Author: Alka

  • Intimacy – the Best Stress Buster for Couples!

    The result of this research finding is not very different from the obvious. BUT I think that findings hold an element of universal truth. We often feel relieved after sharing our woes with parents or siblings. Kissing, embracing, holding hand, a warm glance of our parents, siblings or friends blow away our blues, no matter in what stage of life we are in.

    Results of a recent study have said that couples who hug and kiss have lower stress hormone levels in their bodies especially if they are married.

    The week long Swiss study by researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, of 51 German couples who were mostly married checked the cortisol levels in their saliva. Cortisol, a hormone in the body, also responsible for several stress-related changes in the body, is secreted by the adrenal glands, has been termed “the stress hormone” because high levels of it are secreted during the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response. Small increases in cortisol have positive effects on the body like helping in proper glucose metabolism and regulation of blood pressure. Higher levels of cortisol are seen in the morning with its lowest levels at night.

    What is more important is we HAVE to nurture, develop and protect this kind of intimacy. It doesn’t spring up naturally. Now the million dollar question is, do we have time for such nurturing and caring?

    Beate Ditzen of Zurich University, who conducted the research said intimacy seemed to improve the hormone levels by boosting the mood. She stressed that it was not intimacy per se that was needed but couples finding things they could do together that would create positive feelings for each other. The definition of intimacy differs from couple to couple and Dr Ditzen said. “This means that there is no specific behavior that couples should show in everyday life. Rather, all kinds of behavior which couples themselves would consider intimate… might be beneficial,” the expert added.

    I wish next they find out how couples develop such kind of intimacy. Because its not a sum total of physical acts only. That will go kaput soon.

  • ‘Hotties’ Not So Hot?

    Is it really true that love is blind? Whatever articles or fiction I read on love paint a rosier than rosy picture of love. But what I have seen in real life is more of a bizarre kind of emotions than actual love. Love makes you think and do many awkward things that you won’t do when you are thinking normally. I have seen sane headed persons behaving in most illogical manner. But a recent online study tell the same thing.

    In an experiment with college students in long-term relationships, researchers at UCLA and the online dating service eHarmony found that asking coeds to reflect on the love they felt for their boyfriends or girlfriends blunted the appeal of especially attractive members of the opposite sex.

    When people are in love they don’t remember the USP of the hot alternatives presented to them such as curvaceous body or toned muscles. Then what do they remember of the “other” hot prospects?

    “These people could remember the color of a shirt or whether the photo was taken in New York, but they didn’t remember anything tempting about the person,” Gonzaga said. “It’s not like their overall memory was impaired; it’s as if they had selectively screened out things that would make them think about the how attractive the alternative was.”
    “One of the biggest threats to a relationship is an attractive alternative to your loved one — or that attractive woman at work or the hot guy you meet in the bar,” Gonzaga said. “In subtle ways that you might not even notice, the gushy feelings you get when you think of your partner help you fend off these threats.”

    So it really seems true that love triumphs all or most of the obstacles. 🙂

  • Success!

    I just want to thank Dr. L.B. Verma sir for treating the subject history the way it should be treated. Whatever understanding I have of history, is solely due to his way of teaching. I remember students from other disciplines used to come and attend his class and if there was no place to sit, students preferred to stand at the back of the class and listened to him. Its because of him we used to understand how a mere common man defeated mighty emperors and church priests and they had to give up their power to the common man in the form of democracy. I don’t know where he is today. But I know one fact, a teacher affects eternity. Its really true when I think about Verma sir. I wish he can read my poem. He will perfectly understand what I am trying to convey.

    Success!

    Another reason to float on cloud nine
    World’s most envied automobile, at my doorsteps!!
    Father! Come & look at your birthday present..

    Later my son later, right now I am busy,
    Busy?
    Father, talking to a perfect non entity and
    Busy ?

    Father! You will never be a success!!
    I can’t thrust it upon you anymore
    You refuse to join the list of also arrived!
    I shouted down the frustration of my entire life..

    Calm down my son. Calm down.
    I always defied those instruments which,
    Standardize me, classify me, categorize me..
    I laughed out loud,
    Always!

    Just crosscheck, my son, when the King tried
    To dictate terms on me,
    I’d proclaimed proudly
    Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

    Crosscheck, my son what happened to the priest,
    When the priest issued the passport to heaven,
    I have confined him to the pages of books
    Today you have to sit in the lap of history
    To search for his power!!

    If the circumference of the human intelligence
    Has shrunken so miserably, then
    It is high time, My Son! Learn from history,
    And don’t decide for me, overtly or covertly,
    What is success!
    Because History ever repeats itself!!!

  • Saying Goodbye to $100K Per Year in Easy Income

    This guy is amazing. Most of the people do everything in their capacity to earn extra bucks. And if the source of income is passive why would one want to temper with it? But read what he has done.

    “By dropping Adsense and text link ads with no immediate replacement, I’m giving up a good chunk of change. We’re talking in excess of $100,000 per year just from those two sources. And this is easy, fairly stable, passive income that goes straight into my bank account month after month.”

    “In truth there are a number of reasons I’m doing this, and they don’t have much to do with money.

    One reason for this change is that generating income from selling advertising just doesn’t resonate with me anymore. I’m totally bored with it. I feel a strong desire to drop it and move on to something new.

    I also felt that many of the ads being served up were a bit too Cro-Magnon relative to the ideas I’ve been blogging about. It seemed rather lame to write an article on Oneness and then see ads for money-making schemes next to it. Even worse was when fast food ads popped up next to an article about the raw food diet. I quickly banned the objectionable ads of course, but lately I found myself feeling increasingly disconnected from most of the ads that were being displayed. I don’t want to generate income in a manner that makes me feel disconnected.”
    “Am I worried or stressed about dumping thousands of dollars in easy monthly income? Not a bit. I feel totally at peace with this new direction, even though I can’t quite see where it will lead.

    Given the choice between having an extra $100K per year of free money vs. becoming the kind of person who can kill off that much income without fear or worry, I’m grateful that I can look in the mirror and see a guy that can make the latter choice, simply because he knows he’s following the path with a heart.”

  • What Attracts Men to Women?

    I think every female wants to unlock this mystery 🙂 It will make things simpler and life easier. I always suspected that men use their eyes 🙂 instead of brain or heart when they choose a mate. They just behave like a child who loves most of that things that glitter but are not gold! I was NOT wrong! Adult males DO behave like a child. 🙂 A man’s eye(s) definitely play an all important role in selecting a female. Jokes apart, a groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color—literally and figuratively—to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.

    “In the final study, the shirt of the woman in the photograph, instead of the background, was digitally colored red or blue. In this experiment, men were queried not only about their attraction to the woman, but their intentions regarding dating. One question asked: “Imagine that you are going on a date with this person and have $100 in your wallet. How much money would you be willing to spend on your date?”

    Under all of the conditions, the women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than the exact same women shown with other colors. When wearing red, the woman was also more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing.”

    BUT this color blindness stops at the attractiveness barometer only. Men don’t show this color blindness as far as likability, intelligence or kindness are concerned. 🙂 Thank god for small mercies and gifting some real human qualities to males too!!

  • Five-year old tied and dragged for not attending school!

    I don’t have words and strength to add something of my own to this news.

    Lucknow: A school principal in Uttar Pradesh was booked on Thursday for tying a five-year-old student with ropes and dragging him for nearly 50 metres for not attending school regularly, an official said.

    “An FIR has been registered against the school principal Shamsad Ali for ill-treating the child Alok Gupta, studying in the kindergarten at the Mother Teresa Public School,” said officer in-charge of basic education Awadesh Kumar.

    A team was sent to inquire into the incident in which Alok was tied and dragged on Wednesday and was also made to kneel down in front of the school gate for nearly two hours.
    The school is in Baghuchaghat village in Deori, about 280 km from here.
    According to information available, Alok was unable to attend school due to health problems, Kumar said.
    Corporal punishment is banned in schools following the directions of the Supreme Court.

  • Raj Thackeray and North Indians

    Mr. Raj Thackeray was in news. It was obvious he doesn’t like lock ups or jails. But what is surprising is his lawyer’s name who was in the limelight most the time, Mr. Akhilesh Chube. What a North Indian sounding name! Or probably when one’s *ss is truly in danger of being grilled, North, South, East or West Indians don’t matter. Vageesh Saraswat, the MNS vice-president is also from Aligarh, probably a north Indian town. Few weeks ago Mr. Raj Thackeray had organized a computer software course for Maharashtrian Youths. The head instructor was Saurabh Mishra.
    But Manish Chauhan has written a pretty interesting account on this ongoing sub nationalism plaguing modern metrosexual Indians. His target is Shahrukh Khan. 🙂

    Shahrukh Khan is in trouble. He calls himself a Delhi boy, which he duly is, but Bal Thackray insists now he is not because Mumbai has given him wealth and fame. Though at the same time, he also insists that Sonia Gandhi is still an Italian, a Videshi.

    Shahrukh must be disoriented by now about his existence. Myself sailing on the same damn boat. Join the notorious club. Who knows, someone might club us all.

    I repeat, Bal Thackray insists since it is Mumbai and Maharashtra which has given him wealth and fame so why does he harp about being a Delhi boy.

    As if, as soon as he touched Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or shall I say Bhusawal, almost magically, someone started giving him all his wealth – to make him rich, and concurrently, someone else (or the same guy perhaps) started calling his name on AIR, to make him famous.

    Applying the theory of mathematical induction (though I never came across a bigger fraudulent theory), every one making money or name in Maharashtra started doing in the same manner. Well, not every body, though. Some of them were beaten black and blue right on landing at the Kalyan & Kurla station. However, rest get it for free, by almost doing nothing.

    It may also be that all the movie audience of Shahrukh Khan is from Mumbai and Maharashtra only. Rest of India and world are not counted. It is already known that he dances at the ceremonies of Netas to earn quick bucks. So this settles it.

    Mahindra and Mahindra, Telco, Bajaj sell all their vehicles only in Mumbai and rest of Maharashtra. So those workers who come here and work should also pay their homage and respect for their bread and butter, and to their very existence, only to Maharashtra.

    Had there been no Maharashtra, who would have created these vehicles and much worse, who would have bought them, isn’t it ? Anyway it is not their work which is bringing them money. They are being paid only for the fact that they have entered Maharashtra.

    It is God’s will that they were born to move into Maharashtra in future. Was this not tobe, may be God would have cancelled the order. That’s why, my dear Shahrukh, you ain’t no Delhi boy. You were desitined to come here, and that’s why you were concieved (or else it would have been someone else in your place). You are now Mee-Mumbai-Maharashtra boy.

    Now let us all say in chorus – Jai Maharashtra!

  • Richard Fuld punched in face in Lehman Brothers gym

    It seems as the economy is recessing the anger of the employees is on the rise. Richard Fuld, the disgraced head of Lehman Brothers, was punched in the face in the office gym amid the bank’s collapse. I know the news is a bit old. But I thought about the lucky fellow who availed the opportunity to give vent to his anger. How many of us want to punch our boss on many occasion but … what Richard Fuld, former Lehman Brothers CEO, and his team was doing for such a long time, it seems, this is a very small price to pay. Lehman Brothers, was particularly badly hit by “toxic” mortgage debt and filed for bankruptcy last month. Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers had given a low down on bank’s financial crisis before the US House Oversight Committee. Richard Fuld was genuinely surprised that why the US government was not bailing out the 158 years old firm.

    Those who has seen him testifying before the US House Oversight Committee said that his performance was brilliant. he blamed everyone but himself for the failure of the 158 year old Lehman Brothers.

    Vicki Ward, a US journalist, said “two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source” had confirmed it to her. “He went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under,” she told CNBC. “He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold.

    “And frankly after having watched [Mr Fuld’s testimony to the committee], I’d have done the same too.”

  • World’s Most Relaxing Room!

    When I was reading this “Scientists Create ‘World’s Most Relaxing Room‘ ”

    Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman has designed and constructed a large-scale multi-media space that aims to calm even the most stressed out of minds.To help promote the University of Hertfordshire’s Health and Human Sciences Research Institute Showcase, Wiseman reviewed the scientific research into relaxation, and has created what is being billed as ‘The world’s most relaxing room.

    I was a bit dazed. Can a place like this really exists when one forgets the economic recession and hence one’s worries? Is it possible that relaxing is as simple as entering into a room? We don’t have to learn relaxing exercises from anyone? Will this relaxing room be available to everyone by paying a nominal sum? I think, if we have to pay for relaxing room like we pay for watching a movie, then it won’t remain a relaxing room at all. We, being we, will bring our attitude, money, fashion, bags and boots and what not and start the competition or rat race again and relaxation will jump out of the each and every available window.

    But nonetheless its an interesting read.

    During the Showcase, which runs from 21-24 October at the University’s de Havilland campus, groups of up to ten visitors at a time will be invited to enter this large and unusual space, lie on soft matting and rest their head on lavender-scented pillows. In each fifteen minute session, people will be bathed in a calming glade-like green light, listen to a specially composed soothing soundtrack, and look at a completely clear artificial blue sky.

  • Economic Slowdown? Are You Kidding?

     

    Is our economy really slowing down? Common people are really talking about economic recession instead of sports and films ? If I go by the newspaper headlines, it seems economic recession has really caught the imagination of print media. Each day I can see the creases and frowns in their headlines about recession. Instead of political news, economic recession news seem grabbing the headlines. 
    I know vaguely about this company AIG, because I have seen the ads of Tata-AIG insurance on TV. What I know is, AIG is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. Recently AIG was hit hard by the turmoil in the credit markets in September 2008. But AIG got a fresh lease of life after an $85 billion government bailout. Basically AIG had faced a near death situation. But I have my own doubts that economic recession is actually happening when I read about this company AIG something like this:

    AIG big shots get $500G vacations on taxpayers’ dime

    Just six days after sticking taxpayers with an $85 billion bailout, AIG’s top executives dropped $500,000 whooping it up at a swanky California beach resort.

    Among the charges American International Group racked up at last month’s week-long retreat:

    • $150,000 for banquets,
    • $10,000 in bar bills,
    • $3,000 on tips,
    • $7,000 in greens fees,
    • $23,000 at the hotel spa
    • $1,400 at the salon.

    "They were getting their manicures, their facials, their pedicures and their massages while American people were footing the bill!" barked Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is probing the ever-growing financial collapse.

    Do you still think that we are facing economic recession?

  • Chief Minister of Delhi!

    Soumya Viswanathan, 27, who worked as a producer with Headlines Today, was returning home at three in the morning from office. She phoned her father to say that she would be home in fifteen minutes. But she was found dead in her car on Nelson Mandela Road in Vasant Kunj locality. Her car was rammed into the road divider and she had a bullet injury in her head. Soumya Viswanathan was taken to AIIMS where she was declared brought dead.
    What our learned Chief Minister has to say about the incident?

    “All by herself till 3 am at night in a city where people believe…you know…you should not be so adventurous.”

    What would our Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit would have said if she would have been murdered after coming out from a disc or pub? That such “type” of women deserve this kind of death. They are luring the criminals into killing them? What Sheila Dikshit have said about the outrage her remark caused, to a Congress News Network (CNN-IBN) programme “Devil’s Advocate” anchored by I can’t remember his name but only his English accent.

    “It horrified me enormously…I am a woman myself. I have three sisters; I have two grand daughters. I think what I said was really blown out of proportion,” Dikshit told Karan Thapar’s Devil’s Advocate programme on CNN-IBN.

    “I used the phrase adventurous in two ways that travelling at three in the morning is not a safe thing for anybody to do and above all I think even for boys, travelling after 9 in the evening. Companies employing young girls and boys 24 hours for that matter should provide escort for the safety of our girls and boys,” she said.

    Wow! You have sisters and granddaughters! But they have the blessings of a certain Madame from Congress party. Soumya Viswanathan didn’t chose to born to that dynasty! Too bad for her. And if the company have to ensure the safety on the roads of Delhi, then please step down as a Chief Minister and spare us the agony of your scholarly remarks.

  • Hail Internet! Hail Blogging!

    Sudipta Chatterjee says:

    Bloggers, wake up! For long the mainstream media has been plagiarising pictures from our blogs for long. And they seem to get away with it with impunity. Because they don’t respond to emails. They don’t publish letters sent to the editor about their reporters lifting images with impunity. How can they — these losers can’t stand up to own their mistakes; they don’t have the balls to do that.

    The question is, how do we fight it? And the answer is right here: we have our own blogs. Remember, united we stand and divided we fall. So on October 2nd, let us all post something about this plagiarism. It should only be fitting that we all stand together and lodge our protest against injustice on the day the one man who taught us this was born.

    I don’t have my pictures plagiarized by anyone. But my sister had gone through this problem. She did contact the PR person and editor of the magazine and extracted an apology and token compensation from them. 🙂 You can read the whole drama here: When You See a Picture Taken by You in an In Flight Magazine with a Credit to Someone Else!
    So thanks to internet and thanks to blogging which have given some power to us, the mere mortals! Hail Gandhiji who taught us to fight for our rights!

  • Plants In Forest Create Their Own Aspirin!

    I was pretty surprised when I read this, “Plants In Forest Emit Aspirin Chemical To Deal With Stress; Discovery May Help Agriculture” Like us, they don’t have to rush to a chemist’s shop and then swallow those pills.

    Unlike humans, who are advised to take aspirin as a fever suppressant, plants have the ability to produce their own mix of aspirin-like chemicals, triggering the formation of proteins that boost their biochemical defenses and reduce injury,” says NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) scientist Thomas Karl, who led the study. “Our measurements show that significant amounts of the chemical can be detected in the atmosphere as plants respond to drought, unseasonable temperatures, or other stresses.

    This discovery can be helpful to the farmers.

    The discovery raises the possibility that farmers, forest managers, and others may eventually be able to start monitoring plants for early signs of a disease, an insect infestation, or other types of stress. At present, they often do not know if an ecosystem is unhealthy until there are visible indicators, such as dead leaves.

  • News Channels Being Stupid?

    This guy/ Guys/ gal/gals is /are simply amazing. I admire the way he/she/they really makes/make an effort to write and before writing, does/do some actual research. After reading his/her/their post, it seems that news channels are still living in some fools paradise. They still have to feel the impact of internet how they can’t fool the common public (netzians) now.
    Here is what, Padma Vidushak, Rajdeep Sardesai’s channel, CNN-IBN, felt about Madame President’s birthday celebration:

    It was the first Presidential birthday in many years to be celebrated outside the grandeur of the Raisina Hill. First Lady Pratibha Patil celebrated her 73rd birthday with the destitute and the mentally challenged in their homes, in complete contrast to her predecessor Kalam, whose birthday celebrations looked more like Children’s Day celebrations inside Raisina Hill.[link]

    Now what barbarindians did? He/she/they posted five links. Each links describes where and how ex-president Kalam celebrated his birthday. And surprisingly none of his birthday was celebrated in Raisina Hill!
    I am just copying and pasting his work.

    2006: New Delhi, Oct. 15 (PTI): The President, A P J Abdul Kalam, today celebrated his 75th birthday with spastic children in Bangalore. [link]

    2005: Governor Sushil Kumar Shinde greeting President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on his 74th birthday at Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad on Saturday. [link]

    2004: BANGALORE: President of India, Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam today turned 73, celebrating his birthday outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan. [link]

    2003: SURAT OCT. 15. The president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today celebrated his 73rd birthday among religious heads and children at Surat in south Gujarat. [link]

    2002: CHENNAI Oct. 15 . The Governor and the Chief Minister have conveyed their greetings to the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, on the occasion of his 72nd birthday. [link] [Oops! Finally it looks like he is on Raisina Hill! We found one!]

    If you try posting all these links on CNN-IBN’s site they will “moderate” it. 🙂

  • Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold?

    I come across this interesting article. Here the Psychologists (Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management) arrive on the conclusion that social isolation really make you feel that room is colder than actually it is!

    They divided a group of volunteers into two. One group is asked to recall the experience when they were expelled from certain group or club. Another group was told to evoke experiences when they have gained a membership of certain club or group. Later on they were asked to guess the room temperature on the pretense that the building’s maintenance staff wanted that information. And the findings were really surprising.

    Those who were told to think about a socially isolating experience gave lower estimates of the temperature. In other words, the recalled memories of being ostracized actually made people experience the ambient temperature as colder.

    In another experiment, instead of relying on volunteers’ memories, the researchers triggered feelings of exclusion by having the volunteers play a computer-simulated ball tossing game. The game was designed so that some of the volunteers had the ball tossed to them many times, but others were left out.” Afterwards, all the volunteers rated the desirability of certain foods and beverages: hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple, and hot soup. (source:Science Daily)

    Read about the findings 🙂

    “It’s striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded,” Leonardelli said. “Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation.”

    Can we take this metaphor literally and not descriptively? Watch your behavior next time, when you go out alone. 🙂

  • Delhi Bomb Blasts and Ramp Modeling

    Shivraj Patil changing clothes in 3 hours

    Source: Star News

    Serial bomb blasts were happening in Delhi. People were looking for their near and dear ones. Mobiles were jammed and it was difficult talking to anyone. Doctors of Lady Harding Medical College were making appeal to general public to come forward and donate blood for Delhi bomb victims. Common people were trying to help in their own way.
    But danger was still lurking somewhere. After serial bomb blasts Delhi was still unsafe. An e-mail claimed that they planned nine serial blasts for Delhi. So bomb squad were still searching for live bombs.
    Here the million dollar question is, “what the Honorable Home Minister Of India Mr. Shivraj Patil was doing? Oh! He was busy playing the role of a ramp model. Today starnews showed that he was changing clothes for different occasion. First starnews claimed that he changed clothes three times in three hours while serial blasts were taking place in Delhi! But when they were showing the program they received a call from Home Ministry that the honorable minister has not changed three times in three hours but three times in five hours. We as public should really be relieved after this clarification or damage control. They should have informed the newsroom that MAJOR TV CREWS FROM INTERNATIONAL MEDIA will be covering this Delhi blasts and how come he turn out shabbily dressed and in the same suit? WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE REPUTATION OF INDIA IN FRONT OF WHOLE WORLD? So he has to behave as a ramp model first and as a Home Minister later.

  • Serial Blasts in Delhi

    Today I was just planning to go to Karol Bagh to purchase a bicycle. But somehow my plan got altered and I returned back from Friends colony only. While I was returning home, the driver received a call from his anxious wife if he is still in Delhi ? He broke the news to me that there were serial bomb blasts in New Delhi. Till now 18 are reported killed, 70 injured in Delhi serial blasts. I got the following news about Delhi blasts from The Hindu;

    New Delhi (PTI): At least 18 people were killed and 70 injured in five serial blasts in a span of 45 minutes when terrorists targeted three crowded market areas in the heart of the Capital this evening.

    Bringing back memories of the pre-Diwali terror strike in Sarojini market in 2005 that left 68 dead, the blasts rocked Connaught place, about a km from Parliament, Ghaffar market in Karol Bagh in Central Delhi and the M Block market in posh Greater Kailash in South Delhi.

    It seems that serial bomb blasts are fast becoming usual news unless someone’s near and dear ones are involved. We will hear the usual statements from our PPM (Puppet Prime Minister) that these acts will not be tolerated. Terrorists will not be spared and blah! blah! blah! till some other city face the same bomb blasts and the game will start again. I was just curious why terrorists can’t fight against illness, illiteracy, poverty, hunger or for a clean environment? Would the effort require will be more if they try to find a cure against AIDS? I know its a foolish romantic thinking on my part.

  • Rain Water Harvesting

    I wish to thank Destination Infinity for this post. I find his blog post quite interesting and practical.

    Every year Mumbai rains make news and for all the wrong reasons. When I keep on watching images of Mumbai flooded with rain I wonder why such an abundance and why an equal amount of waste? Of course, current mai baap of Mumbai, Mr. Raj Thackray doesn’t have time for such stupid things for Marathis and Maharashtra. I was reading about rain water harvesting at Wikipedia.

    Rainwater harvesting in urban areas can have manifold reasons. To provide supplemental water for the city’s requirement,it increase soil moisture levels for urban greenery, to increase the ground water table through artificial recharge, to mitigate urban flooding and to improve the quality of groundwater are some of the reasons why rainwater harvesting can be adopted in cities. In urban areas of the developed world, at a household level, harvested rainwater can be used for flushing toilets and washing laundry. Indeed in hard water areas it is superior to mains water for this. It can also be used for showering or bathing. It may require treatment prior to use for drinking.
    In New Zealand, many houses away from the larger towns and cities routinely rely on rainwater collected from roofs as the only source of water for all household activities. This is almost inevitably the case for many holiday homes.

    Here is what Destination Infinity thinks:
    Sometimes, we do not need to develop wisdom by re-inventing the wheel. For centuries, rain water harvesting has been a dominant activity in our country. Be it for irrigation systems, be it in temples, be it in the backyard of ones own house. This is something that we have always been doing. But, after the concrete jungles have taken over the cities, Rainwater Harvesting has not been in the fore front of demands of any purchaser or builder of home/ apartment in urban landscapes. Do we wake up only after a large scale disaster hits us, like Los Angeles – whose case is explained in the video below?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHi4IU7JQ5Q&feature=related

    Rain water harvesting in an urban landscape could be as simple as collecting the water flowing from the terraces out into the road (and causing local street flooding) into an underground tank/ sump or a cachement area which could later used for washing clothes, Cars, cooking, flushing toilets etc. (OR) Letting the rainwater flow into the ground from the terrace through multiple layers of natural filtering like broken bricks etc. which would contribute to the rise of the water tables in the area.

    The following two websites have all the resources, case studies, links, community projects and all the necessary information on rainwater harvesting – particularly in India.

    www.rainwaterharvesting.org

    http://akash-ganga-rwh.com/RWH/WaterHarvesting.html

    The following video is actually an advertisement for the rain water harvesting systems but has a lot of information on practical implementation of rain water harvesting. As they say, some times the advertisements are more informative and useful than the programs/serials in our television.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsV_JgLzW4w&feature=related

    And if you have watched all the videos till now, do watch this one also. A nice way of putting across the message. Just to end.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xtMnE9Bo6s

    Do let know if you know of any interesting implementations of the rain water harvesting methods in your area.

  • CERN Black hole!

    I found this “The CERN black hole” video on youtube. This video has received around 6500 comments and more than 1,600,000 views:-)

  • CERN search to solve Big Bang mystery!

    Largest particle collider conducts successful test!

    GENEVA (AP) — The world’s largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons around a 17-mile underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.

    After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 a.m. indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.

    “There it is,” project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

    Another headline is: “India shines at CERN experiment

    The entire Large Hadron Collider or LHC will be sitting on India made jacks, these objects weigh 32 tonnes and have to be located to the precision of a few tens of micron.

    All of us are concerned about The safety of the LHC

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions.The LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern. Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies. The LSAG report has been reviewed and endorsed by CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee, a group of external scientists that advises CERN’s governing body, its Council.

    I was busy finding out the number of Indian scientists involved in this LHC experiment. But what to say about Hindi broadcast media? My maid and her children watch those channels and gathered some facts about big bang. Today she issued an ultimatum that she would leave early to be with her children on their last day on this earth! She also narrated that yesterday they had refused to have their dinner out of fear. I was trying to explain to the maid that everything is OK about this big bang experiment while watching TV at the same time. And VIOLA!!! On TV they were showing a designer family ( family having all the right external attributes, be it drawing room or personal appearances) and their kids too DIDN’T EAT AND SLEEP IN THE NIGHT!! Long live BIG BANG and media! Hindi broadcast media was out with full force these days, even consulting astrologers and all those dandy looking Babas about impending annihilation of this planet and whole universe! Hats of to media for making Indians basically behaving as one irrespective of class, caste, creed or literacy level.