At this library, instead of borrowing a book, you can dive into an interactive Virtual Reality installation and examine the birth of our planet, aided by a snake

At this library, instead of borrowing a book, you can dive into an interactive Virtual Reality installation and examine the birth of our planet, aided by a snake

I find myself in a desolate cave, my feet touching sand. As I take in the sunshine that pierces through a canopy above, I am caught off-guard by a writhing snake: Vasuki.

It invites me to follow. I do, only to find myself inside yet another cavern awash with a soft red glow, featuring Karnatakas Togalu Gombeyaata puppets suspended mid-air. I touch them and the puppets come to life, as drum beats fill the air.

I am in the Library of Shadows, I am told. But physically, I am at Chennais Goethe-Institut library, sporting a VR headset. This is just one of the worlds that make up The Infinite Library, an installation currently travelling through Goethe-Institut libraries across the country, introducing readers to South Indian puppetry, Polynesian navigation and European medieval alchemy.

The physical library is drenched in an unfamiliar green glow. And there are hints everywhere: QR codes, projections on walls and glass jars that house 3D-printed sculptures, illuminated from inside. It makes for a journey that thrives on abstraction but at the same time, tries to answer questions about human evolution.

The final VR experience, which lasts for 15 minutes, titled The Main Cavern, is an amalgamation of all these components, presenting the user with three choices on which library to open: Library of Shadows, Elements or Navigation. I choose the third, and find myself in a boat, bobbing with the gentle waves, as a dog keeps me company, and dolphins join me in a soothing ride that lasts till dusk.

The lit-up Goethe-Institut library in Chennai| Photo Credit: special arrangement

This world has been created by Mika Johnson, a filmmaker from the Czech Republic, who had brought Kafkas Metamorphosis as a VR experience to the Goethe-Institut in 2019.

The Infinite Library, which has been in the works for two years, started travelling in March. Its a sci-fi concept. What we are trying to do is imagine the future of libraries, the future of technologies we will interact with, says Mika.He believes that there will come a point where access to every individuals story is open, based on which, different realities will be simulated. The story that this library wants to tell you is about how you arrived here and it begins 4.5 billion years ago, he adds.

Mika says that the installation is partially influenced by a sci-fi story written by Jorge Juis Borges. Initially I was piecing together different libraries that existed in time to make people move through them. At the same time, I was reading about evolution. If you take away books, there are symbols and objects that we first interacted with, and those come from the caves. That was his starting point.

For Mika, a library is a sacred space that he enjoys reimagining as spaces where culture can be created, and not just imbibed. Which is why his favourite space is Oodi, in Helsinki, Finland, where 3D printers, VR spaces and video game rooms are seamless parts of the physical library.

Next stop is Pune, for the library that deftly uses the past as a gateway to the future.

The Infinite Library is at Goethe-Institut library, Nungambakkam till September 24 from 10am to 5 pm.

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A Virtual Reality experience at this Chennai library examines the evolution of life - The Hindu

IT WAS the fodder for many a local newspaper story: library book overdue by 20 years faces record fines. But no more.

Reading Library Service is planning to withdraw late fees to help encourage usage.

It is an extension of a suspension originally introduced in spring 2020, as the first covid lockdown meant people couldnt easily return books.

And to help fund the change in fees, the council will look to increase income elsewhere, such as its printing documents service, currently from 15p per page.

Reading Borough Council lead councillor for leisure and culture, Cllr Adele Barnett-Ward, said it was part of its measures to support families during the cost of living crisis.

Readings library service is a fantastic source of free books, ebooks, emagazines and audiobooks but we know that fear of incurring fines or unexpected costs puts some residents off using their local library, she said.

By removing fines we are sending a clear message that we want everyone to feel confident using their library, whether they are borrowing a book, joining in one of our social or activity sessions, or just want somewhere to sit and relax without having to spend money.

Over the last year, our libraries have seen around 200,000 visitors across the network, with 400,000 books and eBooks issued and around 2,000 home visits to people who are unable to leave their homes.

These are great results, but we are striving to build on these numbers, particularly in our quieter libraries

Removing the reservation fee will mean library users can read any book held by the service without having to worry about whether it is available on the shelves of their local library.

She said that while cuts to Local Authority funding have resulted in the closure of a fifth of the nations libraries since 2010, Reading has bucked the trend with its libraries remaining in situ.

We value the vital role they play in improving health outcomes, improving quality of life, and supporting improved education, wellbeing and skills, she said. I want to encourage everyone to visit their local library and see whats on offer, or to check out our online offering at http://www.reading.gov.uk/elibrary for a huge range of free eBooks, eMagazine, eAudio.

Our libraries belong to all of us and they are more important now than ever.

Green Councillor Rob White, leader of the main opposition group on Reading Borough Council, said: Greens support cutting library fines, they dont raise much money and they put people off coming into libraries.

We want more people to develop a love of reading and we think cutting fines will help with this.

This view was echoed by Liberal Democrat Cllr Anne Thompson, who said: I did a double-take when I first spotted the withdrawal of library fines on the agenda.

As a sometimes tardy returner of library books myself, I thought, surely this wont work. But after reading up on the proposal and discussing it with my Lib Dem colleagues, I changed my mind.

After all, weve not had library fines in Reading since the start of the pandemic and were still returning our books.

The figures show that fines made up 8% of income for Reading libraries in 2019-20, money which is now more than covered by other income streams. And its about much more than money. Its about encouraging people to use the libraries, especially children.

As the cost of living crisis bites, parents dont want to be worrying about their kids running up library fines. Many US libraries got rid of fines a few years ago and its had a really positive effect on engagement, with far more users coming through the doors.

So yes, Reading Lib Dems welcome this fascinating proposal.

The decision has been criticised by the Conservative group leader, Cllr Clarence Mitchell.

While we will always support maintaining, or even improving, the usage levels of our libraries, particularly for Readings more disadvantaged families especially in the internet age of such downloadable reading choice myself and my colleague on the Policy Committee, Cllr Simon Robinson, expressed our concerns about the effect of the removal of any sanction at all for those few people who may choose not to return books or other items, he said.

Library fines, while small in themselves, have for generations served as as both a gentle deterrent and a community-minded safeguard to ensure the safe and timely return of books and other materials for the good of all the other library users in Reading.

This decision, though, means the Council will now not be pursuing lost books at all. RBCs Labour administration claims that such fines put people off using our libraries, that the numbers involved are declining and are not worth pursuing.

But what is now to stop anyone simply taking books and never returning them without fear of any penalty?

We therefore abstained on the decision on principle, and sincerely hope that our fears over the potential for an eventual outflow of books do not come true.

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Brought to book: Reading Libraries to axe late fees - Reading Today

LITTLE ROCK -- A group of architects has been selected to jointly spearhead the upcoming remodeling of the Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library in downtown Little Rock.

Witsell Evans Rasco, Polk Stanley Wilcox and Mark Mann of Stocks Mann Architects will oversee the redesign.

According to a written report that Central Arkansas Library System Executive Director Nate Coulter prepared for a board meeting Thursday, a committee of staff, board members and library supporters from the community reviewed the qualifications of architects and made the selection.

"All of these architects were involved in one way or another with the original construction at Main [Library] in 1994-1996. Last week they met with some CALS staff to start considering the implications for library operations during an extensive remodel," Coulter wrote. "The most significant of the immediate tasks are hiring a contractor and determining which services will remain available at Main during the remodeling."

Lance Ivy, the library system's director of facilities and operations, said at the board meeting Thursday that the next big step is doing requests for qualifications for the contractors.

The planned redesign is a product of the library system's May 24 special election in Little Rock.

At that time, voters approved lowering and extending a capital-improvement property tax levy in Little Rock from 1.8 to 1.3 mills and refinancing bonds. Last year, Little Rock voters approved an equivalent increase to the library system's millage rate in the capital city that funds operations and maintenance, raising it from 3.3 to 3.8 mills.

With an expected $22 million drawn from the bond refinancing, in addition to the redesign of the Main Library, officials at the library system plan to purchase a bookmobile and make other upgrades.

Witsell Evans Rasco as well as Polk Stanley Wilcox recently conducted an initial architectural study from which library system board members were shown preliminary renderings in June of what the Main Library could look like post-remodeling.

Coulter wrote in his report that bond underwriters at the firm Crews & Associates believe the library system remains on track for a late-October sale of the bonds.

The remodeling work at the Main Library may take between 12-18 months once it begins, Coulter wrote, "depending on how much of the building is closed to the public while the work is done."

Coulter has said that the remodeling work might not begin until the middle of next year.

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Architects selected to oversee remodeling of Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library - Arkansas Online

In the annals of hype about things that dont yet exist, the metaverse has enjoyed an impressive rocketlike trajectory. Its so important to Mark Zuckerberg that he changed the name of his company to Meta. Other tech giants, including Microsoft and Nvidia, are also pivoting to the metaverse. But what is it? And do we even want one?

In the mid-20th century, metaverse was an obscure synonym for metapoetry, or poetry about poetry. The modern technological sense of the term was introduced in Neal Stephensons 1992 science-fiction novel, Snow Crash. The people in this 21st-century dystopia would don virtual-reality goggles to access a realm that is part massive multiplayer videogame, part immersive internet: a digital city-planet in which all manner of entertainment and shady business dealings may be pursued. Mr. Stephensons readers have wanted to go to the metaverse ever since. John Carmack, the lead developer of the first-person-shooter game Doom, once said it was a moral imperative to build the metaverse. Instead we got Facebook.

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From Meatspace to Metaverse: Two Books on Virtual Reality - The Wall Street Journal

Pune: In good news for lovers of antiquity, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune is offering online access to some very rare books housed in the institute. The institute is also transforming its online courses in languages, philosophy, science, arts, and medicine, among others, and will develop a mobile application for people who are interested in the courses.

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will inaugurate the initiative on Wednesday.

BORI has digitised 20,000 books and 14,000 ancient manuscripts out of the total 28,000 manuscripts till now from Sanskrit, Prakrit, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Devnagari, Kannada, etc. Ten thousand rare books, over 100 years old, and the digitised manuscripts will be available to the public on its official website.

Its noteworthy that this treasure will now be open to the public. People can access it in the library section of BORIs website. This online platform is a first of its kind experiment, said Bhupal Patwardhan, chairman of BORIs executive board. The institute has over 1.50 lakh books on various subjects.

Shailesh Kshirsagar, a researcher of history of Vedic science, has been studying Vedic mathematics over the last few years. He and a group of researchers often visit BORI to study and take notes from rare books and manuscripts on the subject.

Now we will have direct access online, which will help us study at any time and from anywhere, said Kshirsagar.

While some courses are free, others will come at a small fee.

Some of the institutes oldest rare books are from 1813. Apart from this, there is the first edition of the Rigveda Samhita, translated by philologist Max Muller, into German, he added.

We want to reach out to people across the globe who are interested in studying and researching our culture and its diversity. The courses run for around 100 hours. We had the content, which had to be edited curated and validated for the online platform, Patwardhan said.

Excerpt from:
Pune-based BORI offers online access to rare ancient books - Hindustan Times

Kettering University today officially opened its new Learning Commons, a $63 million, 105,000-square-foot building designed to facilitate optimum collaboration and transform the social and academic life for students and faculty.

We see the Learning Commons as a revolution in how universities conceptualize space, howthey fashion space to create and support behavior and a collaborative model, said Kettering University President Dr. Robert K. McMahan. To learn more about it and its purpose, you mustfirst suspend everything you think about university spaces. The Learning Commons is unique. There is no building on a college campus, or anywhere else, quite like this.

The one-of-a-kind building has spectacular collaborative and social spaces that bring togetherstudents, faculty and staff, and reflect Ketterings commitment to creating a campus that bestprepares students for future careers.

Featuring wide-open, technology-enriched spaces, the Learning Commons encouragescollaboration and innovation, attributes fundamental to Ketterings 103-year history and itsvalues as a cooperative learning model today and in the future.

The facility includes a digital library, a 200-seat auditorium described as a mini IMAX theater,dining facilities, media resource centers, outdoor patios with seating, multiple collaborationspaces and a suite for guest professors and lecturers. There is also a reflection space wherepeople can have privacy.

The natural light throughout the building is welcoming, which energizes people and makes themexcited to work. The study spaces have incredible views of the campus.

McMahan said the Learning Commons is the first new building on Ketterings campus in 20years and features architectural elements from numerous buildings hes visited.

I would pay close attention to a small area or aspect of a building and how people interactedwithin the space, he said. This building brings together a number of those aspects in an artfuland functional way that promotes collaboration among students and faculty. The open meetingspaces with comfortable furniture and meeting rooms with glass walls allow people to seewhats happening inside and encourage them to participate.

The building is designed so people can stand on one side and see through to the other side withunobstructed sightlines. In addition, stairways to each floor are not stacked, forcing people tomove laterally before they can move vertically, encouraging movement throughout the building.

This is a museum-caliber environment in terms of construction quality and systems, saidMcMahan. It can be modified and expanded and will last 50 to 60 years. The only thing you cando is build something thats flexible enough to let people define the building.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation granted $25 million to support construction of the building.

The Mott Foundation is pleased to support the Kettering Learning Commons, said MottFoundation President and CEO Ridgway White. We believe the building represents theingenuity that Kettering and its students embody, and we look forward to seeing future Ketteringgraduates learn and excel in new ways that will propel Flint and Michigan to be leaders in fieldsof work and study that have only begun to be imagined.

The Learning Commons was also the centerpiece for the Universitys Boldly Forward CapitalCampaign, which raised $155 million from July 2012 through December 2021. Of that total,$45.4 million went toward the facility. Kettering received funds from more than 6,000 donorsthrough the capital campaign, which will provide scholarships and upgrades to several buildings.

Many of us owe our success to what we learned at Kettering, and many alumni chose to giveback to the university through the Boldly Forward Capital Campaign, said Gary L. Cowger,chair of the Boldly Forward Capital Campaign and a graduate of General Motors Institute (nowKettering University). Along with alumni, many companies, foundations, and individuals viewKettering as a leader in co-op education that graduates students ready to enter the workforcewith years of experience. Their dollars will make a huge difference to the university and itsstudents today and in the future. We greatly appreciate the support of all donors.

Cowger retired from General Motors after a 45-year career as group vice president of globalmanufacturing and labor relations and was president of GM North America before taking overglobal operations. He is now chairman and CEO of GLC Ventures, LLC. He received abachelors degree in industrial engineering from the university in 1970 and an honorary Doctorof Engineering from Kettering in 2007.

The Learning Commons was designed by world-renowned architectural firm Stantec, which hasdesigned academic facilities in 37 states and provinces across North America.

The Learning Commons is expected to have a positive effect on Kettering students and facultyfor decades to come.

Officials broke ground on the Learning Commons on Feb. 5, 2020.

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Kettering University Opens State-of-the-Art Learning Commons on its Flint Campus - Kettering University

A tour of Brantfords former Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School and interviews with five survivors from the institution are part of a virtual event offered Friday through Woodland Cultural Centre and Welland Public Library.

The cultural centre offers a variety of tours, education programs and workshops that allow visitors to learn about an assortment of topics covering the past, present and future of southern Ontarios First Nations peoples, the library said in a release.

The virtual tour of the former residential school in Brantford will give the history of the institution over its 140 years, and viewers will see rooms inside, including the girls and boys dormitories, the cafeteria and the laundry room.

Registration is required as space is limited, the library said. It asks people to register at their earliest convenience by calling 905-734-6210 or at wellandlibrary.ca.

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Virtual tour of Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School offered through Welland library - St. Catharines Standard

Ward: Theres a pretty clear trajectory from the 2018 brawl at the Metropolitan Republican Club to Trumps stand back and stand by comment during the presidential debate in September 2020 to, ultimately, the Jan. 6 insurrection. Did anything really surprise you about their role on Jan. 6?

Campbell: I was turning in the final chapters of the book when the original conspiracy charges came down against them, which were not surprising. The 1776 Returns document showed that the Proud Boys didnt just have an outsize role in Jan. 6, but that they may have had a role in planning it, too. Leading up to January 6, the Proud Boys were prepping for civil war, and they were getting super excited for their last stand for Trump.

But I was absolutely surprised that the [other] architects of Jan. 6 would put any sort of trust in the Proud Boys to pull this thing off, because any big event that theyve been involved in over the years has led to mass arrests. The Proud Boys are terrible with their information security, and theyre constantly being watched by the feds and by journalists. So it was absolutely surprising to me, when that 1776 Returns document came down, that they had such a big role in [planning] it.

And then theyve continued to surprise me with their resiliency. A number of people wrote them off after Jan. 6, saying, Oh, the Proud Boys are imploding, or theyre gonna dissolve after this, and sure enough, theyre still in action.

Ward: Early in the book, you cite McInnes claim that Fighting solves everything, and you argue that the GOP more or less tacitly endorsed that point of view when the Republican National Committee classified the violence of Jan. 6 as legitimate political discourse. How much credit or blame, depending on your point of view do the Proud Boys deserve for the GOPs decision to endorse some forms of political violence?

Campbell: I think they have [played] a huge role. I mean, they were showing up at events big and small at the behest of Trump and the GOP grievance machine for years and fighting it out in the street. Over time, the goalposts have been moved to the degree that political violence, as a justified response to the things that the [GOP] is mad about, is totally normal now.

Whats scary about the Proud Boys is that the playbook that theyve helped create under Trump is such that everyday Americans think that they can go out [into the streets] and fight for the things that theyre mad about. Youve got regular people joining extremists at abortion clinics and at Boston Childrens Hospital and at drag queen story hours. Theyre threatening and intimidating people, and theyre looking at the Proud Boys, whose leaders have seen very few consequences until Jan. 6. Certainly, [McInnes] has never seen any real legal consequences for fomenting all of this.

[Look at] Libs of TikTok. All these right-wing loudmouths are looking at the Proud Boys and saying, Hey, as long as I couch everything that Im saying in political speech, I can say whatever I want people can go out and murder, and Im never going to see any consequences for it. And at least legally, thats largely true. So, while you cant say that the Proud Boys are the arbiters of all political violence, you can certainly draw a line between this sort of stuff and these small events [where] theyve been fighting and fighting and fighting over the years. And its not just Proud Boys events anymore where violence happens. Every facet of American life is overrun by political violence now, and I think the Proud Boys are a big part of that.

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Jan. 6 Was Just the Beginning for the Proud Boys - POLITICO

Fiskes exoneration of Clinton enraged the right. At this juncture in history, the paranoid style was enjoying one of its sporadic revivals. On talk radio and in the halls of Congress, absurd theories linking the Clintons to Fosters death flourished. These years also witnessed a rising tendency led by Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, soon to become speaker of the House to gin up claims of ethical impropriety to take down political foes. To Republicans unreconciled to the Democrats return to the White House, Clinton was inherently suspect. And so, that summer, a panel of three judges, led by Judge David Sentelle a protege of North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, who had been keen to go after Clinton since his election took it upon themselves to replace the impartial Fiske with the very partisan Starr, then working in private practice.

Ken Starr decided to extend his inquiry beyond Whitewater and, in early 1997, he and his team began poking around into the presidents sex life.|Doug Mills/AP Photo

It was an unconventional and consequential choice. For one thing, Starr lacked prosecutorial experience. Despite having been a judge for six years in the 1980s, he was also a known partisan, active in the Federalist Society and conservative circles. Having aspired as a youth to become a preacher, he sold Bibles while in college and taught Sunday school even while on the federal bench. His piety often blurred the lines between church and state. As independent counsel, he would promote stories like one in the conservative Washington Times headlined, Deeply Christian Starr Starts Day Jogging, Singing Hymns.

The biggest problem with his appointment, however, was a major conflict of interest: Earlier in the year, Starr had provided legal assistance to Paula Jones, an Arkansas woman who was suing Clinton over a vulgar sexual advance he had allegedly made to her as governor. Starr even drafted an amicus brief supporting Jones. But Starr didnt disclose those connections to the judges who appointed him, and later he would, against all ethical standards, make common cause with Jones team in his pursuit of the president.

When Starr began his investigation in mid-1994, Clinton seemed vulnerable. Despite passing some landmark legislation, he had failed to achieve his ambitious health care plan and was struggling over foreign policy messes in Somalia and Bosnia. But after November 1994, when the Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 50 years, Clinton found his footing and his fortunes revived. In response, Republicans launched new investigations into various matters and pressured Starr to find proof of Clintons wrongdoing. After several years, however, he couldnt find any, and Whitewater receded from the front pages. Clinton was destined to become the first Democrat to win two presidential elections since Franklin Roosevelt. Starr, it seemed, would have to close up shop.

But then Starr made a big decision to extend his inquiry. In early 1997, he and his team began poking around into the presidents sex life. Doing so might have been illegal, since it lay well outside Starrs mandate as independent counsel. In a few months time, the news of his fishing expedition broke. In a June 1997 Washington Post article, Arkansas state troopers spoke with concern about what was going on. In the past, I thought they were trying to get to the bottom of Whitewater, said trooper Roger Perry, whom Starrs staff had questioned. This last time, I was left with the impression that they wanted to show he was a womanizer. All they wanted to talk about was women. The plunge into sexual politics drew denunciations. Starr chose to ignore the warning lights. Moralism propelled him forward.

As Starr later admitted, his office soon opened a back channel also probably illegal to lawyers for Jones, whose harassment case was proceeding along independent lines. A gaggle of far-right attorneys helping her had learned about the presidents recent dalliance with Lewinsky and passed it along to Starrs staff. These attorneys called the Elves because one of their number, the polemicist-provocateur Ann Coulter, compared them to busy elves working away in Santas workshop then connected Starrs office with Linda Tripp, the Pentagon aide who posed as a confidante to Lewinsky, got her to confess details about the affair and secretly taped their conversations.

Starr made his next momentous decision in deciding to use the affair as part of the impeachment case he was building. In mid-January 1998, convinced that Clinton had lied about his relationship with Lewinsky in a recent deposition in the Jones case, Starr asked permission from Reno to formally expand his probe into Clintons sex life even though he had already done just that months before. Years later, he would admit that doing so had been a mistake. (Someone else should have led the Lewinsky inquiry, he conceded.) But in seeking his expanded mandate, Starr hid from Reno and the three-judge panel those back-channel contacts with the Jones team. Reno authorized the expansion, but when she learned months later about the concealment, she almost fired Starr on the spot.

News of Clintons affair with a former intern, many years his junior, generated a predictable storm of outrage. But in a short time a public consensus emerged that, however tawdry the affair, and however harshly people might judge Clintons character, this wasnt something to remove a president over. Washington pundits, in contrast, felt differently, as did a few well-placed reporters who, relying on a flood of selective leaks from Starrs staff (especially attorney Brett Kavanaugh), kept the story alive for months even as the presidents approval ratings stabilized north of 60 percent. Starrs hovered around 22 percent.

Clinton appeared to retire the whole business on Aug. 17, 1998, when he finally confessed to and apologized for the affair. Most of the public said it was time to move on. But again Starr along with Gingrich and the Republican House leadership refused to let up. With Whitewater a dead letter, sexual politics would be the grounds for impeachment.

During Clintons testimony before a grand jury, all the questions had been about sex, and when Starr sent his impeachment referral to Congress in September, it contained gratuitous descriptions of specific sex acts, pornographic in nature. The goal was to incite new public outrage and, perhaps, humiliate his nemesis. Like the classic small-town preacher who rails against sexual deviance precisely because he finds it so titillating, Starr was even more ardent than some of his advisers in favoring a narrative laced with explicit detail. I love the narrative! Starr told aides who counseled greater restraint.

Despite losing seats in the November midterm election historically an almost unheard-of development Republicans pressed forward with impeachment. Starr made yet another fateful decision by choosing, against precedent, to become an aggressive advocate for impeachment. (In 1974, Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski had stayed neutral, submitting a spare factual account and merely suggesting to Congress possible impeachable infractions President Richard Nixon had committed.) Starrs decision infuriated his ethics adviser, Sam Dash, onetime counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, whom Starr had retained early on to give himself some cover. He was a partisan Republican, Dash later said of Starr. But I really believed him when he said he could push all that aside. Having defended Starr for years, Dash now let it rip, quitting the team and publicly denouncing Starrs decision to openly throw in his lot with the House Republicans.

The Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently, Ken Starr piously lamented in then-President Donald Trumps defense. Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the Age of Impeachment.|Alex Edelman/Getty Images

It was especially unnecessary because Clintons acquittal was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Even many Republican senators doubted that the charges amounted to constitutional crimes. But the GOP leadership, joined by Starr, pressed on. In the end, of the four charges that the Judiciary Committee reported, two failed to gain a majority even in the Republican-controlled House. The other two were rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate. But if the damage to Clinton was minor, the disruption to the country had been enormous. Starrs decisions over many years to take over from Fiske, to veer into sexual politics, to run with the Lewinsky affair, to make sex the centerpiece of his report which stemmed from his prosecutorial zeal, had helped poison the atmosphere in Washington and deepen the tendency to use sexual behavior as the basis for partisan warfare.

Ironically, it was already becoming clear that many of the presidents antagonists had their own sexual secrets to hide. House Judiciary Chair Henry Hyde was revealed to have had an affair in his 40s, which he tried to downplay as a youthful indiscretion. Gingrich, damaged by the GOP losses at the polls, was overthrown as speaker amid talk that he had been conducting his own extramarital affair. His intended replacement, Robert Livingston, declined the speakership when his past infidelities surfaced. The eventual speaker, Dennis Hastert, was later convicted and imprisoned for child sex abuse. And of course Starrs key aide Kavanaugh who pushed hard to grill the president and Lewinsky about the sexual details of their relationship was, as a Supreme Court nominee in 2018, alleged to have sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford while they were in high school. Even Starrs eventual successor as independent counsel, Robert W. Ray, was charged with stalking an old girlfriend.

Amazingly enough, it eventually emerged that Starr too, for all his moralizing, had carried on his own extramarital affair, with Judi Hershman, an adviser to the independent counsels office. More damningly still, Starr had to resign in 2016 as president of Baylor University after it was reported that he had covered up a string of sexual assaults, including rapes, by members of his football team. One victim had even sent him an email, while he was president, informing him that she had been raped. I honestly may have (seen it), he said of her message. Im not denying that I saw it. Her rapist was sentenced to 20 years.

Despite his essential role in the Clinton impeachment, Starr in 2020 not only defended President Donald Trump during his (first) impeachment trial, but somehow managed to summon the chutzpah to impugn the Democrats for bringing charges never mind that the charges against Trump, for conspiring with a foreign government to compromise the 2020 election, were far graver than those against Clinton. The Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently, Starr piously lamented in Trumps defense. Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the Age of Impeachment.

Perhaps we are living in such an age. If so, the person most responsible for that sad state of affairs is none other than Ken Starr.

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Opinion | Ken Starr: The Man Who Created the Lewinsky Scandal - POLITICO

21 JULY 2022

Founder Chairman of SAIMS, Dr. Vinod Bhandari has been awarded by The Eminence Award 2022 for the Most Committed Hospital of Central India. It's another feather in the cap of SAIMS Fraternity. The Award was presented by Honble Minister for Road Transport & Highways in the Government of India Shri Nitin Gadkari on 21st July, 2022 at New Delhi.

07 JANUARY 2022

Governor of Kerala Hon'ble Shri Arif Mohd. Khan Visited Sri Aurobindo University

Hon'ble Governor Inaugurated the Ceremony organized in colloboration with Sri Aurobindo University & Free Press, on "NEP: A way forward to Medical Education"

21 DECEMBER 2021

Governor of M.P. Hon'ble Mangubhai Patel Visited Sri Aurobindo University

He started the "Sickle Cell Project" at SAU and inaugurated Ultrasound Simulation Lab, ECMO Academy & Advanced Central Laboratory at SAIMS.

Sri Aurobindo University Organizes International Conference on COVID

An International conference under the aegis of Indian Society for Rational Pharmacotherapeutics (ISRPT) was successfully conducted from 25th to 27th November, 2021 at Sri Aurobindo University Campus. Eminent scientists from the globe participated in this event.

INDO-UK FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

LECTURE & HANDSON ON DENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY CONDUCTED AT SRI AUROBINDO COLLEGE OF DENTISTRY, DEPT. OF PEDODONTICS ON 27 OCTOBER 2021

11th SEPTEMBER 2021

TEACHER'S DAY CELEBRATION AT SAIMS

15th AUGUST 2021

CERTIFICATE AWARDED TO SAIMS BY INDORE COLLECTOR FOR INSTALLATION OF OXYGEN GAS PLANT ON 15TH AUGUST CEREMONY

20.07.2021

Latest NGS Sequencing Maching for COVID-19 is at Indore

Sri Aurobindo Hospital has imported the latest Next Generation Genome Sequencing Machine from USA for characterization and early detection along with identification of various COVID-19 variants.

Sri Aurobindo College of Dentistry

On 25-26th June 2021, Career Guidance Counseling Cell, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Dentistry is hosting a webinar on "Career options after BDS" which focuses on providing assistance to the future dentists of intern batch and final year, in making informed educational choices with the guest speaker as honorable Dr. Saransh Malot.

INTERNATIONAL YOGA DAY MEET - 21ST JUNE 2021

International Yoga Day Meet was organised by Department of Public Health Dentistry, on 21st June 2021, based on the theme "Come Breathe In & Breathe Out With Us In Rhythm", with yoga instructors as Dr. Binti Chand and Dr. Anchal Sharma.

INVITATION & NOTICE

19th APRIL 2021

Hon'ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi Ji called a Virtual Meet with Renowned Doctors and Pharmacist of different States and discussed the COVID-19 Pandemic. From Madhya Pradesh, Founder Chairman of SAIMS Dr. Vinod Bhandari represented in the meet and shared their experience and gave suggestions sought by P.M.

5th APRIL 2021

Hon'ble Chief Minister of M.P. Shri Shivraj Singh Ji called a Virtual Meet with Directors of Private Medical Institutions to discuss the COVID-19 Pandemic. SAIMS Founder Chairman Dr. Vinod Bhandari & Managing Direcotr Dr. Mahak Bhandari attended the meet and shared their experience and gave suggestions sought by C.M.

13-14TH MARCH 2021

WORKSHOP ON THESIS PROTOCOL TYPING & BASIC RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3rd MARCH 2021

DR. MANJUSHREE BHANDARI APPOINTED CHANCELLOR OF SRI AUROBINDO UNIVERSITY

13TH FEBRUARY 2021

SAIMS-TIMES INAUGURATED

Inauguration of SAIMS Times, a magzine for all academicians, physicians, clinicians, students. Inauguration took place by IMA National President Dr. Jaylal

INAUGURATION OF COVID VACCINE AT SAIMS MEDICAL COLLEGE

Chief Guest Shri Shankar Lalwani, MP, inaugurated the COVID vaccination program at SAIMS MEDICAL COLLEGE CAMPUS

FIRST COVID VACCINE WAS ADMINISTERED TO DR. RAVI DOSI, HOD, DEPT. OF RESPIRATORY MEDICINE, SAIMS

14 JANUARY 2021

MAKAR SANRANTI CELEBRATION AT SAIMS MEDICAL COLLEGE CAMPUS

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