Winter is here

It is getting colder now, winter is here. The Christmas decorations and the lights are out. There are bright dazzling trees everywhere, the streets are lined with lights, the shops are always inviting. There is no one around on the roads!
It is cold, people don't want to be walking around to experience the lights of Christmas, they just drive by.
It is nice to watch the lights reflecting off the wind shields of the car's, they just contour the car and as the car moves ahead they are moving like waves on the cars.
Jesus was born on one cold winter night in a stable. It would have been too cold. Anyway there has been a lot of debate if he was actually born at this time. It is nice to celebrate Christmas at this time because people come together during winter and create a feeling of companionship, warmth and friendliness which is what is need more on a cold winter night.

Recession Times

There is widespread talk everywhere that the economy is picking up. People are optimistic that the situation will improve in the coming time.
Still everyone is cautious about the situation, no one wants to buy a new car or make any new investments except saving for their holidays.
The companies although talk about improvements in the situation do not necessarily accept that when it comes to salaries and benefits of the workers.
Major industries are still reeling and waiting for a bailout, there are more mergers happening to increase the market hold.
Gold prices are steadily increasing everyday, seems like gold is going to be the trading commodity in the days to come for the governments of the world.

Slow down time

Have you ever been in a situation when momentarily everything blurs and there is only one thing in focus in your mind?
This happens to people when they are put in a kind of do or die situation. The brain realises the gravity of the situation and starts working instinctively. You no longer can actually think in those situations. There is one objective to achieve and everything else actually blurs as your eyes only concentrate on that particular thing, it is not just the eyes but all the senses are tuned into one thing.

During this time, the brain overclocks, it works faster than it normally does, because of the adrenaline released. This creates and illusion of time slowing down although the brain is working faster to help us get out of the do or die situation we are facing.

Cosmetic surgery

Cosmetic surgery has come a long way, from repairing damaged body parts to enhancing body parts.
If Pamela Anderson made it famous then there are a lot of people who made it notorious.
Recently there is a Chinese woman, who had plastic surgery on her fingers. One might wonder why, did she make her fingers bigger? The answer is no, she got her fingers done so that she can illegally immigrate to Japan.
She altered her finger prints so that she can pass through the biometric testing, which she succeeded.
Eventually she was caught for some other crime and she was busted or is it fingered.

Flagellum

I was watching a program on the origins of life. There was a talk about intelligent design being the cause of life rather than the evolution model.

The proponents of intelligent design cited as an example the flagellum. This is a long thread like structure on certain bacteria that is used for movement.

The flagellum is a miniature motor, it is quite clear from the images that was shown. Their argument was that this was the most simplest form of cell machinery. It is not possible for this structure to evolve. Evolution means smaller changes happening over a course of time that produce a larger entity. If this explanation is applied to the flagellum, then the flagellum would not exist as the flagellum requires all the parts to be present simultaneously for it to exhibit a particular behaviour namely transportation.

Once again scientists differ.

Photobomb

Photobomb is a recent phenomenon popular on viral and photo sharing sites. A photobomb is a photo which has got more that the subject of the photo. In photos termed as photobombs, the subject of the photo is merely an excuse for taking the photo which might contain something funny happening in the background.

Sometimes, a genuine photo of a subject might become a photobomb when an intruder comes in the background to intentionally "bomb" the photo.

Most of the photobombs are usually graphic, which shows the trends of people's interests. It might be varied from drunk people passed out to sober people making out. There are even animal channel type photobombs, one such being a guy posing in front of mating lions in a zoo.

Check out this new phenomenon, just type photobomb in google and have a laugh.

Do you watch pornography?

If you don't then your might be of some help to scientists who are doing some research on sexual preferences.
They had done some research on men who watch porn and when it was time to do some research on men who do not watch any porn, they could not find any.
So all men watch porn, I guess that is what is keeping the internet up and running.
If you have not heard, I would suggest you listen to the song "The internet is for porn" on youtube.

Lamborghini and the Polizia

Ferruccio Lamborghini was not satisfied with the handling of Ferrari and so was born the Lamborghini.
The Lamborghini cars are a status symbol perhaps even more than any other car, no wonder there are very few of them manufactured each year.
The Lamborghini Co. gifted a Gallardo to the Italian Police in honour of the exemplary work they do.
Unfortunately it seems the Italian police are not good drivers, so they are now left with a wrecked Lamborghini that is good only for the scrapyard.
Mama Mia.

Try Yoga to relax

Yoga is quite popular in USA and most of Europe. It has gained recognition quite recently and it is quite a crazy in these parts of the world.
Yoga is one of the ancient traditions of India which is still being followed by a sizeable population in India. People would have come across yoga in some way directly or indirectly in India. Since it is a tradition of India, people are used to hearing about yoga that it is not something which has got a mystic appeal unlike the rest of the world. So yoga is sometimes disregarded as a way to exercise the body and the mind and the benefits are rarely known among the masses.
Yoga has got elaborate postures or asanas  ranging from simple to very complicated stances of the body. Certain asanas requires years of practise before it can be perfected. An important part of yoga in the breathing along with the asanas. The breathing has to be done correctly, the inhaling and exhaling at correct intervals and at the right postures, failing which might result in injury or pain.
There are also breathing exercises that are done to improve concentration and relaxing the mind.
There are a lot of instruction videos for yoga on the internet which give a detailed step by step account of the asanas.
It is a good all round exercise, if that is the correct word, for all round development of the body and mind.

Wii can exercise

Wii, is an odd name for a gaming console. It was quite amusing to watch people hold something their hands and motion them to mimic a movement. It was funny to watch the people do some crazy movements.
I had the opportunity to play a few games on the Wii, I was a bit apprehensive at first, but then I decided to give it a try.
The experience of playing a game on Wii is incomparable to any other game playing experience, the interactivity is like no other.
Gone are the days when playing a video game was just sitting in front of the TV or computer and moving just the fingers.
With a Wii you use the whole body. It is truly playing the game virtually. It is quite exhausting and tiring too. Playing on the Wii is a good exercise, especially boxing. People break into a sweat boxing on the Wii.
How much better it could get, parents would not longer be worried that their children are spending more time in front of the TV.
There is also something like a floor mat which can sense the feet. Wow, now that is a great idea. The applications are endless. 

I think Nintendo have defined the future of future video games.

Free Software

How many of us cannot afford to buy the expensive word processor or the image editing software?
In this age of internet there is a solution for every digital problem.

Open Source Software - This a classification or license under with certain software are released. This means that the software is free to use and be developed further by anyone who is interested.

This means a lot to everyone, imagine the best word processing software on the market, now imagine a similar word processing software created by eager developers all over the world and released as open source. This open source word processor would keep getting better everyday, with ideas pouring from everyone who has a feature to be incorporated.

There is already Open Office, the open source office solution, which includes among other tools a word processor that is quite competitive to any commercial word processor. There is also GIMP, an open source image editing software. There are also operating systems, databases, media players, browsers, email clients, anti viruses and even games.

The open source ideology is well embraced by the software industry. As more an more open source alternatives are being made available for commercial software, what would be the state of the major software companies.

Checkout the huge list of open source software available on the internet, you might no longer need that expensive software that you use.

Wines

Recently I was at a wine factory. I went there on an organised tour to see the wine making process.
I was surprised at the whole modern way of wine making.

The wine making I have seen involved people stamping over grapes in a large wooden trough. The juice is then collected and stored in wooden barrels. I saw this in some village which produced home made wines.
So when I went to the factory, I was surprised at the huge steel cylinders and pipes connected to them. There were flies all around, attracted by the smell of grapes. The smell was not very inviting, it was infact very repulsive. The smell of rotting fruit to be exact, which is what wine making is all about. I did not really expect the flies.

Then we went to the bottling plant, they have a machine which bottles at the rate of  1500 one litre bottles per hour. That is a lot of wine. Adjacent to the bottling plant is the wine cellar with the huge casks.
The wine cellar was in a quite place, apparently silence produces better wine, not to mention the spices in the wine and the wood the cask is made of.
There were lots of bottles in the racks, each from a different year, the oldest wine dating back to 1999. The bottles are stacked on top of each other. The way the wine bottles are shaped ensures that the neck of the bottles are slightly tilted toward the ground. This ensures that the wine always touches the cork stopper, again for better quality wine.

Then finally for some wine tasting, different types of wine. Some were like vinegar, some where sweet and a few tasted excellent. There was a wine which had a very good fragrance and well was intoxicating.
So I returned home with a couple of bottles of that one.

Now as I am writing this blog, I take a sip to make me write better......

People watching

Being in a mall is always an interesting time. First of all the place presents us with a lot of sights and sounds.
It is a visual treat for the eyes. The colourful displays everywhere, the lights in the shops are always inviting to the visitor.

Walking in a mall, one is sure to come across the smell of food wafting through the air. It would make anyone hungry instantly, especially with kids, you are definitely going to get a piece of that freshly baked pie.

It is a wonderful time for the children, they have lots of things to do, unlike at home where they are in front of the TV playing games. It is good to see children running around and screaming as they are supposed to do.
They also want their parents to buy everything that they see. Watching the parents parent their children is amusing. The things children do to convince their parents, and the things parents say to their children is definitely interesting. Sometimes, the parents win and then you also hear crying.

There are different kinds of people who visit a mall. Not everyone goes to shop!
 The first kind of people are the ones who go to actually buy something. They have something in mind that they want to buy and go get it. Although they rarely return with just what they wanted. This is specially true for women.
Second, these are the people who just go to shop every weekend. They have no idea of what they want to buy, but they want to go shopping. These people are very good for businesses.
The third group of people are the ones who hang out with their friends. They are usually located in coffee shops. If this group consists of teenagers they just keep walking all around and are in no fixed place.
The fourth group is the ones who do not much to do and they decide that going to the mall would be the best thing to do. These people keep walking around, visit the shops, watch other people and just hang around. These people do not buy anything, but they are prospective customers.
Then there is always a bunch of children who tag along with their mother/aunts who go shopping.

Watch for these people the next time you visit a mall. It is interesting observing people anywhere.

Goodbye torrents

Pirate bay is gone. Mininova has limited itself to legal torrents.

Millions of people all around the world have woken up to check if the torrent that they started download the previous night has been completely downloaded.

Be it movies, music, tv serials, software, games, you name it, there was some torrent site which had it. Unfortunately these were copyrighted, nevertheless people shared.
Axxo, Klaxxon became household names. Gone were the days when people used to wait for an Axxo update. Times were ominous after Axxo disappeared from the scene. What happened to him is still a mystery.

It is time to bid farewell to torrents as we know it. Soon the only content that anyone can download from the torrent sites are data in the public domains. How attractive this would be the masses is a question. That in turn would put a severe strain on the torrents sites without any patron.

It is still dark at the end of the tunnel for torrents. Only time can answer us if there will be a revival.

Till then goodbye torrents.

Moving around houses

The Chinese Feng Shui and Indian Vastu Shastra are based on one common ideology - Bullshit.

Moving around doors and windows of a house to gain wisdom, happiness, weatlh and what not is not science.

There are scores of practitioners of this "art" who go around ruining well planned and built houses in the name of better living.
They even go about calling this a science without flinching an eyelid.

Humans started from caves, I am sure they did not have feng shui and vastu shastra back then. In spite of that we have survived and come to the present state.

I am sure that if we can survive in caves without these practices, we can very well survive in well equipped modern houses.

I remember watching a program on Discovery where two feng shui "experts" could not agree on the same thing.
Each of them had vastly differing suggestions on remodelling the interior of the house for increasing the so called postive energy flow.

People have to realise the foolishness of believing in these systems and falling for them.
If these practises actually do something then I am sure it only makes them poorer, because of the money they spend on remodelling the house and paying the shaman.


“Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.”

End of the world - Mexican timezone only

Time : Sometime around 200 - 300 A.D.
Place : Some where in present South America.

A young guy is given a task of carving some numbers onto stones. He keeps doing it diligently everyday carving a couple of hundred numbers everyday. One day as he is engrossed in the engraving, he happens to see a beautiful young girl pass by. He wonders what he is doing there with a stone, when he could be doing better. So he leaves the stones and goes after the girl and never returns back to finish his job.

Time : Present day.
Place : Mexico.

The whole is in a frenzy after some archaeologist discovers some stones with numbers. They have deciphered that the stones contains dates and the date suddenly stops at the modern day time of Dec 21, 2012. They come to the conclusion that the world is going to end on that day.

If only these guys knew why the date stopped at Dec 21, 2012.
The date stopped because the guy who was carving them went out on a date.

Point to ponder - If it really is going to happen on Dec 21, 2012, which timezone is it? If it is in the Mexican time zone, then it would already be Dec 22 in Japan. So the world will not end for Japan?

Caterpillar Fungus in Schezwan sauce

Perhaps everyone knows of parasitic wasps, the ones which lay their eggs on cockroaches or spiders. The larvae of which eventually eat through the hapless victim and finally emerging as a fully grown wasp from within the body of the cockroach or spider thereby killing it. These organisms are called parasitoids.

An interesting parasitoid is the Caterpillar Fungus, so called because of the fungus' preference for caterpillars.
This particular fungus somehow manages to enter into the body of the caterpillar. How it does that is currently unknown to us. It eventually grows inside the caterpillar replacing its internal organs and finally comes out through the caterpillar's head.

The Chinese have a liking for this particular fungus as it is half animal and half vegetable. Not surprising, that's what makes them Chinese. Some of their athletes swear by it.

Sells for over $5000 a kilo.

Bon appetite.

Differing Scientists

Why do scientists have differing and totally opposite views regarding the same subject?

They go about publishing contradictory results based on their research, each of them claiming their work to be correct.

So who is right? Should I drink alcohol or not? Should I wash my hands or not? Is there global warming or not? Was there a big bang or not?

Too many research activities and too many observations which eventually make life miserable to anyone who actually believes in science. Science is always right, but scientists are not.

Reading all the too many reports makes me wonder if scientists actually do research for the sake of science or just for securing research funds.
It is very possible that the results of the research are deliberately misinterpreted to mislead the people, to force them to make the wrong choices to increase the profitability of business which are involved.

If science and business is an unholy alliance, then the scientists are the priests blessing that alliance.

Of Ice and Men

Watching people ice skating or probably any other skating makes me realise how difficult learning to walk must be for a baby.

Today at the skating rink I visited, there were adults who were trying to skate and kept falling down repeatedly. It was like they were trying to learn a new kind of motion. Holding the rails, trying to balance the body, bending the knees to lower the centre of gravity, all these are exactly the things a baby does. I wonder if the skaters realised that when they were doing those routines.

There were several peals of laughter when a particular middle aged man could not maintain his balance. He was all over the floor. The "ice guards" were helping him on to his feet.
My friends were exhausted by the time they came out of the rink, they were in there for two hours. Some of them were sweating and had a sore back from all the falls. All this from just trying to maintain a balance and walking, not from skating.

It must be quite a time for a child learning to walk, there must be a lot of determination to get up on those tiny feet and start walking in spite of all those falls.

One step at a time....

Phones and Apples

Of all things said and done, yesterday was the first time that I laid my hands on an Apple that does not grow on a tree. I must say I was clearly impressed by the iPhone.
It is certainly not a phone, it can also be used as a phone!

My phone seems like a brick next to it, but I am happy with it. I need a phone which just makes phone calls and send text messages, which is exactly what my phone does.

The iPhone is a very good gadget for tech enthusiasts, you have to give it to Apple for the innovative design and the thought put into it. Think about it, there are no buttons anywhere it is all touch sensitive, it even has got a motion sensor.

If only this Apple could keep the doctor away.

$15,000 a litre

People have been killed for their fat in Mexico. Now how worse can it get.
They throw away the internal organs and remove the fat!

The Italians are also involved, perhaps for the cosmetic companies in
Europe.

Since the French are the leading cosmetic manufactures in the world, it makes me wonder how much more crazy the French can get.


Time to start PETH - People for Ethical Treatment of Humans.

What's in a dream?

It is all a dream............

Ever woken up from a dream only to realise that you are still sleeping? Well you are not in the Matrix.

Once I woke up, cooked my scrambled eggs and had my breakfast, and find myself in bed sleeping, only to wake up again. This happened four times in succession, that at one point I thought I will not be able to "actually" wake up.
I was struck with fear over the thought that people are going to think I am dead and bury me. I force myself to try to wake up only to realise after sometime that I am still stuck in the dream world.
How scary can that be?

Suddenly there is a jerk and this time I am sure I have woken up in the real world.

Or have I ?


Hope is a waking dream. - Aristotle