life. Love the experience, and you’ll look forward to it daily.

5. Make it social. Find friends who love to read, or find them online. There’s a world of readers on the Internet, and they’d be happy to make recommendations and talk about the books you’re all reading. Try a book club as well. Reading is solitary, but is also a social act.

6. Make it a habit. Pick a trigger in your daily routine, and consistently read exactly after that trigger each day. Even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes. The more consistent you are, and the longer you keep the streak going, the stronger the habit will become.

7. Don’t make it a chore. Don’t make it something on your todo list or schedule that you have to check off. It’s not part of your self-improvement plan. It’s a part of your Make Life More Awesome Plan.

8. Give up on a book if it’s boring. Reading isn’t something you do because it’s good for you — it’s not like taking your vitamins. You’re reading because it’s fun. So if a book isn’t fun, dump it. Give it a try for at least a chapter, but if you still don’t love it, move on.

9. Discover amazing books. I talk to other people who are passionate about books, and I’ll read reviews, or just explore an old-fashioned bookstore. Supporting your local bookstores is a great thing, and it’s incredibly fun. Libraries are also amazing places that are underused — get a card today.

10. Don’t worry about speed. Speed reading is fine for some, but slow reading is great too. The number of books, and the rate of reading them, matters not a whit. It’s not a competition. You’re reading to enjoy the books, so take your time. It’s like enjoying good food, or good sex: better savored, not rushed.

Original link - http://zenhabits.net/read/#more-8753