Palanthir

Donate your Corneas please

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:10:00 +0000

Donate Your Corneas Please

View more presentations from rahuliit2003.

Can India Become a Superpower?

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:41:00 +0000

Can India Become a Superpower?

Sunitha Krishnan's fight against sex slavery

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:46:00 +0000

I'm talking to you about the worst form of human rights violation, the third largest organized crime, a 10 billion dollar industry. I'm talking to you about modern-day slavery.

I'd like to tell you the story of these three children, Pranitha, Shaheen and Anjali. Pranitha's mother was a woman in prostitution, a prostituted person. She got infected with HIV, and towards the end of her life, when she was in the final stages of AIDS, she could not prostitute, so she sold four-year-old Pranitha to a broker. By the time we got the information, we reached there, Pranitha was already raped by three men.

Shaheen's background I don't even know. We found her in a railway track, raped by many many men, I don't know many. But the indications of that on her body was that her intestine was outside her body. And when we took her to the hospital she needed 32 stitches to put back her intestine into her body. We still don't know who her parents are, who she is. All that we know that hundreds of men had used her brutally.

Anjali's father, a drunkard, sold his child for pornography. You're seeing here images of three years, four-year-olds, and five-year-old children who have been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. In this country, and across the globe, hundreds and thousands of children, as young as three, as young as four, are sold into sexual slavery. But that's not the only purpose that human beings are sold for. They are sold in the name of adoption. They are sold in the name of organ trade. They are sold in the name of forced labor, camel jockeying, anything, everything.

I work on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation. And I tell you stories from there. My own journey to work with these children started as a teenager. I was 15 when I was gang-raped by eight men. I don't remember the rape part of it so much as much as the anger part of it. Yes, there were eight men who defiled me, raped me, but that didn't go into my consciousness. I never felt like a victim, then or now. But what lingered from then till now -- I am 40 today -- is this huge outrageous anger.

Two years, I was ostracized, I was stigmatized, I was isolated, because I was a victim. And that's what we do to all traffic survivors. We, as a society, we have PhDs in victimizing a victim. Right from the age of 15, when I started looking around me, I started seeing hundreds and thousands of women and children who are left in sexual slavery-like practices, but have absolutely no respite, because we don't allow them to come in.

Where does their journey begin? Most of them come from very optionalist families, not just poor. You have even the middle class sometimes getting trafficked. I had this I.S. officer's daughter, who is 14 years old, studying in ninth standard, who was raped chatting with one individual, and ran away from home because she wanted to become a heroine, who was trafficked. I have hundreds and thousands of stories of very very well-to-do families, and children from well-to-do families, who are getting trafficked.

These people are deceived, forced. 99.9 percent of them resist being inducted into prostitution. Some pay the price for it. They're killed; we don't even hear about them. They are voiceless, Anamikas, nameless people. But the rest, who succumb into it, go through everyday torture. Because the men who come to them are not men who want to make you your girlfriends, or who want to have a family with you. These are men who buy you for an hour, for a day, and use you, throw you.

Each of the girls that I have rescued -- I have rescued more than 3,200 girls -- each of them tell me one story in common ...one story about one man, at least, putting chilli powder in her vagina, one man taking a cigarette and burning her, one man whipping her. We are living among those men: they're our brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, all around us. And we are silent about them.

We think it is easy money. We think it is shortcut. We think the person likes to do what she's doing. But the extra bonuses that she gets is various infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV, AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, you name it, substance abuse, drugs, everything under the sun. And one day she gives up on you and me, because we have no options for her. And therefore she starts normalizing this exploitation. She believes, "Yes, this is it, this is what my destiny is about." And this is normal, to get raped by 100 men a day. And it's abnormal to live in a shelter. It's abnormal to get rehabilitated.

It's in that context that I work. It's in that context that I rescue children. I've rescued children as young as three years, and I've rescued women as old as 40 years. When I rescued them, one of the biggest challenges I had was where do I begin. Because I had lots of them who were already HIV infected. One third of the people I rescue are HIV positive. And therefore my challenge was to understand how can I get out the power from this pain. And for me, I was my greatest experience. Understanding my own self, understanding my own pain, my own isolation, was my greatest teacher. Because what we did with these girls is to understand their potential.

You see a girl here who is trained as a welder. She works for a very big company, a workshop in Hyderabad, making furnitures. She earns around 12,000 rupees. She is an illiterate girl, trained, skilled as a welder. Why welding and why not computers? We felt, one of the things that these girls had is immense amount of courage. They did not have any pardas inside their body, hijabs inside themselves; they've crossed the barrier of it. And therefore they could fight in a male-dominated world, very easily, and not feel very shy about it.

We have trained girls as carpenters, as masons, as security guards, as cab drivers. And each one of them are excelling in their chosen field, gaining confidence, restoring dignity, and building hopes in their own lives. These girls are also working in big construction companies like Ram-ki construction, as masons, full-time masons.

What has been my challenge? My challenge has not been the traffickers who beat me up. I've been beaten up more than 14 times in my life. I can't hear from my right ear. I've lost a staff of mine who was murdered while on a rescue. My biggest challenge is society. It's you and me. My biggest challenge is your blocks to accept these victims as our own.

A very supportive friend of mine, a well-wisher of mine, used to give me every month, 2,000 rupees for vegetables. When her mother fell sick she said, "Sunitha, you have so much of contacts. Can you get somebody in my house to work, so that she can look after my mother?" And there is a long pause. And then she says, "Not one of our girls."

It's very fashionable to talk about human trafficking, in this fantastic A-C hall. It's very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. But it is not nice to bring them to our homes. It's not nice to give them employment in our factories, our companies. It's not nice for our children to study with their children. There it ends. That's my biggest challenge.

If I'm here today, I'm here not only as Sunitha Krishnan. I'm here as a voice of the victims and survivors of human trafficking. They need your compassion. They need your empathy. They need, much more than anything else, your acceptance.

Many times when I talk to people, I keep telling them one thing: don't tell me hundred ways how you can not respond to this problem. Can you ply your mind for that one way that you can respond to the problem? And that's what I'm here for, asking for your support, demanding for your support, requesting for your support. Can you break your culture of silence? Can you speak to at least two persons about this story? Tell them this story. Convince them to tell the story to another two persons.

I'm not asking you all to become Mahatma Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings, or Medha Patkars, or something like that. I'm asking you, in your limited world, can you open your minds? Can you open your hearts? Can you just encompass these people too? Because they are also a part of us. They are also part of this world. I'm asking you, for these children, whose faces you see, they're no more. They died of AIDS last year. I'm asking you to help them, accept as human beings, not as philanthropy, not as charity, but as human beings who deserve all our support. I'm asking you this because no child, no human being, deserves what these children have gone through. Thank you.

India Inc. rediscovers Mahatma Gandhi

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:31:00 +0000

Business gurus in India are talking about a new role model: Mahatma Gandhi.

The Father of the Nation is now being held up as the master strategist, an exemplary leader, and someone whose ideas and tactics corporate India can emulate.

From Boston Consulting Group's CEO Arun Maira to management guru C K Prahalad and economist Professor Arindam Chaudhuri, key business thinkers are preaching how corporate India needs to revisit Gandhi's ideas and apply the lessons learnt from him to their leadership styles.

Three months ago at the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas held in New Delhi, Prahalad unveiled his interpretation of Gandhi as a 'strategist.'

Gandhi's ideas are of particular relevance to India at this juncture, as it struggles to find ways to inch closer to the 8-10 percent gross domestic product growth rate necessary to become an economic superpower, he says.

Gandhi reinvented the rules of the game to deal with a situation where all the available existing methods had failed.

“He broke tradition. He understood that you cannot fight the British with force. So he decided to change the game in a fundamentally different way. He unleashed the power of ordinary people, inspired women and men in the country to fight under a unifying goal. Resource constraint did not bother him. He aimed at a common agenda: Poorna Swaraj. That was the motivation,” says Prahalad.

Drawing lessons from this, he suggests that India needs to fundamentally change the way it can grow.

“Freedom or Poorna Swaraj was necessary. We did not know how to get it. Same way, today, I do not know how to grow at 10 percent or more, or how to create 10-15 million new jobs every year. But that is not an option for us. We have to invent a new way and that is what Gandhi taught us: clarity of goals. Let us have the courage to invent the means. Let us change the paradigm on how we can run,” says Prahalad.

For Arindam Chaudhuri, Gandhi and Lord Krishna have both been big sources of inspiration.

In his book, Count your chickens before they hatch, Chaudhuri has written extensively about Gandhi's style of leadership and how it can be applied to corporate India.

“Mahatma Gandhi's example to me is a perfect case of adopting styles to suit the culture. The country today stands divided on whether what he did was good or bad... I just know one thing: there was never a leader before him nor one after him who could unite us all and bring us out in the streets to demand for what was rightfully ours. To me, he is the greatest leader our land has ever seen. It is 'Theory 'I' management' at its practical best: productively and intelligently utilizing whatever the resource you are endowed with,” says Chaudhuri.

[Theory 'I' management has been propounded by Arindam Chaudhuri and refers to India-centric management. Like the popular management theories, Theory X and Theory Y, Theory 'I' is an attempt to define the Indian worker and develop a theory on management style for him, keeping in mind the Indian conditions.]

Gandhi's leadership style is being termed as 'follower-centric' and one that took into account existing conditions before determining the strategy.

“Gandhi advocated having leadership styles that were dependent on the circumstances. When Gandhi was in South Africa, he launched his protests in a suit and a tie. But when he came back to India, he thought of khadi and launched non-violent protests on a greater scale,” says Chaudhuri.

The rediscovery of Gandhi by corporate India is not surprising, says Dr Gita Piramal, managing editor, The Smart Manager.

“Ideas travel very fast. Gandhi is a fascinating figure. On the one hand, he had totally ambivalent feelings about industrial manufacturing. But, on the other, he was a wonderful strategist, showman and leader. He had an amazing public relations network and a very good relationship with the press then,” says Piramal.

“For instance, look at the Dandi march. If Gandhi had gone there quietly, it would just not have made an impact. He knew he had to create an event to make an impact and so he took his followers on a march that stirred popular imagination of the time. He had a total understanding of the human psychology and used it along with his public relation skills,” she says.

Part of the reason for the re-emergence of Gandhi's ideas is the crumbling of popular role models drawn from the West.

Arun Maira, chief executive officer, Boston Consulting Group, points out that Jack Welch, corporate India's perennial favourite, was recently criticized for his retirement perks which even came under scrutiny from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

“We keep feeling that models of people in the West are the ones we should follow. In a way, we remain subservient to the leadership values and models of the West. But since the last two to three years these models are being doubted even in the West, and so it is time for India to look within itself for leadership examples,” says Maira.

According to him, Gandhi's style of leadership as applied to corporate India would involve making even the lowest person in the organization believe in it and the significance of his contribution towards it.

“In business, empowerment is all about making sure everyone is connected to the organization's goals. Gandhi has a way of doing that: making sure that everyone in the cause is connected to the goal,” says Maira.

But how does a capitalist corporate India reconcile itself to the socialism that Gandhi stood for? Gandhi was vehemently against industrialization and felt it would have a highly negative impact on society.

Maira and Professor Chaudhuri agree that accepting all of Gandhi's values would not be possible for corporate India but, with an open mind, the disconnect between Gandhi's socialist ideas and the capitalist views is not as wide as it may seem.

“In the last few years, there is a thinking that capitalism is not just about creating wealth, but you have to take care of the shareholders and stakeholders, too. Many years ago, this emphasis on the interests of the stakeholders was labeled socialism. So, Gandhi's ideas and the lessons learnt from him are not totally different from what corporate India would like to do,” says Maira.

“It is not really selective application of Gandhi's ideas. Gandhi's example as a manager and leader is extraordinary. There was no one like him who could get people together to embrace his vision as their vision. An understanding of these qualities about him is what is happening now in corporate India,” says Piramal.

Which is why business leaders are clear that Gandhi's managerial ideas are what they want to follow.

A must-read Crime Thriller!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:49:00 +0000

Detective by Arthur Hailey

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the kind of book that you'd call "unputdownable". Fast-paced, wasting the least of pulp in describing a dog's ponytail or the sullen expression on the Gibbon's face in a zoo, the author takes you on a ride, letting you know more about Crime Scene Investigation(CSI) than any other author before. The author takes you high as the story unfurls, never letting you down or consider your time a waste. With most of the story taking place in the Homicide HQ, Crime, Duty, Law, Lust and Loneliness intertwine at various degrees in various stages of the plot, bringing another Best-Seller from one of the finest authors of our time.

View all my reviews.

A Book better left on the Bookshelf

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:37:00 +0000

The Vorpal Blade by Colin Forbes

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Slow-paced and outrageously, outrightly boring, in it's best pages the book can be dubbed average. All we come across in the book are people indulging themselves in excessive Double Scotch and Coffee all along; a pathetic reporter who pops out of any wall or any table for that matter at the turn of every conversation, the deputy director of SIS moving around with a bunch of hillbillies and relying on dreams and psychosis experts to guess the murderer; a detective who showers at every possible opportunity and pokes her nose around every conversation in town, unfortunately for the reader, solving the complicated case by drinking gallons of Tea, Coffee, Water and Chardonnay alone. Too many loose ends and flaws in the plot, The Vorpal Blade certainly isn't the better of Colin's works. The only reason I had to complete the book is to write my first book review on Goodreads.

View all my reviews.

What is BitTorrent?

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:01:00 +0000

Originally posted on Zeropaid

Easy, step-by-step guide for those who have heard of KaZaA and other file-sharing programs, but are looking for a faster and safer way to download movies, music, TV shows, anime, and just about anything else you can think of.

Many people are still unaware of what exactly BitTorrent is or what it does. BitTorrent is a P2P protocol, or method, that allows people to share data much more efficiently and at much greater transfer speeds than previous file-sharing software like KaZaA, Morpheus, and WinMX. These programs were Direct Connect types in that each person connected directly and solely to one other user in order to share files. The drawback of this is that the person receiving the data is limited by the upload connection speed of the person sending it.

What BitTorrent does is remove this limitation by allowing a virtually unlimited number of people to connect to one another and share the same file at the same time. Instead of being limited by the upload speed of the other user one is suddenly in the welcome position of being limited by ones own download speed.

The idea behind BitTorrent is to allow massive distribution of popular files without penalizing the source by soaring bandwidth costs and possible crashes due to demand that exceeds the capability of the server. In this way, anyone who creates a popular program, music file or other product can make it available to the public regardless of assets, even if the file becomes highly popular.

To understand how BitTorrent functions, first consider how normal downloading works. Personal computers connected to the Internet are known as clients while the websites visited reside on Internet servers. Servers "serve up information" to clients. If you surf to a site and click on a link to download a program, you create a one-on-one connection to that server that uses whatever bandwidth is necessary to serve you the file. When you have received the entire file, the connection is released so the server can utilize that stream of bandwidth for handling other connections.

The problem arises when unusually high numbers of clients visit a site simultaneously. This can cause the server to effectively run out of available bandwidth and "crash." When this happens, clients are refused a connection. "The site is down."

To avoid this, BitTorrent creates a different networking scheme. It uses the other clients who are also downloading the file to effectively act as servers to one another, simultaneously uploading the parts of the file received to others requesting the file. Hence, when you click on a file to download, several connections will be made to receive "slices" of the file that combine to create the entire file. Meanwhile, as you are downloading these "slices" you are also uploading them to anyone else that needs the parts you are receiving. Once the entire file is received it is considered polite to keep your client connected to act as a seed. A seed refers to a source that has the entire file available.

In this way BitTorrent relieves the burden of the servers but more significantly it makes it possible for anyone to disseminate a file quickly and easily without requiring expensive servers or an infrastructure of distribution. If the demand is there, the file will spread.

Tips for maximising a BSNL Dataone(Broadband) connection.

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Wed, 21 May 2008 09:59:00 +0000

Note: even if you aren't an Indian BSNL Dataone customer, you may find a thing or two of interest in this post.

I'm writing this post because:-

Reason 1. Murali wanted me to mail him few links for the softwares( auto-dialer, Datafox plug-in etc.) for his new Data-One 500C package.

Reason 2. The post may help some out there, who want to download Gigs of movies, mp3s, games, porn from the net but don't have the time or the patience to sit in front of their computer the whole day.

Reason 3. Last but not the least, I'm a blogger and my blog has a post more than it did before.

So going into the post itself, the things I'll be talking about in this post are

a) How to check your BSNL Broadband usage in the lower right corner of your firefox browser (sorry I don't know the plug-in for other browsers) instead of the boring routine of going to http://dataone.in/ everytime you want to know your usage (here again, while this link can be used for checking the usage of both limited and the unlimited usage packages, I don't find a reason why some unlimited package user is prompted to check his usage unless he's half as inquisitive as me). The plug-in is called Datafox. As the name itself tells you, a plug-in for Dataone made for the browser Firefox. All you have to do is go HERE, download the plug-in and open the xpi file (the extension of the file you just downloaded is .xpi, the format for firefox plug-ins) with firefox explorer or just drag the 80 kb file into an open firefox tab. After installing, you need to restart the browser when prompted (the firefox browser, not windows) and configure the plug-in straight away. Double-click on the "X" marked Datafox icon in the lower-right most corner of the browser and select "BSNL" for the ISP, enter your password and username for your connection (believe me, no harm here because no one can use your connection details for any other purpose on an outsider BSNL connection save for checking your usage details, the fact is that only you may connect to internet with those details only on your phone number's connection), tick "save password", "override default domain" and login. One last configuration, right-click on the Datafox icon, go into preferences, tick "login on startup", "display data in Gib", "upto 3 decimal places", "Bandwidth limit (according to your package, if you're not sure go HERE )", in the statusbar string input "{cX}/{tX}". If you're only interested in your usage excluding the happy hours(2:00-8:00 am), just go for {cX}.

b) How to get your system to start up on it's own, download your files and shutdown when done. Many of the motherboards today come with a built-in RTC(Real-Time Clock, the time set in your Motherboard's BIOS) wake up alarm, meaning that you can set them to start on their own at a pre-desired time on a single day or the same time everyday, the whole month. My motherboard is configured to power up every night at 2:05 am and shutdown at 7:55 am in the morning (making the most of Happy Hours excluding 10 minutes right?). In my next post, which I insist you shouldn't miss by any chance, I'll let you know a major flaw in the Happy Hours browsing system which can practically doom you and the reason why I power up my system only after 2:00 am and not before. Also, one thing I should remind you here is that while I use an RTC alarm on the motherboard to start the pc, in order to shutdown the system, a 600 kb software "Autoshutdown" is used. Once the system is up and working, you need a dial-up software to establish the connection (luckily, if you asked your technician to setup your connection to be on always, I mean without having to dial a connection, you don't need to do this part at all). This software is "Winpoet", you may download it HERE. After installing the software, you may configure it to connect on system start-up. This much said, you're able to get the system up and connected to the internet but who'll take care of the downloads? Just setup your utorrent or other clients or Download managers to start with system startup. Happy Downloading. BUT don't forget leaving your UPS and BSNL Modem switched on or configuring your Autoshutdown to shutdown at 7:55 am everyday.

Checklist:-

1) Download Datafox plugin HERE.

datafox-1_0_1.xpi

Hosted by eSnips

2) Download Winpoet HERE.

WinPoET403.zip

Hosted by eSnips

3) Download Autoshutdown HERE.

AutoShutdown.zip

Hosted by eSnips

4) Configure Autoshutdown to shutdown at 7:55 am everyday (contact me/ comment back for detailed instructions on the same).

5) Configure BIOS to start up at 2:05 am in the night (search a bit for this option in your BIOS, it almost always exists).

6) Configure Winpoet to startup and use auto-connect.

7) Configure your Download Manager or torrent client to auto-start with system startup.

8) Don't forget leaving your UPS and Modem switched on and your Monitor switched off and CPU shutdown.

Happy Downloading, and make the most of BSNL Broadband. If you think all these steps are a pain, consider the 138 GB(yeah that's right, 138 Gigabytes) that I downloaded last month, or rather that my system downloaded :). Comments are welcome and suggestions are valued. Queries are answered at the earliest.

Death on the Football Field: Angels of Football

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:52:00 +0000

Originally posted by Lonely for Sportales

Football or soccer, is the most popular sport in many parts of the world. We lock our hearts and brains to the results of the matches at weekends, Champions League or UEFA Cup. Every goal scored is enough to make us fall from our chairs

However, there are some moments in football that upset all followers. They are the deaths and injuries on football fields. This article is devoted to three memorable footballers who died on the field, Marc Vivien Foe, Miklos Feher and Antonio Puerta.

Marc-Vivien Foé

Foe was born in Cameroon in 1975. He started his football career as a junior in Union Garoua, then he transferred to Canon Yaounde team. His success in Cameroon, carried him to the France League. He played for RC Lens and Olympique Lyonnais teams in France and for Westham United and Manchester City in United Kingdom. He was choosen for the Cameroon National team and played 64 times scoring 8 goals. His team was invited to Fifa Confederations Cup in Lyon. After he played against Brazil and Turkey, Cameroon deserved to face Colombia in the semifinal of the cup.

He died in the 72nd minute of the game in Stade De Gerland in Lyon. Autopsies showed that his death was because of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

Miklós Fehér

Feher was born in Hungary in 1979 and started his football career in Gyori Eto FC. His goals and technique moved him to the famous Portugal club FC Porto. He couldn't show his talent in Porto. Hence, he was hired to SC Salguerios and Sporting Braga teams. Finally, he was transferred to another famous Portugal club Benfica. Feher died in 2004 while playing against Vitoria Guimaraes. His death is still in my mind. Fehér, who had just come on as a substitute, received a yellow card in injury time and suddenly bent forward seemingly in pain and then fell backwards to the ground. Team mates rushed immediately to aid Fehér before medical personnel arrived on the pitch.

CPR was performed as players looked on in visible distress. An ambulance arrived on the pitch and Fehér was rushed to the hospital. His condition was covered by the Portuguese media throughout the day but before midnight Fehér's death was confirmed. The Public Prosecutor (the Portuguese agency responsible for the release of autopsy details) announced that Fehér died from a heart attack. He was 24 years old. Many wouldn't yet forget his last smile when the referee gave him an yellow card, just as he fell down on the field, in the middle of the last game he played.

Antonio Puerta

Puerta was born in Spain in 1984. In his career, he played only for Seville team. He played for Seville B team first and moved to Seville A team due to his success. His youth and talented football impressed famous clubs Real Madrid, Manchester United and Arsenal teams and he entered to the transfer list of these clubs. He died in 2007 while he was playing against Getafe in Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan stadium. It was announced that his death was because of Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (multiple organ failure, in short). At the time of his death, his girlfriend was expecting his first child.

What's in a Hero's statue?

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:39:00 +0000

(Source: http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.asp)

Why are some war heroes horses statues reared up, and others on all four legs, or the heroes swords are drawn? Do the number of hooves lifted into the air on equestrian statues reveal how the riders died?

Folk wisdom has it that equestrian statues contain a code whereby the rider's fate can be determined by noting how many hooves the horse has raised.

The most common theory is this:

One hoof is raised = the rider was wounded in battle

The hoof code seems to mostly hold true for all statues. However, James Longstreet wasn't wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg yet his horse has one foot raised. Maybe it had an itch?

Two raised hooves / horse is reared back on its hind legs = the rider died in battle

All four hooves on the ground = the rider survived all battles unharmed and passed away by a natural cause.

As far as the sword being drawn or not, It's assumed that it simply symbolizes the charging towards the enemy; a signal for the rest of his troops to follow him into battle. Most likely its up to the sculptor if he wanted to have the sword drawn or not.

Is Ramayana true? Part-1

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:15:00 +0000

NASA Images Discover Ancient Bridge (Adam's Bridge) between India and Sri Lanka

(Courtesy : NASA Digital Image Collection)

Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam´s Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long.

The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge´s age is also almost equivalent.

This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in tredha yuga (more than 1,700,000 years ago).

In this epic, there is a mentioning about a bridge, which was built between Rameshwaram (India) and Srilankan coast under the supervision of a dynamic and invincible figure called Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme.

This information may not be of much importance to the archeologists who are interested in exploring the origins of man, but it is sure to open the spiritual gates of the people of the world to have come to know an ancient history linked to the Indian mythology.

Stand up, Shout aloud

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:56:00 +0000

Get paid for just showing a Banner!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:01:00 +0000

Easier than any other way of earning online yet, you can make money just by displaying Banners as simple as those below on any part of your homepage. Sounds Grrrt doesn't it? Click on the banner to join the program and make some chunk of it yourself!!!

Referral

Praise as good as cash to Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:16:00 +0000

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Paying people a compliment appears to activate the same reward center in the brain as paying them cash, Japanese researchers said on Wednesday.

They said the study offers scientific support for the long-held assumption that people get a psychological boost from having a good reputation.

"We found that these seemingly different kinds of rewards -- a good reputation versus money -- are biologically coded by the same neural structure, the striatum," said Dr. Norihiro Sadato of the Japanese National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Okazaki, Japan.

"This provides the biological basis of our everyday experience that personal reputation is felt as rewards," Sadato said in an e-mail.

Sadato's team studied 19 healthy people using a brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.

In one set of experiments, people played a gambling game in which they were told one of three cards would yield a payout. The researchers then monitored the brain activity triggered when the subjects got a cash reward.

In a second set of experiments, people were told they were being evaluated by strangers based on information from a personality questionnaire and a video they had made.

The researchers then monitored reactions to these staged evaluations -- including when the subjects thought strangers had paid them a compliment.

For MORE go HERE

Life's Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:51:00 +0000

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country side with the purpose of showing him how poor people lived.

They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what the son would consider a very poor family.

On their return trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.

"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what have you learned from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered:

"I saw that we have one dog and they had four.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night...

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve themselves.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us; they have friends to protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."

Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

Appreciate every single thing you have in life, especially people around you !

Why you shouldn't be using Heels

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:59:00 +0000

Please click on the picture to see the enlarged and clearer one, I couldn't manage to fit the Hi-Resolution pic in this template's width.

Mind-Boggling

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:55:00 +0000

Found this one in my mailbox this morning; Thanks to the courtesy of Fun & Fun Only, this illusion is like nothing I've ever seen before.

Did you take a close look at the picture? let me tell you it is not animated. Your eyes are making it move.To test this, stare at one spot for a couple of seconds and everything will stop moving. Or look at the black center of each circle and it will stop moving. But move your eyes over to the next black center and the previous one will appear to move after you take your eyes away from it.... Weird ???

How Creative are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:46:00 +0000

You Are 87% Creative

You are an incredibly creative person. For you, there are no bounds or limits to your creativity.

Your next creation could be something very great... Or at least very cool!

Found out this one while browsing the other day on Enchanted Crafts

How Creative Are You?

Glass Head!!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:39:00 +0000

For the full post on " A visit to the The Corning Museum of Glass" go here.

Amazing Light-Trails

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:52:00 +0000

There is a light-trail of a Boeing taking off among these, can you find it?

Hello Entrecarders

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Hello Entrecard friends, please care to spare a minute or two for me, I'd like to have a word with you. For the past 10-11 days I've been pretty seriously dropping 300 cards everyday, and to read atleast 1/3rd of the articles and yet promote my new site( and second entrecard) hardly leaves me any time to manage or modify my dropping list. Sorry to all those who've been consistently dropping on me and yet aren't getting any return drops; as I said I was busy what with end labs approaching and all that. So I thought better of it today and started writing this post, for the same reason I've changed the place of my widget, hoping that powerdroppers may find this post in the pursuit of my widget.

Those who have remained my regular droppers but haven't been getting my drop/blog watch in return kindly comment at the end of this post, giving me your entrecard url and your blog url. I promise you I'll add you to my dropping list within 3 hours. You can as well mail me or message me on the Entrecard in-house message system; I'll act promptly. Thanx for being a loyal dropper.

Killer Bear? I'm just a big teddy, really!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:43:00 +0000

(article originally published in the newspaper Dailymail )

It was a chance encounter that could have ended with flying fur and bloodshed in the snow.

Wildlife photographer Norbert Rosing was taking pictures of a team of huskies in Canada's frozen north when a polar bear gatecrashed the party.

Along with dog handler Brian Ladoon, Mr Rosing watched helplessly as the bear and one of the dogs approached each other.

1 - This floe ain't big enough for the both of us: The bear gives the husky a stare that says beware

2 - Watch out, I'm a southpaw: The dog cowers as his adversary threatens to land a knockout blow

3 - On second thoughts, you're not so bad: A nuzzle with the muzzle clinches the peace deal

4 - Go on, give me a (bear) hug: The new friends enjoy a cuddle

5 - If I lie here long enough I might even get a tickle on the tummy: The bear is playful, the husky is a little bemused and the handler (out of shot) is extremely relieved

RuBot II eats Rubik Cube for breakfast

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:15:00 +0000

What the !@#$%?

you must be wondering what I mean already, so lemme brief you well in advance, we're talking of an AI Robot(Artificial Intelligence buddy, grow up) whose sole purpose of existence is to set new records in the time it takes for solving the famous Rubik's Cube . Yeah, we're talking of Robots solving the cube! Let's be frank about it how many of you ever solved a 3 x 3 Rubik's cube completely? Me for one never really made it though many times it felt I was mid-way through.
If your answer was 'NO' like me, maybe you too can learn the technique here

So coming back to the Robots, the RuBot II looks very much like a distant cousin of the T-800 in the Terminator series. This scary looking robot is capable of solving the Rubik cube, a puzzle game that still confounds a large segment of the population with it's intricacies. The RuBot II uses cameras in its eyes to scan the cube for a few seconds before using its menacing pneumatic arms to carry out the instructions based on Herbert Kociemba's solving algorithm, courtesy of the Cube Explorer software. It normally takes an average of 20 moves to solve a problem, and will not pass a minute in time no matter how complicated the cube is. Watch RuBot II in action below.

Rubot II in action

Man vs. Machine

Top 30 Youngest Bloggers In the World

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:53:00 +0000

Rank	Name	Website	Age
1	Carl Ocab	http://www.carlocab.com	14
2	Thilak Raj Rao	http://tech-buzz.net	18
3	Paul Bourque	http://www.uberaffiliate.com	19
4	David Wilkinson	http://www.techzi.net	13
5	Jason Pereira	http://www.theuniversitykid.com	17
6	Jon Wheatley	http://www.j0n.org	20
7	Ahson Rafiq	http://www.blueverse.com/	18
8	Sly Blanco	http://slyvisions.com/	16
9	Marko Dimitrovski	http://buckserv.com/	13
10	Nick Sullivan	http://internetbabel.com/	17
11	Eli Burford	http://www.photoshopstar.com	17
12	Collin LaHay	http://mixedmarketarts.com	18
13	Pranav Rastogi	http://www.diggitlive.com	13
14	Shannon Lilly	http://www.infectedbybugs.com/	19
15	Maher Saleh	http://www.moneymakerboy.com/	12
16	Thomas Sinfield	http://www.thomassinfield.com/	17
17	Wayne Liew	http://www.wayneliew.com	18
18	Adly bin Mukhtar	http://youngim.net/	17
19	Chloe Spencer	http://www.neopetsfanatic.com/	16
20	Sean	http://www.seantheblogger.com/	15
21	James McDonald	http://www.eatfruitplease.com	18
22	Josh Buckley	http://www.joshbuckley.net/	16
23	Jim Regan	http://www.thenetfool.com/	18
24	Gareth Boyd	http://www.justgareth.com	15
25	Shane Hudson	http://lonelydesigns.com/	14
26	Jessica Maha	http://jessicamah.com/blog/	17
27	Glenn Wolsey	http://www.glennwolsey.com/	15
28	Connor Wilson	http://www.connorwilson.com/	16
29	James Owers	http://jamesowers.co.uk	19
30	Li	http://www.dropinonme.com	17

The amazing list was compiled by Michael. If you like the post, you may considering visiting his Blog or digging this article. Myself did not know the abbreviation of SEO till recently, and to realise that these prodigies have mastered SEO secrets you would give anything to learn is simply mind-blowing.

Handsome Gal or Pretty Guy??

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul P) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:31:00 +0000

(Pic originally posted by Miss. Song Yia on her blog http://songyia.blogspot.com/)

Who's hotter? The Boy or the Girl?

“Don't you think he is so much hotter than I am; I am so envious of his body!” ~ Song Yia, the lady in the photo.

The guy in the photo (before he opted for undergoing the Sex Reassignment surgery that is, as scientifically he's not a guy anymore) is a model for the famed Alcazar Cabaret Show in Pattaya near Bangkok, where the whole ladyboy cabaret thing originated.

A Brochure of Alcazar Ladyboy Cabaret reads

Alcazar Cabaret Show in Pattaya

Tours start from THB 570

You haven't been to Pattaya if you miss the world-famous Alcazar Cabaret Show. One of Thailand's foremost ladyboy cabarets, Alcazar has been a true feast for the eyes for over 20 years. Prepare to be thrilled by 400 dazzling, talented artists and entertainers who will deliver fun-filled performances including comedic impersonations and dramatic numbers.

Price Includes:

Air conditioned vehicle with English-speaking guide.
Admission fee as mentioned on this program.
Transfer from/to hotel in Pattaya.

	Popular ladyboy show
	Great entertainment for all

Costing something between 500-600 Thai Bahts ( around $19-21) for a one hour show, it's worth every penny say 90% of the audience, the same who vouch that the Lady Boys are better-looking and hotter than most females. A suggestion for all those adults planning to go to Pattaya, don't miss Alcazar's.

To Book your tickets go Here