Mrigank's Musings

My First Kitchen Conquest - Sooji Ka Chilla

2009-04-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys!

For those of you who know me .. I know its outright UNTHINKABLE to even imagine me inside the kitchen.. But its TRUE! I recently made my maiden foray into the cookie-zone.. & guess what?! With a B.I.G. SUCCESS - Mom was simply ecstatic upon tasting My First Kitchen Conquest.... Even dad said it was yummy.. (he usually says, "OKay.." on tasting something quite good! :D)
As you can very easily guess what I made - Sooji Ka Chilla [For those who dunno what's a "sooji ka chilla" - its hindi for (Indian) semolina pancake..]

(Just a li'l more of this bragging then I'd give the recipe.. :D)
What made it even more complex that I did it without using a nonstick frying pan - I managed it with our good 'ol Indian Tava... (Obviously, even mom was scared initially) To get around the handicap, I borrowed some tips from our South-Indian Dosa Making Chefs... I used to watch them making Dosas with great interest....

They are so easy to make and a nice change in the regular breakfast. Its quite a filling breakfast , and can be made more healthier by adding as many veggies as you want in the batter itself, as per your taste..

The Inspiration

The basic recipe I learned from mom. But I was inspired by the (almost :P) yummy chillas I ate at Shreya's place...

So who's Shreya???
Well! She looks (somewhat) like below.. and is a YES!+ volunteer in Allahabad, UP (these days I'm in Allahabad doing stuff..)

(OKay! Don't Frown Now!! Who told you to upload that Behanji pic of yours??! :P)

The chillas Shreya prepared had onions... & I hate onions.. This kicked off a chain reaction that in turn made me tune into The Bawa Consciousness...
To know what "Bawa" looks like.. look at the pics below.. To know more about Him.. read Bawa's Blog... (check it out anyways.. I'm sure you'd find something interesting..)

The Recipe

I started thinking what could I have possibly used instead of onions.. A casual thought sauntered to so many things.. tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms, green peas... (You wanna suggest anymore Bau?!)

Ingredients:

For the batter:

1 cup Semolina (rava)
4 tbsp yogurt (curd)
a pinch of sodium bicarbonate (khane ka soda)
salt to taste

For the topping:

1 small tomato, finely chopped
1 small capsicum, finely chopped
1 grated carrot
Green peas(optional)
Grated cheese (optional)
Coriander leaves
A few mushrooms, finely chopped

Oil to cook
Musturd seeds
Curry leaves

I like to add everything in the batter itself.. Cooking it this way gives the Chilla a suttle, raw flavour.. If you want a more "cooked" sort of taste, then you may try (light) steam cooking the "harder" veggies..

Method:

Mix yogurt, semolina, salt and beat well. Let it rest overnight(so curd gets a bit sour and semolina swells nicely) or atleast for 2 hours.
Just before making pancakes add soda. Optionally, you may add the veggies to the batter as well at this stage (Don't add them at the beginning - you'll spoil them..)

Heat the wok.
Add about 1 tsp (or even less) oil, then add musturd seeds (few ) and curry leaves.
When the seeds splutter, pour about one big ladle of the batter at the center of the pan. Spread it a little bit.
Spread the veggies over the top.
Cover it and let it cook for a few minutes in low flame, or until the bottom of the pancake is light brown. Optionally, you may flip over and let the other side cook - I prefer it cooked only on one side. When they are raw, they have a whitish tinge (similar to the colour of the batter) visible on the surface
Garnish with coriander leaves and/or cheese.
Serve hot with (preferrably) green chutney.
DO NOT USE KETCHUP - it simply kills the suttle natural flavour of the chilla.. every foodie knows that...

Tips:

Don't spread the pancakes too much. While cooking covered , they swell a bit, and are better enjoyed hard on crust and soft inside.
Can sprinkle some chat masala powder over it, to enhance its taste.

How to do it on a Tava:

Make sure that the tava is perfectly HOT - leave it on full burner for a while and then sprinkle a drop or two of water - if it boils and dances and stays there for long enough, its HOT! (yes! It stays "longer" if its really, really HOT - go study your physics..)
Wipe off the water with a piece of cotton cloth.. then proceed as above - just add a li'l more of oil and make sure that the batter lands right in the middle of the oil so that it has some encircling it after its spread out - helps when you take it off the tava.. or else be ready to "scratch" it off the tava...
Once you've cooked one, clean the tava by sprinkling a generous quantity of water onto the tava and wipe it clean.. Remember one of those chefs cooking one dosa after another..??! ;-)

The Outcome...

Mom was initially very skeptical about my daring-do and was almost at "war-readiness" with a fire extinguisher in hand... But everybody liked the outcome.. Dad (genuinely) "praised" it..
And for the first time, Mom agreed that Art Of Living teachers are any good - I told her I got the inspiration from Bawa..... :D

Artificial intelligence now a step closer to reality

2008-10-14T02:14:00.000-07:00

Artificial intelligence came another step closer to reality on this Sunday after a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test which evaluates a system’s ability to demonstrate intelligence.

The test is named after mathematician Alan Turing, who in a 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” proposed that the machine can be considered intelligent if enough people cannot reliably differentiate between a human and a machine during a natural language conversation. To pass the test, a computer should hoodwink a minimum 30 percent of the human judges.

At the annual Loebner Prize competition at the University of Reading on Sunday, one system, dubbed Elbot, managed the most successful score yet when it fooled 25 percent of the judges.
Five computer systems were pitted against five judges on Sunday. They were each given five minutes of unrestricted conversation through a terminal to decide which of the entities they were talking to was a human and a machine.

Will Pavia, one of the five judges, wrote in The Times of his simultaneous conversations with the computers and fellow-judges.

Here is an example of the conversation:
Pavia wrote: Are you the human or the computer?
Reply on one terminal: What do you think?
Reply on another terminal: Some of my friends are programmers.

Would you be able to say which if the replies was from a computer and which from a judge? Keep thinking.

Pavia finally guessed correctly that he was talking to a computer when in reply to his question on Sarah Palin - US presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate - the terminal flashed: “Sorry, don’t know her”. “No sentient being could possibly answer in this way,” Pavia concluded.
The Loebner Prize was created by American businessman Hugh Loebner in 1990 together with the Cambridge Centre for Behavioural Studies, and is an annual competition offering a grand prize of $100,000 and a gold medal to the first computer to win the Turing Test.

Professor Kevin Warwick, of the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, said: “Although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time.”
“Today’s results actually show a more complex story than a straight pass or fail by one machine. Where the machines were identified correctly by the human interrogators as machines, the conversational abilities of each machine was scored at 80 and 90 percent.”

Which only means computers are getting better and better in conversing with ease with human beings, gradually reducing the divide between machine and man.

All About Navaratri

2008-09-30T22:49:00.001-07:00

The Blessed Festival Of Navaratri is here...!!!!

The Navaratri is a festival of the Hindus, considered to be very holy and auspicious... Extremely powerful Poojas and Homas are done all across India...

It is said to be a time of celebration within... and without..

For the spiritually inclined, it is a time to meditate, celebrate and rejoice within....
For the party-animals, it is a totally different kind of treat....
The time for Garba, Dandia - Ras.... Time to experience and celebrate the Divine within through blissfull dance....

(please click on the pictures to see their magnified, readable versions..)

Jokes

2008-09-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

Here are some jokes that had me rolling on the floor with laughter... bit adult but I think the readers (if any!) have already been warned of the probable adult content on my blog...

Talking Italian

A bus in Japan stops and two Italian men get on. They seat themselves, and engage in animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores their conversation at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

''Emma come first. I come. Dennis come and Dennis come again. I come again. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come once-a-more.''

''You foul-mouthed swine,'' retorted the lady indignantly. ''In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public.''

''Hey, coola down lady,'' said the man. ''Imma just tella my friend howa to spella Mississippi...''

Viagra Robbery

Our local drugstore was robbed of 500 bottles of Viagra. The suspect is known to be a hardened criminal!

Glazed over

A cop pulls over a guy. "Your eyes are awfully red. Have you been drinking?" "Gee, officer," the man says. "Your eyes are awfully glazed -- have you been eating doughnuts?"

Wrestlemania

Three Americans were up against a very large Russian in a wrestling meet. They were nervous because he had a famous move called "The Russian Pretzel," which often landed his opponents in the hospital.
When the first American caught a glimpse of him, he said, "Coach, he's HUGE. I'm scared."
The coach replied, "You da MAN! Just go in there and tear him up!"
The guy started the match quite confidently, but after about a minute, the Russian picked him up, slammed him into the famous pretzel, and sent him to the emergency room.
The same thing happened to the second wrestler, so the third guy was petrified. He told his coach he was backing out.
The coach said, "C'mon, son. You're our last chance!"
The kid started out pretty well, but when the Russian started to twist him into the pretzel, the coach covered his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the referee holding the American's hand up in victory. The coach, baffled, asked the kid how he did it.
"Well Coach, when that damn Russian picked me up and started twisting my body, it HURT! So when I saw two red things dangling there, I bit them... HARD! You'd be surprised what you can do when you bite your own nuts!"

The Perfect Husband

Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker- function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.
MAN: "Hello"WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"

MAN: "Yes."

WOMAN: "I'm at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?"

MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much."

WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2007 models. I saw one I really liked."

MAN: "How much?"

WOMAN: "$65,000."

MAN: "OK, but for that price I want it with all the options."

WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing. The house we wanted last year is back on the market. They're asking $950,000."

MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer, but just offer $900,000."

WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you!"

MAN: "Bye, I love you, too."
The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment. Then he smiles and asks: "Anyone know whose phone this is?"

Chicken & Egg

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face. The egg is frowning and looking very frustrated.
The egg mutters, to no one in particular, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question!"

Ex-Lax, Don't Do It

Why are men like laxatives?
Because they irritate the crap out of you!

Not-So-Dumb Blonde

One day a blonde is sitting on a plane next to one of those annoying, pushy businessmen. He asks her if she would like to play a game. She politely declines, but the man explains the game to her anyway.
He says, "It goes like this: I will ask you a question and if you get it wrong you will give me $5, and vice-versa."
She says no again, and tries to fall asleep.
The man tries harder, saying, "Aw, come on. I'll give you $50 for each question. Or how about $500?"
At that number, the blonde agrees.
The businessman explains again, "If you get my question wrong you give me $5. And when you ask the question, and I get it wrong, I will pay you $500.
"Got it," she replies.
He asks, "Who was the sixth president?" She admits she doesn't know and gives him $5.
Now it's her turn, and she says, "What has purple legs, five arms and only two yellow teeth?"
The businessman doesn't know - he uses his laptop, checks the Internet, e-mails his friends. No one knows the answer. So he gives her $500.00.
Then, as they're landing he asks her, "What was that thing anyway?"
She thinks a few minutes, hands him $5 and walks off the plane.

Photos of Big Bang Theory Experiment

2008-09-19T02:06:00.001-07:00

My Birthday & Engineers' Day (in India)

2008-09-15T04:14:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday...
And coincidentally it coincides with engineer's day in India... :)

My YES!+ TTC invite :-) B-)

2008-06-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

I received a invitation to attend The Art Of Living Teachers' Training Course today... A day that I've been waiting for so many years now....

I could have waited till eternity.., or even till the next Life..., to become an AOL teacher..... but Nature had other plans... I got it in this Life only..!! :-D I'm sure by this date next month, I'm gonna be an AOL teacher!!!

I have seen this sense of Lion-like self-esteem in very few people in this world.... It is supposed to be uncool, impractical, hypocritical(and GOD knows what not..) to be genuinely associated with a social service, spiritual organization... I tell you, once somebody has actually experienced the sincere concern for this world, the society, and the Love-All attitude in the AOL people, even hardened antagonists will be forced to changed their opinions...

The Art Of Living has touched more than twenty million lives and spread to over 152 countries in a mere 25 years... Its Sudarshan Kriya has transformed the lives of millions across the world... Sudarshan Kriya has this power to flush out and heal all emotional and physical stresses and their negative repercussions... 17, 18, 19 February, 2006 saw the biggest gathering of people meditating together in the History of entire mankind - The Art Of Living Silver Jubilee Celebrations... some 1 million people meditated together on these three days ....
THE IMPACT - Some little-known(at least here in India - because we proudly lag behind the West in this - STRESS!) research institute keeps a daily record of "Worlds' Stress"... It surprisingly recorded its lowest ever reading in its history.... They traced it back to this particular event......
Guess this should be a reason enough for anyone reading this blog and not having done an Art Of Living course, to do ASAP!! :-) Just keep in mind that stress is more mental-emotional than physical - the end result being the same in both the cases... A NICELY BAKED MIND...!!!!!! :-D
Stress makes you crib, complain, angry, lazy, introverted, (over)aggressive, unfriendly, rude, wild, mad(genuinely:D), obsessive, LOSER....... The list is endless... So if you've ever experienced any of these... An Art Of Living workshop can work miracles for you.....
AND IFF, BY-ANY-CHANCE, you're young physically/at-heart and have not done YES!+... All I can say is.. "May GOD bless you - you have NO IDEA what F.U.N. you're missing in Life..."

IBM Roadrunner - The Fastest Supercomputer!!!

2008-06-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

The Roadrunner

The Roadrunner is a supercomputer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. Currently the world's fastest supercomputer, the US$133 million Roadrunner is designed for a performance level of 1.026 petaflops peak, which it reached on May 25, 2008, to be the world's first TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops system.

IBM built the computer for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It is a hybrid design with 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i CPUs and 6,912 AMD Opteron dual-core processors in specially designed TriBlades connected by Infiniband.

The Roadrunner uses the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system and is managed with xCAT distributed computing software. Roadrunner uses 3.9 megawatts of power, which is enough to power 39,000 100-watt light bulbs. It takes up 6,000 square feet, uses 57 miles of fiber optic cable and weighs in at 500,000 pounds. What is even more astounding, it uses enough power to bake 20,000 medium 4-topping pizzas per hour, navigate Yahoo for 3 weeks before becoming clogged with spam, porn and adware, and find truly interesting and useful content on AOL in under two weeks. An anticipated upgrade will give Roadrunner enough computing power to boot Microsoft Vista in two out of three attempts without crashing... It became operational in 2008... (Curious techies like me may try peeping into the numerous links I've provided for details.. ;-D)

DOE plans to use the computer for simulating how nuclear materials age and whether the aging nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States is safe and reliable. Other uses for the supercomputer include the sciences, financial, automotive and aerospace industries.

Roadrunner will be housed at NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory(DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration). The laboratory worked collaboratively with IBM, the manufacturer, for six years to deliver a novel computer architecture that can meet the nation’s evolving national security needs. The result has redefined the frontier of supercomputing, not only by crossing the one petaflop threshold, but also by introducing a new paradigm for the future.

Most nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile were produced anywhere from 30 to 40 years ago, and no new nuclear weapons have been produced since the end of the Cold War. Since US President George H.W. Bush ended underground nuclear testing in 1992, the U.S. has relied on science-based research and development to extend the lifetime of the current weapons in the stockpile. NNSA’s ability to model the extraordinary complexity of nuclear weapons systems is essential to maintaining confidence in the performance of the aging stockpile.

A “flop” is an acronym meaning floating-point operations per second. One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second i.e. 10¹⁵(try putting 15 zeros after 1 and count the number.. :D) floating-point operations per second... To put this into perspective, if each of the 6 billion people on earth had a hand calculator and worked together on a calculation 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, it would take 46 years to do what Roadrunner would do in one day...!

But just an afterthought...

While I agree this is a major accomplishment in the world of computing it seems to be a waste of an incredible tool. I am an IT professional and I am in awe of this computer, but to have the US government spending $100 billion to run more nuclear explosion simulations is irresponsible at best... With the gasoline prices skyrocketing, shouldn’t we be using this computer to help us figure out how and if we can make cold fusion work? Sounds like a lot of "good-use" of this computer to me....

ps: Credit again to Wikipedia and the various links on its Roadrunner page that gave me all the info I needed to create this post...

The making of a fire-kiln: Playing with F.I.R.E.

2008-06-07T04:29:00.000-07:00

This happened a long time ago in my ancestral village when I was about 10 years old... We had this gang of kids about my age and we were playing some game which required us to cook with "toy" utensils.. such as little kettles, ladles etc. Half way into the game we discovered that we were terminally short of certain utensils and there was no way the parents of any of us would give us the money needed to buy a new "kitchen-set"... So our game was in jeopardy...!

Gunjan, a very naughty local lad, decided to "offer his skills and resources" for the project and suggested we make our own from the mud we could easily dig from our orchard.. he even volunteered to get us the equipment needed to dig up the ground, mix the mud etc. as well as teach us how to make the utensils themselves, an art which he had learned from his minute observations of the village potter...

Sounded like a lot of adventure to us kids.., and in a couple of minutes all my minions(I was the gang leader - the naughtiest of all..) were busy digging furiously with me and Gunjan supervising the progress of the work... Finally, after a lot of dirt had been kicked-up(we had dug up more than half of the orchard..)... Gunjan decided that he had "enough mud" to build the utensils... So a couple of kids were sent off to fetch several pails of water from a nearby well... The gang got together and under Gunjan's supervision(my role in the act had not yet started..), we mixed enough mud and water to build the Wall of China... Effectively, we had turned the entire orchard into a little marsh.... Then we did a pretty good job at building life-sized utensils instead of those little toy ones... somewhere down the line we had decided to "actually cook" in those utensils....

The utensils were left out to dry and meanwhile we created more nuisance of ourselves by successfully launching a commando operation aimed at setting free our neighbor's herd of cows which then stormed through his courtyard out into the fields and with the poor guy chasing them around.... I was the leader of the operation with Gunjan playing second fiddle.. We had scrambled a ladder at the back of the cow shed, had entered the shed from an opening in the thatched roof, freed all the cows, tied a rope around the gate and yanked it open from the cowshed-roof lest we fell into the hands of the "enemy"... We then dispersed and ran into a huge bamboo grove that was supposed to be haunted... I'm sure the ghosts, if any, had fled when they saw our "battle group" advancing towards their hideout...

It was almost two hours and so we kids decided to go to our homes, quickly have lunch, or people would have been sent out on a search and destroy mission to hunt us down(we also had to provide alibis as an evidence of our innocence in operation holy-cows), and regroup in the orchard at the end of 60 minutes...

Sooo... we regrouped at the end of the hour and found that though the utensils had dried up well enough in the blistering June afternoon, we faced with another problem - a couple of girls in our gang attracted our attention to the fact that the "utensils" were unbaked and could not be used for cooking...!! Now it was my turn to take charge of the affairs... I told them that if baking is what is needed, we're going to bake them... But HOW??!! was the question... We thought of taking our stuff to the brick-kiln in the vicinity but there was a danger of the owner informing the families of one of us and that could land us into deep-$#!T... Also, it takes several days for a brick kiln to "open up" and we were in no mood to put off the adventure until then... So we decided to build our own.. right in the middle of the orchard where we had already dug up a gorge of sorts - we only needed to dig it a little deeper....

Gunjan helped me with a few "design optimizations" which enabled us to do away with the need of a chimney, to build which, we didn't have the necessary "technological advancement"... We got our minions to dig up the hole deeper and lo! our kiln was ready!!! Next was the issue of "fuel" to get the kiln going... So each of us stole some coal from his house, coupled with some firewood.. we were still short of firewood, so ventured into the nearby fields which were stacked with freshly harvested crop awaiting sifting... The entire area around the orchard(as well as the orchard itself..) was an arsonist's heaven.. and we were about to turn into really dangerous ones!!

The firewood and the coal was stacked tightly into our kiln and the utensils placed at strategic locations... Gunjan did the honors of "lighting the fire" with a matchbox he had thoughtfully acquired from his home...A strong Loo(a searing hot wind that blows in summers in North India..) was blowing from the direction of our kiln towards the closest field, which, well.. had not yet been harvested, was dry and was perfect "firewood".. We were smiling....

In a couple of minutes the coals attained a reddish glow.., and despite being "tough" kids, we were beginning to "feel the heat"... The fire had turned from the size of a kitchen fire to that of a Holi-Bonfire touching the lower leaves of the mango tree above it... to make matters worse, The #@^&* Loo was carrying burning splinters straight towards the unharvested wheat field... Thick, black smoke was billowing from the top of the fire - which was grazing the lowest leaves of the mango tree above it and fast turning into the funeral pyre of our cherished utensils...

Me and Gunjan were staring aghast at each other and the rest of our gang was looking at us with doubtful eyes, questioning our worthiness as their "able" leaders....

Then I shouted, "Quick! Run!! Every man for his Life... Hide just anywhere and don't-dare-tell-anyone-we-did-it...". It was the best commons-sense crisis management I've ever done!! "Help" was pouring in fast from corners of the village - the word was out - "The orchard is on fire... Save the crops at all costs!"

We all ran and disappeared into weird places... I clambered up high on a very tall mango tree till no one could have seen me from below... Gunjan went and hid himself in the attic of the cowshed we had stormed earlier in the morning.. it backfired very badly as his folks knew very well that he hides there quite often... was nabbed... And you can easily imagine what followed... his grandfather was a cane-brandishing school headmaster, and his father a similar maths teacher....

But even to this date, I am proud of my fidayeens who participated in our misadventure: "Revolutionaries if unsuccessful, are declared traitors!!!" - nobody revealed(all) the names of their other "accomplices" so everybody in the village had a different story to tell... even ghosts of the nearby bamboo shrub were held responsible - with one person claiming to have seen a lady-wearing-a-black-Saree near the bush an hour before the disaster...

I was perched precariously atop the top-branches of my mango tree... I was feeling like an Avian... The fire below was finally put out by the people of the nearby houses - I was glad that I-did-no-crime-ultimately... I stayed there until it began to get dark near the top shoots of the tree enjoying the cool shade, eating raw mangoes, hitting any birds who came to munch on the mangoes around... By then, another trouble had come up(at least for my family..)... "I" was untraceable... Rumors were I had "burned" in the fire, abducted by the witch-in-the-black-Saree and so on... My maternal uncle was a man of logic - he was about to inform the police... Just then I walked in, with a hanging face... Everybody gathered around me, taking turns at hugging and petting me.... I was ready with another cooked up story... "I had followed that lady-in-black to a far off Shiva temple where she suddenly vanished and I had been lost until I found my way back....."

Oh Yes!!! From then on, my minions began to call me HANUMAN!!!!! :D

Techies' Moments!!!

2008-06-05T03:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft "Options"

MS Excel...

My ideal bootleg...

IRC Keyboard

Techie Lingo!!!

Cyber Mom!

Keep Laughing!!!
Mrigank :-D

"On Dealing with "Rogue" Swamis"

2008-05-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

My spiritual master or Guru(as we call them in India..) H.H. Sri Sri Ravishankar (I call Him Guruji..) recently wrote an article was published in various parts in many newspapers around the country... however not one newspaper published it in its entirety... probably because it also talks about the gimmicks played by the media as a part of their publicity stunts.... I don't like to edit anything Guruji says :) so here it is, complete and unabridged, at Bawa's blog... please follow the link below... makes a very interesting read!! :-)

On Dealing with "Rogue" Swamis

Garfield for women...

2008-05-28T03:35:00.000-07:00

Keep Laughing!!!
Mrigank :-D

(Bright) IDEAS for Suicide!!! ;-)

2008-05-27T04:24:00.000-07:00

NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands At Martian Arctic Site

2008-05-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

Artist's conception of the Phoenix spacecraft as it lands on Mars

May 25, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light..

Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry.

Phoenix launched on August 4, 2007, and landed at 23:38 Orbiter UTC on May 25, 2008 in Mars' water-ice-rich northern polar region of Vastitas Borealis at 68.2°N 234.3°W. It will now use its robotic arm to dig into the arctic terrain. Phoenix is the sixth successful Mars lander and the first since Viking 1 & 2 in 1976 to use powered descent.

During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries will provide electricity until the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

Mars as seen from Hubble Space Telescope

Rock strewn surface imaged by Mars Pathfinder

The surface underneath the Phoenix lander, taken minutes after landing.

Cryoturbation polygons due to the Martian permafrost.

A labeled look at NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association

2008-05-21T05:35:00.000-07:00

A bit of G.K. for football lovers who might happen to read my blog...

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association was founded in Paris on the same date as today in 1904.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football), commonly known by its acronym, FIFA (usually pronounced /fifə/ or /fifæ/), is the international governing body of association football. Its headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland, and its current president is Joseph Blatter. FIFA is responsible for the organization and governance of football's major international tournaments, most notably the FIFA World Cup, held since 1930. FIFA has 208 member associations, which is 16 more than the United Nations and 3 more than the International Olympic Committee.

ps: Courtesy again to Wikipedia for telling me about the significance of today's date in history!!!

The "Discovery" of India - May 20th, 1498

2008-05-20T01:49:00.000-07:00

I just happened to figure out that India today was "discovered" by the western world...
Portuguese Vasco da Gama(pictured) arrived at Caliut(Now Kozhikode), India, opening up trade with the Far East... directly by sea.

Vasco da Gama

Actually, India has long had trade links with the entire world... The turks had closed the sea route which passed through Constantinople and the west was left looking for an alternative... So they "sponsored" da Gama for his exploratory voyage... Something they continue to do even today... Just carefully consider the "war on terror" (These are entirely my views, if anybody has a problem with it, they may stop reading it right away!!)

Gama's voyage was successful in reaching India. This permitted the Portuguese to trade with the Far East directly by sea, thus challenging older trading networks of mixed land and sea routes, such as the Spice trade routes that utilized the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean. The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. Portugal hoped to use the route pioneered by Gama to break the Venetian trading monopoly.

However, Gama's achievements were somewhat dimmed by his failure to bring any trade goods of interest to the nations of India. Moreover, the sea route was fraught with its own perils - his fleet went more than three months without seeing land and he lost majority of his sailor-crew, by the time the two of his four ships, returned to Portugal in 1499. Nevertheless, Gama's initial journey opened direct sea route to Asia that in time helped bring about an era of European domination through sea power and commerce that lasted several hundred years, as well as 450 years of Portuguese colonialism in India, Asia, and Africa.

HAIL INDIA!!!!

ps: Full credit to wikipedia for giving me most of the info I needed to create a good-looking post in 7 minutes.... Long live open-source..... Down-Down Plagiarism!!!! ;)

Coincidentally, on the same date in 1873, The Levi Struass & Co. (remember that denim brand??) got a patent for using copper rivets that we see on every denim trouser's pockets.....

The Rajnikant Shot!!! ;)

2008-05-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

I found this picture somewhere on the internet when my curiosity led me to find out some details of a gun mentioned in a book written by two British mercenaries....

Shown above is a spent bullet cartridge through which a sniper round has punched its way clean(sniper rifles are high precision rifles sometimes also known as "telescopic rifles")...

I was initially amazed by the marksmanship of the shooter - given that even the fattest bullets in the world are only a few millimeters in radius...

Then I saw a similarity between this shot and one by Rajnikant, a popular movie star in Tamil movies and a small-time actor of the yore in Hindi movies. The guy is known for his weird, funny antics on screen(like shooting his cigarette in order to light it - with complete success!!) which only the South Indians seem to be able to believe... For Rajnikant it is "just-another-shot" - He must've shot hundreds of bullets like the one above..........

ps: Moral of the post - "Don't dare mistake me for a complete goody-goody just because I 'm smiling all the time..." B-)

Miserable Failure!!!

2008-04-19T05:47:00.001-07:00

In the meantime, I hit this very interesting pic whose link I have given below. Do hit the previous and next link given below the picture for even more interesting stuff. BTW, I reached it by searching for "miserable failure" on Google!! :-))

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmiserablefailure.htm

My first post!!! :-)

2008-04-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

I happened to have hit Bau's blog(actually Bawa & Dinesh, but the latter doesn't seem to be a very active blogger.. :P) at the link below:

Bawa's Blog

Seeing all the interesting(& sometimes mouthwatering/ enlightening/...) stuff posted by Bau, I said to myself, "Man! This is a pretty kewl way to air your views!! 8-)".

But I'm very Laaazy, by choice, by habit, and by instinct... :D So I had no plans to do anything about it and had forgotten all about it - Its a good idea to implement a good idea but a good idea not implemented is mere brain-$#!T, so better let it go... :-)

Until I landed on a piece of crap(the link is given below) about my nation which temporarily sent my temper through the roof(a very rare phenomenon I must agree..), awakened my sleepy intellect, and from that point onward, my insatiable curiosity prodded me to dig deeper into the issue and hunt out more similar truths I knew about and had not cared to delve deeper into...

http://bp3.blogger.com/_KNkpmBEYtkY/R5Xut3xxaBI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/qo8Qt8L6weg/s1600-h/macaulay.gif

Am currently working on a full-fledged report sort of blog on all the stuff I've recently gathered, spiced with some of my own fiercely pro-Indian views... Watch out this space for that but definitely won't be appealing to the intellectually challenged, Indian-apes-who-think-west-is-best... All I can say to console such battered soles(I feel such people don't have souls..), better luck next time, maybe I'd find something extremely good about pasta... though I recently had some good chocolate dough nuts at the Delhi airport while waiting for a delayed flight, but I'm rather into the Desi "rude-food"(as declared by an idiotic celebrity eater..) prepared and readily available in my country instead of Angrezi Khana... And seriously feel that it doesn't get anywhere in variety and taste near Indian food. For a reference, South India itself has over 1400 varieties of sweet dishes or desserts as a firang would have it! But it sounds like desert to me and I can't understand who named something so fabulous as sugar(I love sweets!) to something similar to sand??? - The guy must definitely have been a diabetic!!! :-) And for all those who have been to South India, this part of the country is better known for its spices instead of sweets. I can't imagine what must be the number for Gujarat given that every Gujarati has a sweet tooth... Tell me of one country that has a cultural diversity greater than this and you are honorably invited to kick my... Sorry for offending the foodies - even I enjoy non-Indian food but today it has something to do with my hurt pride...

I am proud to be an Indian!!!

Some muted truths about Indian heritage :-| Part 1

2008-04-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

Have a look at the picture at the link below:

http://bp3.blogger.com/_KNkpmBEYtkY/R5Xut3xxaBI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/qo8Qt8L6weg/s1600-h/macaulay.gif

Shocking!!! Is it???

This is an address by Lord Macaulay to the British Parliament in 1835. This person is credited with "reforming" the Indian Education System.. He is the "father" of the current education system in India - I will call this person a "predator" rather than a father...

Lord Macaulay's education system still exists .... just look at the class system that exists between English speakers and non English speakers.... as for the law of the land it still is in English... sorry legalese.. not even the common folk of england can understand that language... yet India has to live with a British court system and banking system .... you have to research money theory and debt currency system to see how strong a hold the British/Roman Empire still has on our system .... what is your rupee backed by... the note in your pocket what are the Central Bank, RBI ... they not owned by the government: they're private institutions... franchises of the central banking system created by the Rothschild... who are the true rulers of Britain... same goes with the bar associations ... franchises of the Temple Bar in the city of London..
Consider another quote from one of Lord Macaulay's speeches available at the link below. Its called The Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education. Read this piece of garbage if you have no other work to do AND you understand Victorian English pretty well(another sign of the dominance of your life by the British long after they're gone...)
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/rraley/research/english/macaulay.html

"...We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population..."

I don't know if the picture up there is authentic or fake... It may well be a cook-up by some naive jingoist Indian...
But then!!! As Dheeraj, one of my friends said to me once, "Buddy!!! Everyone knows what the truth is... Every Indian knows the truth about his heritage... But who cares???"
For my answer I'd rather quote a short story narrated to me by Rashmin..

Somebody's dog was howling in pain in the middle of the night.. Everybody's sleep was getting disturbed... A neighbor finally walked up to his house, knocked the door and asked, "What's wrong with your dog man??"
The man replied, "Oh nothing!! He is just sitting on a pin..."
The neighbor asked in amazement, "Why doesn't he get up then??!!!!"
The man calmly observed, "Maybe its not hurting enough......"

We all know what we have inherited... But we all want to be somebody else... A ghost of ourselves.....
Everyone knows they're chasing a non-existent mirage.... That the chase is never going to end... Its not going to get them anything... Its not going to get them anywhere.........
Yet!!! We chase.... As Bau says,

"India is a democracy... Everybody has their right to ignorance!!!"
;-)

The BIG Question is.... Why don't we accept this fact??? The answer is simple...

It requires guts to do that!!!!

If you we simply looked back and (honestly)tried to find what is it in this chase that has given us long term happiness?
It definitely gives a heady feel initially.... but horribly screws up our lives later on......
For a record, "diseases" such as depression, heart attack, anxiety were never known to traditional Indian doctors..... They all popped out of nowhere in the latter half of the last century when India began its "industrial revolution"... Coincidentally, the same phenomenon was observed in the west as well.... albeit a bit earlier since the "industrial revolution" began way back in the west....
Now someone may say, "Are you against industrialization by any chance??"
My answer: "No! I'm only against exploitation...."

We are all like the dog-sitting-on-a-pin, but we don't dare to move, living with the ingrained insecurities that we're brought up with... We live with a notion of helplessness and incapability drilled deep into our psychologies.....

"If there are corrupt politicians, how can I change it??"
"I'm scared of my Boss... I need a job!"

Man!!!! Such asses we are.... If we can "elect" a politician, can't we remove him too????
Are you sooo worthless, you won't find a J-O-B(Just-another-Boss!!)??? Why don't you commit suicide then?? Its the easier way out...

I could go on and on about the victim consciousness we live with.... But have to save to something good for the part two of this serious coming soon....

Watch the coming blogs for even more shocking truths about the history of India...

Some muted truths about Indian heritage :-| Part 2
...A historical blasphemy cooked-up to appease the racist views of British Missionaries who doubled up as historians supposed to "educate the world with the truth about India...."!!!!