Today we are living in the age of information, and communication where the information societies are rapidly transforming themselves from information society to knowledge society. Information society or rather its Japanese term “Johoka Shokai”, was perceived by the Japanese writer, Yoneji Masuda, “as a society, which would eventually move to a point at which the production of information values became the formative force for the development of the society.”

               In India the significance of communication in equipping people with new information and skills; and mobilizing them for their willful participation in various development programmes and activities has been well recognized and emphasized in the country’s blueprint policy i.e the five year plans. Communication is fun, Communication is power, Communication is money and Communication is intelligence today. So a country’s growth, cultural moorings, its inner strength and competitive edge all depend greatly on communication power. In the recent years the country is on the threshold of a new communication revolution of which satellite, TV, Video are major manifestations. In this information age from high frequency wireless communication to digital compression technology, to microwave communication to silicon chips, satellite communication, optic fibers, telematics, computer graphics, Internet, world wide web, Internet protocol TV(IPTV),interactive TV(ITV),digital audio broadcasting(DAB),multimedia and so on, there is no stopping and no looking back. Communication wise the whole world is technically knit together and with the constraints of time and distance disappearing, it has been possible for humanity at large to be integrated at intellectual, economic, cultural and emotional levels, by sharing a global commonwealth of human resources, transforming the whole world virtually into a ‘global village’.

Read the rest of this entry

Cathy Zoi, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, is in charge of selecting where to spend 16.8 billion dollars of ARRA, stimulus. Her husband, Robin Roy is the Vice President over Projects & Policy at Serious Materials and they both have stock in that company, which thanks to our tax dollars is now booming. Serious Materials received an undisclosed amount of the ARRA money, the only window company that got any attention from the EERE. They also got Biden and Obama to say they had “the most energy efficient windows in the world”. This company has since changed every ad about them to include ‘green’ technology. This company is no different than Anderson windows and they say on their site they are 2.5x the energy star rating, later they start saying they are 4x the energy star rating. They have yet to provide any facts to these claims that their windows are so much different from everybody else’s.

Is this corruption at it’s best or what? The Democrats in power now are hand picking their winners, anybody who supported them during the elections, which surprisingly, Serious Material was a contributor.

Read the rest of this entry

Congress gets it wrong on energy! Again
Congress seems intent to pass a regressive energy bill — despite the pleas of their constituents for releif at the pump. The truth is that, short of a moratorium on federal gas taxes, there is very little Congress can do to provide short-term releif at the pump but they could help ensure plentifiul supplies of oil and gas — and thus lower prices — in the future, but instead they seem intent to make our situation worse.
The National Petroleum Council recently released a report http://www.npc.org/7-18_Press_rls-post.pdf painting a fairly bleak picture for the world’s energy supply and demand equation. One way Congress could help would be to remove hurdles to domestic oil production on public lands like ANWR and on the OCS and from non-traditional sources like oil shale and coal to oil. Despite what industry proponents argue, these sources don’t need subsidies or a price floor to get going (but who doesn’t want guaranteed profit if they can get Congress to give it to them), but they do need the government to reduce hurdles to development on public lands — and more importantly, not make the situation worse with new legislative roadblocks or make the investment situation worse by rescinding reasonable standards for the depreciation of new equipment.
In light of high prices and declining domestic production, in the 2005 energy bill Congress sought to encourage new production by expediting the leasing of new oil and gas wells on public lands and off-shore by giving new funding and fast-track authority to the Bureau of Land Management and the Minerals Management Service, while reducing the bureaucratic paperwork requirements in order to ensure that proposals for new production were assessed, and contracts written, in a timely fashion – a statutory deadline for approval was built into the law. In addition, in order to encourage companies to build expensive, new platforms in high risk areas in the hurricane prone gulf of mexico, where dry wells are not uncommon, the government decided to treat oil and gas companies on the same par as renewable energy firms, allowing them to write off or accelerate the depreciation on capital equipment for new investments in production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new Democratic Congress wants to take all that away. In order to increase revenues to the government to fund their green priorities – none of which will bring much energy online and so help consumers – they wish to end the accelerated depreciation, extend the time federal agencies have to consider new leases and increase the paperwork hurdles. Each of these steps will discourage or slow the development of new oil and gas projects and thus slow (or even halt in some cases) the delivery of new oil and gas resources to the marketplace – high prices will remain high or rise as we become even more dependent on foreign energy supplies. In addition, they want to impose higher fees on new production and, not allow energy companies unwilling to renegotiate leases drawn up under the Clinton Administration to bid on new leases.
When energy prices were low and new domestic production cost more than companies could make, the Clinton administration, in order to encourage continued exploration, wrote off-shore leases that that did not require companies to pay royalties. Now, when prices are high, the government wants to force companies to break their contract, and pay royalties on oil produced in the past. This does nothing to produce new oil, shows government to be an unreliable partner thus giving companies less assurance when dealing with the government that the deals written will be kept, and will likely keep well qualified companies from bidding on new leases. Under this deal, unless qualified companies accede to extortion, they will not be able to get new leases, which means there will be less competition and less production (or higher priced production). Only Congress could think this will help our energy situation. Worst of all, these policies will be most damaging to the poorest of the poor. They amount to a hidden tax on the most vulnerable among us. Families earning more than $50,000 per year spend just 4 percent of their income to cover all energy costs. By comparison, households earning between $10,000 and $25,000 per year spend 13 percent on their income on energy overall, and families earning below $10,000 per year spend as much as 29 percent of their incomes on energy. While the relatively wealthy can afford higher gas prices with little impact on their lifestyles – they will still take vacations, and don’t have to decide between food, medication and fuel – poorer households are beginning to make that trade-off every day. This bill will do nothing to reduce energy prices or produce more energy and it will impose unconscionable new costs on the poorest among us.

The house today approved a tax increase bill for oil companies and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts. I think this is 100% fair as these companies make on average 40 Billion dollars in profits each year and do little investment in alternative energy sources or conservation.

However, some republicans called this “the pure venom … against the oil and gas industry.” Can you come up with an argument to justify giving these oil companies huge tax breaks?
Dear TaxMaven,

Read the rest of this entry

PUBLIC RELATIONS AS A SOCIAL FORCE

Manipulation or Handshake ?

Public relations is described by the Institute of that name, as not only sustained communication between a supplier and its public, but as a function of management. This latter declaration carries a enormous implication that in the early stages of its application in European countries, caused a mayor upheaval in company boards. The public relations officer therefore, had to be of the highest level of education and be capable of not only working with the difficult public and intransigent press, but also with the company board of directors, without creating a clash of interests. Whereas most would think that this is impossible by virtue of the demands on all fronts, an experienced and well trained person capable of communicating with clarity, can easily do the job. To analise the question in perspective, it is necessary to take a given situation and explore its ramifications in different aspects. Here are two personal examples.

A herbal product is launched. It is considered a natural herbal mixture with no additives. It contains a variety of plant essence which need to be described by law on the label. It claims beneficial properties which have in the main, been reasonably proven in a various tests carried out over a period within respected establishments like say, universities or clinical laboratories. It is not for drinking and therefore can only cause a skin reaction when applied, at worst. The manufactures wish to make every claim to heighten the sales impact. They also wish to present it in ecological terms, free o f additivies etc. A t that point in time, the public relations department can take a back seat and watch the development and presentation of the product. Any adverse comment from the officer, could be interpreted as intrusive and cause friction within any of the specialist advisory committees. The finished product looks good, smells good and covers legislation relating to contents without revealing the formula which is patented but not published. The public relations officer views the product and interprets the overall implication with respect to any aspects that could produce public or press reaction. The packaging may not quite as visually friendly as would be expected of a product designed for large sales. The explanatory wording may not be as clear as desirable and the liquid itself may lack the consistency and colouring that could be frowned upon by users – e.g with respect to staining clothing or running too freely to avoid causing these stains elsewhere. These factors may not come to light till the sales start to come in. The public relations department has worked in conjunction with the promotion and sales department to obtain the sort of editorial that shows support of the product and its contribution to social needs. The press would not be interested in anything other than that. Only in the case of a well recognized public company would it take an interest in the potential effect it could have on the balance sheets and the end return to the shareholder. The problems start at public relations level when the complaints start to come in. When these are tackled fairly by the public relations department, in many cases today, the arguments in defence do not hold water and the standard statements which defend without logic are robotically applied. For some companies whose deceitful campaign has produced millions, it is expected and the deceits maintained until the sales come to a halt. Assuming however that this is a genuine product, a client warns of stains. Another that he or she was put off by the smell and yet another that it run down the skin too easily not allowing time to prevent it from reaching the clothing. If we take these points into context, it means that the product has to be treated with natural emulsifiers, incorporate a scent and somehow prevent it from staining – a tall order for a herbal remedy pretending to be natural.

Read the rest of this entry

Today an investor needs to be aware of and cautious about the distorted worldwide investment climate that exists thanks to the policies since 2000 of the US Federal Reserve System and the departed chairman Alan Greenspan.

Mr Greenspan thought that the answer to all financial problems was simply to create more money. But not by actually producing more goods and providing services but by the unchecked sheer power of the money creation tools of the magical United States Federal Reserve system. Without going into all of the details in this short article the money was created out of thin air without any backing whatsoever. And not a little of it, enormous liquidity was provided under the chairman’s rein.

Read the rest of this entry

Record high prices at American gas pumps and continued trouble-brewing in the Middle East, Nigeria, and other areas of importance to the oil-driven economy have made it clear to Americans that we are in need of developing many new avenues of energy supply and production. In short, we need to reduce our dependency on oil, for it is ultimately finite and, frankly, the cheap sources of oil (not all oil-just the stuff that is cheap to remove from the earth) are running out. Energy consultants and analysts are insistent that cheap oil has “peaked” or is very soon going to peak. What this means for us is an expensive future-unless we can find new sources of powering our mechanized and electronic civilization, new sources which are alternatives to oil.

We must also switch to alternative forms of energy because our present forms are too damaging to the atmosphere. While this write does not believe that the global warming trend is much, if at all, sustained by the activities of mankind (in short, it’s a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can do about it except prepare for the effects of it), we certainly do contribute at present to the destruction of the environment and to things like air pollution with our energy sources as they are. Coal is another source of energy that we need to wean ourselves off of-again, it is finite, and it is filthy, and the mining of it is dangerous and environmentally disruptive. We can also explore new, streamlined methods for producing electricity that we presently generate so much of via hydro-power so that we are less disruptive of the environment when we have need of constructing things such as large dams.

Read the rest of this entry

1.0 INDIAN BANKING SYSTEM

A banking company in India has been defined in the banking companiesact,1949.as one “which transacts the business of banking which means the accepting, for the purpose of lending or investment of deposits of money from the public, repayable on demand or otherwise and withdraw able by cheque, draft, order or otherwise.” Most of the activities a Bank performs are derived from the above definition. In addition, Banks are allowed to perform certain activities which are ancillary to this business of accepting deposits and lending. A bank’s relationship with the public, therefore, revolves around accepting deposits and lending money. Another activity which is assuming increasing importance is transfer of money – both domestic and foreign – from one place to another. This activity is generally known as “remittance business” in banking parlance. The so called forex (foreign exchange) business is largely a part of remittance albeit it involves buying and selling of foreign currencies.

Read the rest of this entry

It is ones individual discretion about any energy source they want to make use of but taking into account the various advantages and disadvantages into account.

It is a known act that one can become environmentally friendly by making use of the alternative energy resources and save the entire world from wasting the natural resources. The people of those countries making use of renewable energy resources have experienced enhanced work opportunities for themselves.

There are plenty of alternative energy sources pros and cons that we have to consider. Te renewable energy resources have a major problem of not capable of storage as in the case of the electricity resource. With alternative energy, it is very difficult to keep a large supply of it in stock so that there is enough to go around. One needs to have thorough know how of these alternative energy resources and their upkeep. For the common people the major disadvantage is that not many of them know about alternative energy.

Read the rest of this entry

There are two unique propositions in Husk Power Systems: The manner in which the entrepreneurs are creating a rural electricity grid in Bihar villages using rice husk and two, the manner in which they have raised funding, the most recent being a $250,000 seed round after competing against over a 1,000 competitors to win the Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco-sponsored Global Business Plan Competition.

   First came the entrepreneurs in Gyanesh Pandey, a BS, Electrical Engineering, IIT Varanasi, teamed up with Ratnesh Yadav, a serial entrepreneur from Patna, who did his BA from Delhi University in 1997 who came up with a plan to electrify villages in rural Bihar with generators powered by rice husk. Rice husk, the outside of rice kernels, have traditionally been removed and discarded before rice is transported. However, when rice husk is heated it releases energy and HPS has developed technology that filters the released gas and runs this through a diesel-like engine to generate electricity.

Read the rest of this entry