Good Morning. Here is the daily dose for the day.
Nature has mastered many complex things to do things in a more efficient way. We are still trying to study nature to fully understand its secrets. Still some people have deciphered few of its secrets and used it to some extent. Just read on.
Bionics (also known as biomimetics, biognosis, biomimicry, or bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.The transfer of technology between lifeforms and synthetic constructs is, according to proponents of bionic technology, desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms, including fauna and flora, to become highly optimized and efficient.
Some classical examples of Biomimetics:
1. Velcro is the most famous example of biomimetics. In 1948, the Swiss engineer George de Mestral was cleaning his dog of burrs picked up on a walk when he realized how the hooks of the burrs clung to the fur.
2.Cat's eye reflectors were invented by Percy Shaw in 1935 after studying the mechanism of cat eyes. He had found that cats had a system of reflecting cells, known as tapetum lucidum, which was capable of reflecting the tiniest bit of light.
3.Julian Vincent drew from the study of pinecones when he developed in 2004 "smart" clothing that adapts to changing temperatures. "I wanted a nonliving system which would respond to changes in moisture by changing shape", he said. "There are several such systems in plants, but most are very small — the pinecone is the largest and therefore the easiest to work on". Pinecones respond to higher humidity by opening their scales (to disperse their seeds). The "smart" fabric does the same thing, opening up when the wearer is warm and sweating, and shutting tight when cold.
4."Morphing aircraft wings" that change shape according to the speed and duration of flight were designed in 2004 by biomimetic scientists from Penn State University. The morphing wings were inspired by different bird species that have differently shaped wings according to the speed at which they fly. In order to change the shape and underlying structure of the aircraft wings, the researchers needed to make the overlying skin also be able to change, which their design does by covering the wings with fish-inspired scales that could slide over each other. In some respects this is a refinement of the swing-wing design.
5.Some paints and roof tiles have been engineered to be self-cleaning by copying the mechanism from the Nelumbo lotus.
6.Nanostructures and physical mechanisms that produce the shining color of butterfly wings were reproduced in silico by Greg Parker, professor of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and research student Luca Plattner in the field of photonics, which is electronics using photons as the information carrier instead of electrons.
7.Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) are the thin-film material often used to fabricate fish tank thermometers or mood rings, that change color with temperature changes. They change color because their molecules are arranged in a helical or chiral arrangement and with temperature the pitch of that helical structure changes, reflecting different wavelengths of light. Chiral Photonics, Inc. has abstracted the self-assembled structure of the organic CLCs to produce analogous optical devices using tiny lengths of inorganic, twisted glass fiber.
8.The wing structure of the blue morpho butterfly was studied and the way it reflects light was mimicked to create an RFID tag that can be read through water and on metal.
9.Neuromorphic chips, silicon retinae or cochleae, has wiring that is modelled after real neural networks. S.a.: connectivity
10. Medical adhesives involving glue and tiny nano-hairs are being developed based on the physical structures found in the feet of geckos.
hmm... If we could understand nature fully, we would be living in a perfect utopia.
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.
- Confucius
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The language of the Andes people
Languages are fascinating inventions of human beings. Some languages are known for their complexity like the Chinese, some for their antiquity and supremeness like the sanskrit, but only some live through ages and continue to perplex linguists even today. We shall see some astonishing facts about a native american language called as Aymara.
1. Aymara (Aymar aru) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes.
2. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over a million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia. It is also spoken to a much lesser extent in Chile and in Northwest Argentina.
3. Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely-spoken neighbour, Quechua. This claim, however, is disputed — although there are indeed similarities such as the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that these similarities are better explained as areal features resulting from prolonged interaction between the two languages, and that they are not demonstrably related.
4. The Aymara language is an agglutinating (agglutination is the morphological process of adding affixes to the base of a word) and to a certain extent polysynthetic language, and has a subject-object-verb word order.
5. The old suggestion that the word "Aymara" comes from the Aymara words "jaya" (ancient) and "mara" (year, time) is almost certainly a quite mistaken folk etymology. Many linguists now favor the theory that the term came from an ethnic group from the Apurimac region known as the Aymaraes, but the etymology remains unclear.
6. Aymara has three phoneme vowels /a i u/, which distinguish two degrees of length. Stress is usually on the penult (the syllable before the last one), but long vowels may shift it.
7. There are roughly two million Bolivian speakers, half a million Peruvian speakers, and perhaps a few thousand speakers in Chile and Argentina. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, Aymara was the dominant language over a much larger area than today, including most of highland Peru south of Cuzco.
8. Aymara placenames are found all the way north into central Peru, and indeed (Altiplano) Aymara is actually but one of the two extant languages of a wider language family, the other surviving representative being Jaqaru/Kawki.
Unique Features:
9. The language has attracted interest because it is based on a three value logic system, and thus supposedly has better expressiveness than many other languages based on binary logic.
10. It is cited by the author Umberto Eco in The Search for the Perfect Language as a language of immense flexibility, capable of accommodating many neologisms.
11. In 1860 Emeterio Villamil de Rada suggested it was "the language of Adam" (la lengua de Adán). Iván Guzmán de Rojas has suggested that it be used as an intermediary language for computerised translation.
12. Linguistic and gestural analysis by Núñez and Sweetser also asserts that the Aymara have an apparently unique, or at least very rare, understanding of time, and Aymara is, with Quechua, one of very few languages where speakers seem to represent the past as in front of them and the future as behind them.
13. There is increasing use of Aymara locally and there are increased numbers learning the language, both Bolivian and abroad. There are even projects to offer Aymara through the internet, such as by ILCA
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao
Nothing is exactly as it seems, nor is it otherwise
- Zen Proverb
1. Aymara (Aymar aru) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes.
2. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over a million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia. It is also spoken to a much lesser extent in Chile and in Northwest Argentina.
3. Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely-spoken neighbour, Quechua. This claim, however, is disputed — although there are indeed similarities such as the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that these similarities are better explained as areal features resulting from prolonged interaction between the two languages, and that they are not demonstrably related.
4. The Aymara language is an agglutinating (agglutination is the morphological process of adding affixes to the base of a word) and to a certain extent polysynthetic language, and has a subject-object-verb word order.
5. The old suggestion that the word "Aymara" comes from the Aymara words "jaya" (ancient) and "mara" (year, time) is almost certainly a quite mistaken folk etymology. Many linguists now favor the theory that the term came from an ethnic group from the Apurimac region known as the Aymaraes, but the etymology remains unclear.
6. Aymara has three phoneme vowels /a i u/, which distinguish two degrees of length. Stress is usually on the penult (the syllable before the last one), but long vowels may shift it.
7. There are roughly two million Bolivian speakers, half a million Peruvian speakers, and perhaps a few thousand speakers in Chile and Argentina. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, Aymara was the dominant language over a much larger area than today, including most of highland Peru south of Cuzco.
8. Aymara placenames are found all the way north into central Peru, and indeed (Altiplano) Aymara is actually but one of the two extant languages of a wider language family, the other surviving representative being Jaqaru/Kawki.
Unique Features:
9. The language has attracted interest because it is based on a three value logic system, and thus supposedly has better expressiveness than many other languages based on binary logic.
10. It is cited by the author Umberto Eco in The Search for the Perfect Language as a language of immense flexibility, capable of accommodating many neologisms.
11. In 1860 Emeterio Villamil de Rada suggested it was "the language of Adam" (la lengua de Adán). Iván Guzmán de Rojas has suggested that it be used as an intermediary language for computerised translation.
12. Linguistic and gestural analysis by Núñez and Sweetser also asserts that the Aymara have an apparently unique, or at least very rare, understanding of time, and Aymara is, with Quechua, one of very few languages where speakers seem to represent the past as in front of them and the future as behind them.
13. There is increasing use of Aymara locally and there are increased numbers learning the language, both Bolivian and abroad. There are even projects to offer Aymara through the internet, such as by ILCA
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao
Nothing is exactly as it seems, nor is it otherwise
- Zen Proverb
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Close Encounters
A close encounter in ufology is an event where a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it was started by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, and was first suggested in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry.
There are different levels of close encounters.
Close Encounters of the First Kind -
- A sighting of one or more unidentified flying objects
Close Encounters of the Second Kind
- An observation of a UFO, and associated physical effects from the UFO, including Heat or radiation, Damage to terrain
Human paralysis, Frightened animals
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-The UFO researcher Ted Bloecher subtypes for the close encounters of the third kind in the Hynek's scale.
A: An entity is observed only inside the UFO
B: An entity is observed inside and outside the UFO
C: An entity is observed near to a UFO, but not going in or out.
D: An entity is observed. No UFOs are seen by the observer, but UFO activity has been reported in the area at about the same time
E: An entity is observed. But no UFOs are seen and no UFO activity has been reported in the area at that time
F: No entity or UFOs are observed, but the subject experiences some kind of "intelligent communication"
close encounter of Fourth kind
-A human is abducted by a UFO or its occupants.
close encounter of Fifth kind
-Named by Steven M. Greer's CSETI group, these purported encounters are joint, bilateral contact events produced through the conscious, voluntary and proactive human-initiated or cooperative communication with Extraterrestrial intelligence.
hmmmm...So next time you have a close encounter next time, you can identify it for yourself.
A beautiful woman who is pleasing to men is good only for frightening fish when she falls into the water - Zen proverb
There are different levels of close encounters.
Close Encounters of the First Kind -
- A sighting of one or more unidentified flying objects
Close Encounters of the Second Kind
- An observation of a UFO, and associated physical effects from the UFO, including Heat or radiation, Damage to terrain
Human paralysis, Frightened animals
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-The UFO researcher Ted Bloecher subtypes for the close encounters of the third kind in the Hynek's scale.
A: An entity is observed only inside the UFO
B: An entity is observed inside and outside the UFO
C: An entity is observed near to a UFO, but not going in or out.
D: An entity is observed. No UFOs are seen by the observer, but UFO activity has been reported in the area at about the same time
E: An entity is observed. But no UFOs are seen and no UFO activity has been reported in the area at that time
F: No entity or UFOs are observed, but the subject experiences some kind of "intelligent communication"
close encounter of Fourth kind
-A human is abducted by a UFO or its occupants.
close encounter of Fifth kind
-Named by Steven M. Greer's CSETI group, these purported encounters are joint, bilateral contact events produced through the conscious, voluntary and proactive human-initiated or cooperative communication with Extraterrestrial intelligence.
hmmmm...So next time you have a close encounter next time, you can identify it for yourself.
A beautiful woman who is pleasing to men is good only for frightening fish when she falls into the water - Zen proverb
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Father of all bombs
While the bigger countries are talking about eradicating all nuclear weapons, on the other hand they are funding money in developing non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The weapon which we are about to know is literally called "Father of all Bombs".
"Father of All Bombs" is the nickname of a Russian-made air-delivered/land activated thermobaric weapon that is claimed to be four times more powerful than the U.S. military's GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB or the "mother of all bombs"), making it the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) weapon in the world. In describing the bomb's destructive power, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff Alexander Rukshin is quoted as saying, "all that is alive merely evaporates.
The vacuum device yields the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT using 7.8 tons of a new type of high explosive developed with the use of nanotechnology. Because of this the bomb is capable of emitting shockwaves as powerful as a small nuclear weapon.The bomb works by exploding in mid-air, while the main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature which incinerates everything nearby. Thermobaric weapons differ from conventional explosive weapons by using oxygen from the atmosphere, rather than carrying an oxidizing agent in their explosives. They produce more energy than normal weapons but are harder to control.
A comparison of the bombs possessed by the Big 2.
Indicator USA Russia
Mass : 8200 kg 7100 kg
TNT equivalent : 11 tons ~44 tons
Blast radius : 150 m (492 ft) 300 m (984 ft)
So people advocating against Weapons of Mass Destruction are indeed the ones who are in possession of it? Strange Parody.
Mohan Rao.
Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourself from them - Zen Proverb
"Father of All Bombs" is the nickname of a Russian-made air-delivered/land activated thermobaric weapon that is claimed to be four times more powerful than the U.S. military's GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB or the "mother of all bombs"), making it the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) weapon in the world. In describing the bomb's destructive power, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff Alexander Rukshin is quoted as saying, "all that is alive merely evaporates.
The vacuum device yields the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT using 7.8 tons of a new type of high explosive developed with the use of nanotechnology. Because of this the bomb is capable of emitting shockwaves as powerful as a small nuclear weapon.The bomb works by exploding in mid-air, while the main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature which incinerates everything nearby. Thermobaric weapons differ from conventional explosive weapons by using oxygen from the atmosphere, rather than carrying an oxidizing agent in their explosives. They produce more energy than normal weapons but are harder to control.
A comparison of the bombs possessed by the Big 2.
Indicator USA Russia
Mass : 8200 kg 7100 kg
TNT equivalent : 11 tons ~44 tons
Blast radius : 150 m (492 ft) 300 m (984 ft)
So people advocating against Weapons of Mass Destruction are indeed the ones who are in possession of it? Strange Parody.
Mohan Rao.
Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourself from them - Zen Proverb
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Casting out Nines
How many times while multiplying two large numbers, we had to check whether the result is right. No. You need not multiply to check for the correctness. You just need to cast out nines. Justread on.
Casting out nines is a sanity check to ensure that hand computations of sums, differences, products, and quotients of integers are correct. By looking at the digital roots of the inputs and outputs, the casting-out-nines method can help one check arithmetic calculations. The method is so simple that most schoolchildren can apply it without understanding its mathematical underpinnings.
After applying an arithmetic operation to two operands and getting a result, you can use this procedure to improve your confidence that the result is correct.
1. Sum the digits of the first operand; any 9s (or sets of digits that add to 9) can be counted as 0.
2. If the resulting sum has two or more digits, sum those digits as in step one; repeat this step until the resulting sum has only one digit.
3. Repeat steps one and two with the second operand. You now have two one-digit numbers, one condensed from the first operand and the other condensed from the second operand. (These one-digit numbers are also the remainders you would end up with if you divided the original operands by 9; mathematically speaking, they're the original operands modulo 9.)
4. Apply the originally specified operation to the two condensed operands, and then apply the summing-of-digits procedure to the result of the operation.
5. Sum the digits of the result you originally obtained for the original calculation.
6. If the result of step 4 does not equal the result of step 5, then the original answer is wrong. If the two results match, then the original answer may be right, though it isn't guaranteed to be.
Example * Say we've calculated that 6338 × 79 equals 500702
1. Sum the digits of 6338: (6 + 3 = 9, so count that as 0) + 3 + 8 = 11
2. Iterate as needed: 1 + 1 = 2
3. Sum the digits of 79: 7 + (9 counted as 0) = 7
4. Perform the original operation on the condensed operands, and sum digits: 2 × 7 = 14; 1 + 4 = 5
5. Sum the digits of 500702: 5 + 0 + 0 + (7 + 0 + 2 = 9, which counts as 0) = 5
6. 5 = 5, so there's a good chance that we were right that 6338 × 79 equals 500702.
You can use the same procedure with multiple operands; just repeat steps 1 and 2 for each operand.
This technique works even for addition, subraction and division.
souce: Wikipedia
When all things return to the One, even gold loses its value. But when the One returns to all things, even the pebbles sparkle - Zen Proverb
Casting out nines is a sanity check to ensure that hand computations of sums, differences, products, and quotients of integers are correct. By looking at the digital roots of the inputs and outputs, the casting-out-nines method can help one check arithmetic calculations. The method is so simple that most schoolchildren can apply it without understanding its mathematical underpinnings.
After applying an arithmetic operation to two operands and getting a result, you can use this procedure to improve your confidence that the result is correct.
1. Sum the digits of the first operand; any 9s (or sets of digits that add to 9) can be counted as 0.
2. If the resulting sum has two or more digits, sum those digits as in step one; repeat this step until the resulting sum has only one digit.
3. Repeat steps one and two with the second operand. You now have two one-digit numbers, one condensed from the first operand and the other condensed from the second operand. (These one-digit numbers are also the remainders you would end up with if you divided the original operands by 9; mathematically speaking, they're the original operands modulo 9.)
4. Apply the originally specified operation to the two condensed operands, and then apply the summing-of-digits procedure to the result of the operation.
5. Sum the digits of the result you originally obtained for the original calculation.
6. If the result of step 4 does not equal the result of step 5, then the original answer is wrong. If the two results match, then the original answer may be right, though it isn't guaranteed to be.
Example * Say we've calculated that 6338 × 79 equals 500702
1. Sum the digits of 6338: (6 + 3 = 9, so count that as 0) + 3 + 8 = 11
2. Iterate as needed: 1 + 1 = 2
3. Sum the digits of 79: 7 + (9 counted as 0) = 7
4. Perform the original operation on the condensed operands, and sum digits: 2 × 7 = 14; 1 + 4 = 5
5. Sum the digits of 500702: 5 + 0 + 0 + (7 + 0 + 2 = 9, which counts as 0) = 5
6. 5 = 5, so there's a good chance that we were right that 6338 × 79 equals 500702.
You can use the same procedure with multiple operands; just repeat steps 1 and 2 for each operand.
This technique works even for addition, subraction and division.
souce: Wikipedia
When all things return to the One, even gold loses its value. But when the One returns to all things, even the pebbles sparkle - Zen Proverb
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Bamboozling Bamboo
We all know that Bamboo are woody evergreen grass and have amazing properties. Today we shall see some not so known facts about Bamboo:
1. Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth; it has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 121 cm (47.6 inches) in a 24-hour period,and can also reach maximal growth rate exceeding one meter (39 inches) per hour for short periods of time.
2. Although some bamboos flower every year, most species flower infrequently. In fact, many bamboos only flower at intervals as long as 60 or 120 years.
3. The bamboo shoot in its fermented state (called khorisa) forms an important ingredient in the cuisine of Assam.
4. In Ayurveda, the Indian system of traditional medicine, the silicious concretion found in the culms of the bamboo stem is called banslochan. It is known as tabashir or tawashir in Unani-Tibb the Indo-Persian system of Medicine.
5. In tropical climates bamboo is used in elements of house construction, construction scaffolding, as a substitute for steel reinforcing rods in concrete construction.
6. It has also been documented that in World War II, Japanese troops tortured U.S. soldiers by removing their fingernails with bamboo.
7. Bamboo absorbs nearly 5 times the amount of greenhouse gases and produces 35% more oxygen than the same amount of trees. It is critical in the fight to end global warming. Bamboo is rain-fed only and helps to reduce soil erosion. It is a grass, so it regenerates without the need for replanting.
8. There have been several breakthroughs in the use of bamboo as an alternative fuel. In this capacity it is most widely known for charcoal. In 2008 one U.S. Company (Lorachell) in a collaborative effort with Vietnam has successfully tested bamboo use as an alternative bio mass fuel. The Bamboo is chipped and fermented producing a biogas.
9. The fiber of bamboo has been used to make paper in China since early times. A high quality hand-made paper is still produced in small quantities. Coarse bamboo paper is still used to make spirit money in many Chinese communities.
10.In the Philippine creation myth, legend tells that the first man and the first woman each emerged from split bamboo stems on an island created after the battle of the elemental forces (Sky and Ocean).
HMM.. To top it all, One of Thomas Edison's first commercially successful incandescent lamps used a filament of carbonized bamboo.
Source:Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
Cry who will, laugh who can.
- Zen Proverb
1. Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth; it has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 121 cm (47.6 inches) in a 24-hour period,and can also reach maximal growth rate exceeding one meter (39 inches) per hour for short periods of time.
2. Although some bamboos flower every year, most species flower infrequently. In fact, many bamboos only flower at intervals as long as 60 or 120 years.
3. The bamboo shoot in its fermented state (called khorisa) forms an important ingredient in the cuisine of Assam.
4. In Ayurveda, the Indian system of traditional medicine, the silicious concretion found in the culms of the bamboo stem is called banslochan. It is known as tabashir or tawashir in Unani-Tibb the Indo-Persian system of Medicine.
5. In tropical climates bamboo is used in elements of house construction, construction scaffolding, as a substitute for steel reinforcing rods in concrete construction.
6. It has also been documented that in World War II, Japanese troops tortured U.S. soldiers by removing their fingernails with bamboo.
7. Bamboo absorbs nearly 5 times the amount of greenhouse gases and produces 35% more oxygen than the same amount of trees. It is critical in the fight to end global warming. Bamboo is rain-fed only and helps to reduce soil erosion. It is a grass, so it regenerates without the need for replanting.
8. There have been several breakthroughs in the use of bamboo as an alternative fuel. In this capacity it is most widely known for charcoal. In 2008 one U.S. Company (Lorachell) in a collaborative effort with Vietnam has successfully tested bamboo use as an alternative bio mass fuel. The Bamboo is chipped and fermented producing a biogas.
9. The fiber of bamboo has been used to make paper in China since early times. A high quality hand-made paper is still produced in small quantities. Coarse bamboo paper is still used to make spirit money in many Chinese communities.
10.In the Philippine creation myth, legend tells that the first man and the first woman each emerged from split bamboo stems on an island created after the battle of the elemental forces (Sky and Ocean).
HMM.. To top it all, One of Thomas Edison's first commercially successful incandescent lamps used a filament of carbonized bamboo.
Source:Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
Cry who will, laugh who can.
- Zen Proverb
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Celebrity worship Syndrome
We would have seen people who are extremely devoted to actors or actress, especially in south India. This is a type of disorder. Just read on.
Celebrity Worship Syndrome is an obsessive-addictive disorder in which a person becomes overly involved with the details of a celebrity's personal life.
Psychologists have indicated that though many people obsess over glamorous film, television, sport and pop stars, others have unlikely icons such as politicians or authors. The only common factor between them is that they are all figures in the public eye (i.e., celebrities). The term Celebrity Worship Syndrome is in fact a misnomer.
Psychologists in the U.S.A. and UK. created a celebrity worship scale to rate the problems.samples have suggested there are 3 different aspects to celebrity worship
Entertainment-social: This dimension comprises attitudes that fans are attracted to a favorite celebrity because of their perceived ability to entertain and become a social focus such as “I love to talk with others who admire my favorite celebrity” and “I like watching and hearing about my favorite celebrity when I am with a large group of people”.
Intense-personal: The intense-personal aspect of celebrity worship reflects intensive and compulsive feelings about the celebrity, akin to the obsessional tendencies of fans often referred to in the literature; for example “I share with my favorite celebrity a special bond that cannot be described in words” and “When something bad happens to my favorite celebrity I feel like it happened to me’”.
Borderline-pathological: This dimension is typified by uncontrollable behaviors and fantasies regarding scenarios involving their celebrities, such as “I have frequent thoughts about my favorite celebrity, even when I don’t want to” and “my favorite celebrity would immediately come to my rescue if I needed help”.
Evidence indicates that poor mental health is correlated with celebrity worship. There is evidence to suggest that the intense-personal celebrity worship dimension was related to higher levels of depression and anxiety. Higher levels of stress, negative affect, and reports of illness also have been attributed to it. Both these studies showed no evidence for a significant relationship between either the entertainment-social or the borderline-pathological dimensions of celebrity worship and mental health.
Among three separate U.K. samples (adolescents, students and older adults) individuals selected a celebrity of their own sex whose body/figure they liked and admired, and then completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale along with two measures of body image. Significant relationships were found between attitudes toward celebrities and body image among female adolescents only. The findings suggested that, in female adolescence, there is an interaction between intense-personal celebrity worship and body image between the ages of 14 and 16 years, and some tentative evidence is found to suggest that this relationship disappears at the onset of adulthood, 17 to 20 years.
Though low levels of celebrity worship (entertainment-social) are not associated with any of the clinical measures, medium levels of celebrity worship (intense-personal) are related to fantasy proneness (around 10% of the shared variance), while high levels of celebrity worship (borderline-pathological) share a greater association with fantasy proneness (around 14% of the shared variance) and dissociation (around 3% of the shared variance, though the effect size of this is small and most probably due to the large sample size). This finding suggests that as celebrity worship becomes more intense, and the individual perceives having a relationship with the celebrity, the more the individual is prone to fantasies.
hmmm...Are you trying to recall something or someone?
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
Better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one
- Zen Proverb.
Celebrity Worship Syndrome is an obsessive-addictive disorder in which a person becomes overly involved with the details of a celebrity's personal life.
Psychologists have indicated that though many people obsess over glamorous film, television, sport and pop stars, others have unlikely icons such as politicians or authors. The only common factor between them is that they are all figures in the public eye (i.e., celebrities). The term Celebrity Worship Syndrome is in fact a misnomer.
Psychologists in the U.S.A. and UK. created a celebrity worship scale to rate the problems.samples have suggested there are 3 different aspects to celebrity worship
Entertainment-social: This dimension comprises attitudes that fans are attracted to a favorite celebrity because of their perceived ability to entertain and become a social focus such as “I love to talk with others who admire my favorite celebrity” and “I like watching and hearing about my favorite celebrity when I am with a large group of people”.
Intense-personal: The intense-personal aspect of celebrity worship reflects intensive and compulsive feelings about the celebrity, akin to the obsessional tendencies of fans often referred to in the literature; for example “I share with my favorite celebrity a special bond that cannot be described in words” and “When something bad happens to my favorite celebrity I feel like it happened to me’”.
Borderline-pathological: This dimension is typified by uncontrollable behaviors and fantasies regarding scenarios involving their celebrities, such as “I have frequent thoughts about my favorite celebrity, even when I don’t want to” and “my favorite celebrity would immediately come to my rescue if I needed help”.
Evidence indicates that poor mental health is correlated with celebrity worship. There is evidence to suggest that the intense-personal celebrity worship dimension was related to higher levels of depression and anxiety. Higher levels of stress, negative affect, and reports of illness also have been attributed to it. Both these studies showed no evidence for a significant relationship between either the entertainment-social or the borderline-pathological dimensions of celebrity worship and mental health.
Among three separate U.K. samples (adolescents, students and older adults) individuals selected a celebrity of their own sex whose body/figure they liked and admired, and then completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale along with two measures of body image. Significant relationships were found between attitudes toward celebrities and body image among female adolescents only. The findings suggested that, in female adolescence, there is an interaction between intense-personal celebrity worship and body image between the ages of 14 and 16 years, and some tentative evidence is found to suggest that this relationship disappears at the onset of adulthood, 17 to 20 years.
Though low levels of celebrity worship (entertainment-social) are not associated with any of the clinical measures, medium levels of celebrity worship (intense-personal) are related to fantasy proneness (around 10% of the shared variance), while high levels of celebrity worship (borderline-pathological) share a greater association with fantasy proneness (around 14% of the shared variance) and dissociation (around 3% of the shared variance, though the effect size of this is small and most probably due to the large sample size). This finding suggests that as celebrity worship becomes more intense, and the individual perceives having a relationship with the celebrity, the more the individual is prone to fantasies.
hmmm...Are you trying to recall something or someone?
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
Better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one
- Zen Proverb.
Monday, December 7, 2009
How hot is your chilli?
We have all at some point of time bitten chillies in our food and whined that it was very "hot". But not many of us know that the hotness or "Piquancy" (which is the correct term) of pepper or chillies are measured on a certain scale.
It is measured in a scale called Scoville scale. The scale is named after its creator, American chemist Wilbur Scoville, who developed a test for rating the pungency of chili peppers. His method, which he devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.
In Scoville's method, as originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the "Piquancy" is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper or a bell pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable, even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chilis, such as habaneros, have a rating of 200,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 200,000-fold before the capsaicin present is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity.
Pungency values for any pepper, stated in Scoville units, are imprecise, due to expected variation within a species—easily by a factor of 10 or more—depending on seed lineage, climate and even soil (this is especially true of habaneros). The inaccuracies described in the measurement methods above also contribute to the imprecision of these values
An additional trivia for you. Naga Jolokia (naga morich, bhut jolokia), the Indian chili tested hottest in the world at 1,040,000 SHU.
If somebody tells you that he had bitten the hottest chilli in the world, ask them what is the SHu unit.
Mohan Rao.
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell - Confucius
It is measured in a scale called Scoville scale. The scale is named after its creator, American chemist Wilbur Scoville, who developed a test for rating the pungency of chili peppers. His method, which he devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.
In Scoville's method, as originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the "Piquancy" is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper or a bell pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable, even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chilis, such as habaneros, have a rating of 200,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 200,000-fold before the capsaicin present is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity.
Pungency values for any pepper, stated in Scoville units, are imprecise, due to expected variation within a species—easily by a factor of 10 or more—depending on seed lineage, climate and even soil (this is especially true of habaneros). The inaccuracies described in the measurement methods above also contribute to the imprecision of these values
An additional trivia for you. Naga Jolokia (naga morich, bhut jolokia), the Indian chili tested hottest in the world at 1,040,000 SHU.
If somebody tells you that he had bitten the hottest chilli in the world, ask them what is the SHu unit.
Mohan Rao.
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell - Confucius
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Duties of a king as in Arthashastra
We all know that Arthashastra is the world treatise on Political science. It clearly defines the duties of the king.
Duties of the King
If the king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is slack (and lazy in performing his duties), the subjects will also be lax and thereby eat into his wealth. Besides, a lazy king will easily fall into the hands of enemies. Hence the maharaj should himself always be energetic. He shall divide the day and the night, each into eight periods of one and half hours, and perform his duties as follows:
First 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise Receive reports on defence, revenue, expenditure
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise Public audiences, to hear petitions of city & country people
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise & Receive revenues & tributes; appoint ministers and other high officials & allot tasks Last 1 1/2 hrs. before noon to them
First 1 1/2 hrs. after noon Write letters & dispatches, confer with councillors, receive secret information from spies
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after noon Personal: recreation, time for contemplation
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after noon & Inspect & review forces; Consult with Chief of Defence
Last 1 1/2 hrs. before sunset
First 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Interview with secret agents
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Personal: bath, meals, study
Third & Fourth 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Retire to the bed chamber to the sound of music, sleep
& First 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight After waking to the sound of music, meditate on political matters & on work to be done
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight Consult with councilors, send out spies
Last 1 1/2 hrs. before sunrise Religious, household & personal duties, meetings with his teacher, adviser on rituals, purohitas, personal physician, chief cooks & astrologer treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy
The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
Confucius
Duties of the King
If the king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is slack (and lazy in performing his duties), the subjects will also be lax and thereby eat into his wealth. Besides, a lazy king will easily fall into the hands of enemies. Hence the maharaj should himself always be energetic. He shall divide the day and the night, each into eight periods of one and half hours, and perform his duties as follows:
First 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise Receive reports on defence, revenue, expenditure
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise Public audiences, to hear petitions of city & country people
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise & Receive revenues & tributes; appoint ministers and other high officials & allot tasks Last 1 1/2 hrs. before noon to them
First 1 1/2 hrs. after noon Write letters & dispatches, confer with councillors, receive secret information from spies
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after noon Personal: recreation, time for contemplation
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after noon & Inspect & review forces; Consult with Chief of Defence
Last 1 1/2 hrs. before sunset
First 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Interview with secret agents
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Personal: bath, meals, study
Third & Fourth 1 1/2 hrs. after sunset Retire to the bed chamber to the sound of music, sleep
& First 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight After waking to the sound of music, meditate on political matters & on work to be done
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after midnight Consult with councilors, send out spies
Last 1 1/2 hrs. before sunrise Religious, household & personal duties, meetings with his teacher, adviser on rituals, purohitas, personal physician, chief cooks & astrologer treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy
The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
Confucius
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The astras
we have all enjoyed the mythological serials in TV, especially the fight scenes where they fight arrow with arrow. They call the arrows by different names. They called it the astra. An astra was a supernatural weapon, presided over by a specific deity. The astras were generally invoked into arrows, although they could potentially be used with anything—Ashwatthama invoked an astra using a blade of grass as his weapon
Now let us see what these astras meant:
Aindraastra - Would bring about a 'shower' of arrows from the sky.
Agneyastra - The weapon discharged would emit flames inextinguishable through normal means.
Varunaastra - The weapon discharged would release torrential volumes of water. This weapon is commonly mentioned as used to counter the Agneyastra.
Nagastra - The weapon would have an inerring aim and take on the shape of a snake, proving deadly upon impact.
Vayvayaastra - Bring about a gale capable of lifting armies off the ground.
Suryastra - Create a dazzling light that would dispel any darkness about.
Vajrastra - Target would be struck with bolts of lightning (vajra referring to Indra's thunderbolt).
Mohiniastra - Dispel any form of maya or sorcery in the vicinity.
Twashtarastra - When used against a group of opponents (such as an army), would cause them to mistake each other for enemies and fight each other
Pramohana - Would cause entire hosts/armies to collapse in a trance.
Brahmaastra - Would destroy entire hosts at once. Could also counter most other astras.
Brahmasirsha - Capable of killing devas. Was used by Ashwatthama on Parikshit.
Narayanaastra - Would create showers of arrows and discs. The astra's power would increase with the resistance offered to it. This weapon had to be obtained from Vishnu directly, and could be used only once.
Vaishnavaastra- Would destroy target completely, irrespective of target's nature. Infallible. This weapon had to be obtained from Vishnu directly.
Pashupatastra - Would destroy target completely, irrespective of target's nature. Infallible. This weapon had to be obtained from Shiva directly.
Source:www.urday.com
Mohan Rao.
Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.
- Zen proverb
Now let us see what these astras meant:
Aindraastra - Would bring about a 'shower' of arrows from the sky.
Agneyastra - The weapon discharged would emit flames inextinguishable through normal means.
Varunaastra - The weapon discharged would release torrential volumes of water. This weapon is commonly mentioned as used to counter the Agneyastra.
Nagastra - The weapon would have an inerring aim and take on the shape of a snake, proving deadly upon impact.
Vayvayaastra - Bring about a gale capable of lifting armies off the ground.
Suryastra - Create a dazzling light that would dispel any darkness about.
Vajrastra - Target would be struck with bolts of lightning (vajra referring to Indra's thunderbolt).
Mohiniastra - Dispel any form of maya or sorcery in the vicinity.
Twashtarastra - When used against a group of opponents (such as an army), would cause them to mistake each other for enemies and fight each other
Pramohana - Would cause entire hosts/armies to collapse in a trance.
Brahmaastra - Would destroy entire hosts at once. Could also counter most other astras.
Brahmasirsha - Capable of killing devas. Was used by Ashwatthama on Parikshit.
Narayanaastra - Would create showers of arrows and discs. The astra's power would increase with the resistance offered to it. This weapon had to be obtained from Vishnu directly, and could be used only once.
Vaishnavaastra- Would destroy target completely, irrespective of target's nature. Infallible. This weapon had to be obtained from Vishnu directly.
Pashupatastra - Would destroy target completely, irrespective of target's nature. Infallible. This weapon had to be obtained from Shiva directly.
Source:www.urday.com
Mohan Rao.
Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.
- Zen proverb
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Anti-flirt club
Do you hate flirting?(Even if you hate to see others flirting), then you should know this.
In the early 1920s a group of women who were so frustrated with flirting, went to extent of creating a club for it.
The Anti-Flirt Club was an American club active in Washington, D.C. during the early 1920s. The purpose of the club was to protect young women and girls who had received unwelcome attention from men in automobiles and on street corners. The Anti-flirt Club launched an "Anti-flirt" week which began on March 4th, 1923.
The club had a series of rules, which were intended as sound and serious advice. These were:
1. Don't flirt: those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.
2. Don't accept rides from flirting motorists - they don't invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don't use your eyes for ogling - they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don't go out with men you don't know - they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
5. Don't wink - a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
6. Don't smile at flirtatious strangers- save them for people you know.
7. Don't annex all the men you can get - by flirting with many you may lose out on the one.
8. Don't fall for the slick, dandified cake eater - the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
9. Don't let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to
forget they are fathers.
10. Don't ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.
Though the club slowly vanished, it is worth knowing because we come to know how women's thought have evolved over a period of time.
Info courtesy:Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
- Zen Proverb
In the early 1920s a group of women who were so frustrated with flirting, went to extent of creating a club for it.
The Anti-Flirt Club was an American club active in Washington, D.C. during the early 1920s. The purpose of the club was to protect young women and girls who had received unwelcome attention from men in automobiles and on street corners. The Anti-flirt Club launched an "Anti-flirt" week which began on March 4th, 1923.
The club had a series of rules, which were intended as sound and serious advice. These were:
1. Don't flirt: those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.
2. Don't accept rides from flirting motorists - they don't invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don't use your eyes for ogling - they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don't go out with men you don't know - they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
5. Don't wink - a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
6. Don't smile at flirtatious strangers- save them for people you know.
7. Don't annex all the men you can get - by flirting with many you may lose out on the one.
8. Don't fall for the slick, dandified cake eater - the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
9. Don't let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to
forget they are fathers.
10. Don't ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.
Though the club slowly vanished, it is worth knowing because we come to know how women's thought have evolved over a period of time.
Info courtesy:Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
- Zen Proverb
Monday, November 30, 2009
Animal Clichés
We have all heard them. We've all used 'em: well-worn clichés about animals that we use as metaphors to describe one another. He's quiet as a mouse. She eats like a bird. But what do these pithy phrases tell us about animals? When it comes to accurately depicting animals, Let's take a look at some familiar animal clichés and see if there is a grain of truth, or just a grain of sand, in these pearls of wisdom.
QUIET AS A MOUSE: Most mice are pretty quiet, except when they are frightened into squeaking. But one species—the grasshopper mouse of the Midwest and the American Southwest—is known for the noise it makes. This mouse marks its territory in part by unleashing long, high-pitched squeals, just like tiny howling wolves. And although these rodents weigh less than half an ounce and scarcely project the look of a voracious hunter, but they're predators, hunting down insects, scorpions and sometimes even other rodents.
EYES LIKE A HAWK: This is what you want your optometrist to tell you. A hawk can see a rabbit from two miles away or a dime from 1,200 feet. The smallest object a human can see from 1,200 feet is a grapefruit.
BLIND AS A BAT: "All bats can see. But most species—about 70 percent—augment their vision with echolocation." Many bats have tiny eyes, which probably gave rise to the belief that they are blind. In experiments, bats with their vision completely obscured have been able to fly across rooms crisscrossed wall to wall with string and not become entangled.
CRAZY AS A COOT: The coot's reputation may be founded on several behavioral characteristics. Coots splash when they spot predators, but that's hardly crazy. The behavior that earned them their place in the world of clichés is probably their method of taking flight. Because their wings are stubby, coots can't get aloft efficiently. They run along the surface of the water, flapping and squawking and generally raising a ruckus long before they rise into the air. For short flights of 100 yards or so, they may not even get airborne. They just run across the water. Crazy? Not likely, but it sure looks that way.
HUNGRY AS A BEAR: Now that's hungry. In fall when salmon first arrive in the streams and grizzlies are most hungry, a big male can eat up to 90 pounds of fish in a single day. A hungry polar bear may be able to eat more than 100 pounds of blubber and meat in a day. So if you have friends who eat like polar bears, you might tell them to watch their cholesterol. And remind them that about 80 percent of the grizzly bear's diet is made up of plenty of greens, fruit and tubers—some 200 plant species in all.
BUSY AS A BEE: Bees are very busy. All the bees in a hive have assigned duties. For the queen and also the males, called drones, the tasks are simple. The queen lays eggs, producing more bees, and the drones fertilize the queen. But the real busy bees are the workers, which are undeveloped females. Workers gather nectar to make honey, build the wax combs in which larvae are raised, defend the hive, feed the queen and the larvae, and when the hive gets too warm, they cool things down by flapping their wings—up to 11,000 times per minute. A big hive will include as many as 60,000 busy workers.
WISE AS AN OWL: Wise as an owl looks might be a better way to phrase it. Hawks and crows are often thought of as the whiz kids of the bird world, but if appearances count, owls are at the head of their class. Owls have eyes that face forward similar to ours and they look calm, indifferent and scholarly, like a judge. The owl's reputation for wisdom traces to Greek mythology. Athena, goddess of wisdom, traveled with an owl on her shoulder. The link of owls to wisdom, at least in ancient Greece, apparently dates to 490 B.C., when King Darius I of Persia was attacking Athens. In a battle on the Plain of Marathon, 10,000 Greeks fought back and seemed to be losing when an owl soared over the field and landed on the shoulder of the Greek general, Miltiades. The Greeks took this to mean that Athena was on their side and, heartened, won the battle. After that, owls were popular in Athens. The wealthy even strolled around town with owls in cages or perched on their shoulders.
BIG AS A MOOSE: That's plenty big. The moose is the largest member of the deer family. The biggest moose come from Alaska, where they may weigh more than 1,800 pounds and stand more than 7.5 feet tall at the shoulder.
EATS LIKE A BIRD: If someone says you eat like a bird and has songbirds in mind, you might consider going on a diet. Birds are voracious eaters. Most birds eat 25 to 50 percent of their body weight daily. Birds have high metabolisms, burning up calories faster than a long-distance runner. Hummingbirds are probably the metabolic champs, maintaining their wing- blurring flight by eating almost continuously all day long, putting away a meal of flower nectar—supplemented with the occasional spider or insect—every 10 minutes. They must eat about twice their body weight daily, the equivalent of a 150-pound man chowing down about 1,000 quarter-pound burgers a day, bread and all.
LAZY AS A SLOTH: Sloths, those tree-hanging denizens of Latin American rain forests that look like little bears suspended upside down from branches, are not lazy. They're just slow. And their slowness is a product of their metabolism, which is only 40 to 45 percent of what a biologist would expect to see in an animal a sloth's size. Everything they do is slow. On average, a sloth will move about 125 feet per day. Sloths even digest slowly, taking a full month to process the food in a full stomach.
Animal clichés, right or wrong, are the mementos of a time when we knew far less about wildlife than we do now. In many cases the phrases are what remains of long-ago beliefs and mistaken ideas. What say?
Source: nwf.org
Mohan Rao.
The mad mind does not halt. If it halts, it is enlightenment.
- Zen Proverb
QUIET AS A MOUSE: Most mice are pretty quiet, except when they are frightened into squeaking. But one species—the grasshopper mouse of the Midwest and the American Southwest—is known for the noise it makes. This mouse marks its territory in part by unleashing long, high-pitched squeals, just like tiny howling wolves. And although these rodents weigh less than half an ounce and scarcely project the look of a voracious hunter, but they're predators, hunting down insects, scorpions and sometimes even other rodents.
EYES LIKE A HAWK: This is what you want your optometrist to tell you. A hawk can see a rabbit from two miles away or a dime from 1,200 feet. The smallest object a human can see from 1,200 feet is a grapefruit.
BLIND AS A BAT: "All bats can see. But most species—about 70 percent—augment their vision with echolocation." Many bats have tiny eyes, which probably gave rise to the belief that they are blind. In experiments, bats with their vision completely obscured have been able to fly across rooms crisscrossed wall to wall with string and not become entangled.
CRAZY AS A COOT: The coot's reputation may be founded on several behavioral characteristics. Coots splash when they spot predators, but that's hardly crazy. The behavior that earned them their place in the world of clichés is probably their method of taking flight. Because their wings are stubby, coots can't get aloft efficiently. They run along the surface of the water, flapping and squawking and generally raising a ruckus long before they rise into the air. For short flights of 100 yards or so, they may not even get airborne. They just run across the water. Crazy? Not likely, but it sure looks that way.
HUNGRY AS A BEAR: Now that's hungry. In fall when salmon first arrive in the streams and grizzlies are most hungry, a big male can eat up to 90 pounds of fish in a single day. A hungry polar bear may be able to eat more than 100 pounds of blubber and meat in a day. So if you have friends who eat like polar bears, you might tell them to watch their cholesterol. And remind them that about 80 percent of the grizzly bear's diet is made up of plenty of greens, fruit and tubers—some 200 plant species in all.
BUSY AS A BEE: Bees are very busy. All the bees in a hive have assigned duties. For the queen and also the males, called drones, the tasks are simple. The queen lays eggs, producing more bees, and the drones fertilize the queen. But the real busy bees are the workers, which are undeveloped females. Workers gather nectar to make honey, build the wax combs in which larvae are raised, defend the hive, feed the queen and the larvae, and when the hive gets too warm, they cool things down by flapping their wings—up to 11,000 times per minute. A big hive will include as many as 60,000 busy workers.
WISE AS AN OWL: Wise as an owl looks might be a better way to phrase it. Hawks and crows are often thought of as the whiz kids of the bird world, but if appearances count, owls are at the head of their class. Owls have eyes that face forward similar to ours and they look calm, indifferent and scholarly, like a judge. The owl's reputation for wisdom traces to Greek mythology. Athena, goddess of wisdom, traveled with an owl on her shoulder. The link of owls to wisdom, at least in ancient Greece, apparently dates to 490 B.C., when King Darius I of Persia was attacking Athens. In a battle on the Plain of Marathon, 10,000 Greeks fought back and seemed to be losing when an owl soared over the field and landed on the shoulder of the Greek general, Miltiades. The Greeks took this to mean that Athena was on their side and, heartened, won the battle. After that, owls were popular in Athens. The wealthy even strolled around town with owls in cages or perched on their shoulders.
BIG AS A MOOSE: That's plenty big. The moose is the largest member of the deer family. The biggest moose come from Alaska, where they may weigh more than 1,800 pounds and stand more than 7.5 feet tall at the shoulder.
EATS LIKE A BIRD: If someone says you eat like a bird and has songbirds in mind, you might consider going on a diet. Birds are voracious eaters. Most birds eat 25 to 50 percent of their body weight daily. Birds have high metabolisms, burning up calories faster than a long-distance runner. Hummingbirds are probably the metabolic champs, maintaining their wing- blurring flight by eating almost continuously all day long, putting away a meal of flower nectar—supplemented with the occasional spider or insect—every 10 minutes. They must eat about twice their body weight daily, the equivalent of a 150-pound man chowing down about 1,000 quarter-pound burgers a day, bread and all.
LAZY AS A SLOTH: Sloths, those tree-hanging denizens of Latin American rain forests that look like little bears suspended upside down from branches, are not lazy. They're just slow. And their slowness is a product of their metabolism, which is only 40 to 45 percent of what a biologist would expect to see in an animal a sloth's size. Everything they do is slow. On average, a sloth will move about 125 feet per day. Sloths even digest slowly, taking a full month to process the food in a full stomach.
Animal clichés, right or wrong, are the mementos of a time when we knew far less about wildlife than we do now. In many cases the phrases are what remains of long-ago beliefs and mistaken ideas. What say?
Source: nwf.org
Mohan Rao.
The mad mind does not halt. If it halts, it is enlightenment.
- Zen Proverb
Saturday, November 28, 2009
The man they could not hang
Good Morning. Here is the daily dose for the day.
Throughout history there have been many magical and mysterious men whose legends survive for ever. But the man we are going to see today is a mystery man from our very recent past. Just read on.
For the past 100 years, the myths surrounding John 'Babbacombe' Lee's story have taken on a life of their own. Lee, nicknamed The Man They Could Not Hang, came to prominence when he was convicted of murdering his employer, Emma Keyse, and setting fire to her Babbacombe home, called The Glen.
During his trial, the prosecution portrayed Lee as a depraved lunatic capable of smashing an old lady's head with an axe, then slashing her throat with a knife. The judge, in passing sentence of death, remarked how calm Lee's demeanour had been throughout the trial.
"In the days leading up to the date of execution, Lee read the Bible prodigiously and proclaimed his innocence. It is said he told the prison chaplain the real culprit was the lover of his half-sister, Elizabeth Harris, who was cook at The Glen and expecting a child which was later delivered out of wedlock in Newton Abbot Workhouse."
The prison governor's logbook states on the morning of the execution, as Lee approached the gallows trapdoor, he told two prison guards he had dreamt 'three times the bolt was drawn, and three times the bolt failed to act'.
Lee was a lonely figure on the gallows — but each time an attempt was made to open the trapdoor, it stuck. After each failed attempt the trapdoor was tested and it opened normally, but when Lee stood on it again the door would not open. Three times this happened, each with the same outcome.
The Home Secretary told Parliament he could not expect a man to 'twice face the pangs of imminent death'. Lee began a 23-year prison sentence in Exeter, and from that day the myths about his life spread across the world.
Some theories include:
1. Witchcraft and devilish incantations were often talked of when people tried to reason Lee's escape from death.
2. Other people told stories of how Lee's mother had visited the church graveyard near her home at Abbotskerswell, recited the Lord's Prayer backwards and summoned the Devil to save her son.
3. In 1905, the witchcraft theory gained credence from a surprising source — the Archdeacon of Westminster, Basil Wilberforce.
The editor of The Times, who poured scorn on the Home Secretary's decision to eventually reprieve Lee, said Lee's story would 'encourage foolish and superstitious people to believe, in spite of evidence as clear as noonday, that Lee was wrongfully convicted'.
After his release, Lee went to London, where he then eloped with a barmaid, abandoning his wife who was expecting their second child. He then seemingly disappeared without trace — having reportedly visited Australia, America and Canada — and Mike Holgate only recently discovered that Lee died in 1945.
Records show Lee died, aged 80, on March 19, 1945. The legend certainly did not die with Lee.
Source: thisissouthdevon.co.uk
Mohan Rao.
Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.
- Zen Proverb.
Throughout history there have been many magical and mysterious men whose legends survive for ever. But the man we are going to see today is a mystery man from our very recent past. Just read on.
For the past 100 years, the myths surrounding John 'Babbacombe' Lee's story have taken on a life of their own. Lee, nicknamed The Man They Could Not Hang, came to prominence when he was convicted of murdering his employer, Emma Keyse, and setting fire to her Babbacombe home, called The Glen.
During his trial, the prosecution portrayed Lee as a depraved lunatic capable of smashing an old lady's head with an axe, then slashing her throat with a knife. The judge, in passing sentence of death, remarked how calm Lee's demeanour had been throughout the trial.
"In the days leading up to the date of execution, Lee read the Bible prodigiously and proclaimed his innocence. It is said he told the prison chaplain the real culprit was the lover of his half-sister, Elizabeth Harris, who was cook at The Glen and expecting a child which was later delivered out of wedlock in Newton Abbot Workhouse."
The prison governor's logbook states on the morning of the execution, as Lee approached the gallows trapdoor, he told two prison guards he had dreamt 'three times the bolt was drawn, and three times the bolt failed to act'.
Lee was a lonely figure on the gallows — but each time an attempt was made to open the trapdoor, it stuck. After each failed attempt the trapdoor was tested and it opened normally, but when Lee stood on it again the door would not open. Three times this happened, each with the same outcome.
The Home Secretary told Parliament he could not expect a man to 'twice face the pangs of imminent death'. Lee began a 23-year prison sentence in Exeter, and from that day the myths about his life spread across the world.
Some theories include:
1. Witchcraft and devilish incantations were often talked of when people tried to reason Lee's escape from death.
2. Other people told stories of how Lee's mother had visited the church graveyard near her home at Abbotskerswell, recited the Lord's Prayer backwards and summoned the Devil to save her son.
3. In 1905, the witchcraft theory gained credence from a surprising source — the Archdeacon of Westminster, Basil Wilberforce.
The editor of The Times, who poured scorn on the Home Secretary's decision to eventually reprieve Lee, said Lee's story would 'encourage foolish and superstitious people to believe, in spite of evidence as clear as noonday, that Lee was wrongfully convicted'.
After his release, Lee went to London, where he then eloped with a barmaid, abandoning his wife who was expecting their second child. He then seemingly disappeared without trace — having reportedly visited Australia, America and Canada — and Mike Holgate only recently discovered that Lee died in 1945.
Records show Lee died, aged 80, on March 19, 1945. The legend certainly did not die with Lee.
Source: thisissouthdevon.co.uk
Mohan Rao.
Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.
- Zen Proverb.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Backronym
We have heard of acronym, but this is something many have unheard of Backronym (or bacronym or also retronym)
It is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing word or abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. Backronyms can be classified along various types. Note that these types are not all exclusive of each other, that is, a backronym can be mnemonic, pure, and recursive.
Pure Backronyms - It occurs when the root word was not previously or commonly known as an acronym or abbreviation Eg) Adidas has been written about in All Day I Dream About Sports: The Story of the Adidas Brand. Adidas comes from the name of the shoe company's founder, Adolf Dassler, whose nickname was Adi (Dassler).
Replacement Backronyms: Some backronyms are back-formed from an initialism or acronym that is an abbreviation with another meaning Eg) IBM is the official abbreviation for "International Business Machines", but is sometimes jokingly referred to as "I've been moved", used among many IBM employees because of the frequent position changes within the company
A recursive backronym:It is an abbreviation that refers to itself in the expression for which it stands. Eg) VISA — Visa International Service Association
Apronym
Many backronyms are apronyms, that is, the word itself is relevant to its associated phrase.[18] The relevance may be either serious or ironic.
Eg) The term BASE jumping, which was coined to signify a parachute jump from one of the bases building, antenna, span, or earth.
Anacronym
Some backronyms are replacements of other phrases that have become obsolete, either for technological, political or marketing reasons. The result is an anacronym.
Eg) DVDs were originally designed as media for audio-visual data, and as such the abbreviation originally stood for "Digital Video Disc". As the format inevitably came into common use for other data storage, a different semi-official expansion was created, namely "Digital Versatile Disc". However, "DVD" officially does not stand for anything.
Mohan Rao.
It is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing word or abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. Backronyms can be classified along various types. Note that these types are not all exclusive of each other, that is, a backronym can be mnemonic, pure, and recursive.
Pure Backronyms - It occurs when the root word was not previously or commonly known as an acronym or abbreviation Eg) Adidas has been written about in All Day I Dream About Sports: The Story of the Adidas Brand. Adidas comes from the name of the shoe company's founder, Adolf Dassler, whose nickname was Adi (Dassler).
Replacement Backronyms: Some backronyms are back-formed from an initialism or acronym that is an abbreviation with another meaning Eg) IBM is the official abbreviation for "International Business Machines", but is sometimes jokingly referred to as "I've been moved", used among many IBM employees because of the frequent position changes within the company
A recursive backronym:It is an abbreviation that refers to itself in the expression for which it stands. Eg) VISA — Visa International Service Association
Apronym
Many backronyms are apronyms, that is, the word itself is relevant to its associated phrase.[18] The relevance may be either serious or ironic.
Eg) The term BASE jumping, which was coined to signify a parachute jump from one of the bases building, antenna, span, or earth.
Anacronym
Some backronyms are replacements of other phrases that have become obsolete, either for technological, political or marketing reasons. The result is an anacronym.
Eg) DVDs were originally designed as media for audio-visual data, and as such the abbreviation originally stood for "Digital Video Disc". As the format inevitably came into common use for other data storage, a different semi-official expansion was created, namely "Digital Versatile Disc". However, "DVD" officially does not stand for anything.
Mohan Rao.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A frowned upon dace form
Sadir is a very ancient dance form of India with no exact date of origination. Some say that sculptural evidence points it's roots back to the fifth century AD.It is said to be artistic yoga as said in the scriptures, because it requires pure dedication.
During the Palava and Chola Dynasty (4Ad -12AD) the art of dancing flourished due to its immense patronage. The intimate association of dance with religion as ritual was established in the temples, and the institution of Devadasi was created
Local kings often invited temple dancers (devadasi) to dance in their courts, the occurrence of which created a new category of dancers -- rajanarthakis By the 18th century, the dance form of Tamil Nadu had crystallised into a distinct and separate style, called Dasiattam, because it was performed by the devadasis in temples.
The conquest of India by the British took its toll on the art as it did on everything else Indian. In the westerners eyes, the devadasi tradition was considered little better than prostitution and fell into disrepute.Under such a puritanical atmosphere, the classical science of dance was ignored, and a dancer was considered a woman of ill repute. An Act of the Madras Presidency banning temple dancing sounded the death knell for dance.
In the early 1930s, the rising national consciousness that had awaked across India led to reformation in the cultural spheres. A meeting was convened at the Music Academy at Alwarpet, Chennai, to save this art form. The first step taken was to give it a new name so as to give it a new lease of life. It was re-christened as "BHARATA NATYAM".
Mohan Rao.
The reverse side also has a reverse side
- Zen Proverb
During the Palava and Chola Dynasty (4Ad -12AD) the art of dancing flourished due to its immense patronage. The intimate association of dance with religion as ritual was established in the temples, and the institution of Devadasi was created
Local kings often invited temple dancers (devadasi) to dance in their courts, the occurrence of which created a new category of dancers -- rajanarthakis By the 18th century, the dance form of Tamil Nadu had crystallised into a distinct and separate style, called Dasiattam, because it was performed by the devadasis in temples.
The conquest of India by the British took its toll on the art as it did on everything else Indian. In the westerners eyes, the devadasi tradition was considered little better than prostitution and fell into disrepute.Under such a puritanical atmosphere, the classical science of dance was ignored, and a dancer was considered a woman of ill repute. An Act of the Madras Presidency banning temple dancing sounded the death knell for dance.
In the early 1930s, the rising national consciousness that had awaked across India led to reformation in the cultural spheres. A meeting was convened at the Music Academy at Alwarpet, Chennai, to save this art form. The first step taken was to give it a new name so as to give it a new lease of life. It was re-christened as "BHARATA NATYAM".
Mohan Rao.
The reverse side also has a reverse side
- Zen Proverb
Monday, November 23, 2009
Age of a Horse
Good Morning. Here is something useless to know for the day.
We all know that the young one of the horse is called as pony. But not many know that pony is a general term and there are further classifcations to it.
The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages:
Foal: a horse of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal that has been weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at 5 to 7 months of age, although foals can be weaned at 4 months with no adverse effects.
Yearling: a horse of either sex that is between one and two years old.
Colt: a male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt," when the term actually only refers to young male horses.
Filly: a female horse under the age of four.
Mare: a female horse four years old and older.
Stallion: a non-castrated male horse four years old and older. Some people, particularly in the UK, refer to a stallion as a "horse".
A ridgling or "rig" is a male horse which has an undescended testicle or is improperly castrated.[16] If both testicles are not descended, the horse may appear to be a gelding, but will still behave like a stallion.
Gelding: a castrated male horse of any age, though for convenience sake, many people also refer to a young gelding under the age of four as a "colt".
In horse racing, the definitions of colt, filly, mare, and stallion may differ from those given above. In the UK, Thoroughbred horse racing defines a colt as a male less than five years old, and a filly as a female less than five years old. In the USA, both Thoroughbred racing and harness racing defines colts and fillies as four years old and younger.
Now are you Confused about what to call a horse. You better be.
source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
If you want to know your past--look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future--look into your present actions. - Zen Proverb
We all know that the young one of the horse is called as pony. But not many know that pony is a general term and there are further classifcations to it.
The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages:
Foal: a horse of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal that has been weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at 5 to 7 months of age, although foals can be weaned at 4 months with no adverse effects.
Yearling: a horse of either sex that is between one and two years old.
Colt: a male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt," when the term actually only refers to young male horses.
Filly: a female horse under the age of four.
Mare: a female horse four years old and older.
Stallion: a non-castrated male horse four years old and older. Some people, particularly in the UK, refer to a stallion as a "horse".
A ridgling or "rig" is a male horse which has an undescended testicle or is improperly castrated.[16] If both testicles are not descended, the horse may appear to be a gelding, but will still behave like a stallion.
Gelding: a castrated male horse of any age, though for convenience sake, many people also refer to a young gelding under the age of four as a "colt".
In horse racing, the definitions of colt, filly, mare, and stallion may differ from those given above. In the UK, Thoroughbred horse racing defines a colt as a male less than five years old, and a filly as a female less than five years old. In the USA, both Thoroughbred racing and harness racing defines colts and fillies as four years old and younger.
Now are you Confused about what to call a horse. You better be.
source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
If you want to know your past--look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future--look into your present actions. - Zen Proverb
Friday, November 20, 2009
Access Control
We all have been used to passwords. we have used them for our log-ins, emails etc. The passwords are primarily used for access control to your files. But did you know that there are also other methods available for access control. Just read on.
Single-use passwords. Having passwords which are only valid once makes many potential attacks ineffective. Most users find single use passwords extremely inconvenient. They have, however, been widely implemented in personal online banking, where they are known as TANs. As most home users only perform a small number of transactions each week, the single use issue has not led to intolerable customer dissatisfaction in this case.
Security tokens are similar in some ways to single-use passwords, but the value to be entered is displayed on a small (generally pocketable) item and changes every minute or so.
Access controls based on public key cryptography e.g. Secure Shell. The necessary keys are usually too large to memorize (but see proposal Passmaze) and must be stored on a local computer, security token or portable memory device, such as a flash disk or floppy disk.
Biometric methods promise authentication based on unalterable personal characteristics, but currently (2008) have high error rates and require additional hardware to scan, for example, fingerprints, irises, etc. They have proven easy to spoof in some famous incidents testing commercially available systems, for example, the gummie fingerprint spoof demonstration,[10] and, because these characteristics are unalterable, they cannot be changed if compromised; this is a highly important consideration in access control as a compromised access token is necessarily insecure.
Single sign-on technology is claimed to eliminate the need for having multiple passwords. Such schemes do not relieve user and administrators from choosing reasonable single passwords, nor system designers or administrators from ensuring that private access control information passed among systems enabling single sign-on is secure against attack. As yet, no satisfactory standard has been developed.
Envaulting technology is a password-free way to secure data on e.g. removable storage devices such as flash drives. Instead of user passwords, access control is based on the user's access to a network resource.
Non-text-based passwords, such as graphical passwords or mouse-movement based passwords. Another system requires users to select a series of faces as a password, utilizing the human brain's ability to recall faces easily.. So far, these are promising, but are not widely used.
Graphical passwords are an alternative means of authentication for log-in intended to be used in place of conventional password; they use images instead of text. In some implementations the user is required to pick from a series of images in the correct sequence in order to gain access. While some believe that graphical passwords would be harder to crack, others suggest that people will be just as likely to pick common images or sequences as they are to pick common passwords.
2D Key (2-Dimensional Key) is a 2D matrix-like key input method having the key styles of multiline passphrase, crossword, ASCII/Unicode art, with optional textual semantic noises, to create big password/key beyond 128 bits to realize the MePKC (Memorizable Public-Key Cryptography) using fully memorizable private key upon the current private key management technologies like encrypted private key, split private key, and roaming private key.
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud. - Confucius
Single-use passwords. Having passwords which are only valid once makes many potential attacks ineffective. Most users find single use passwords extremely inconvenient. They have, however, been widely implemented in personal online banking, where they are known as TANs. As most home users only perform a small number of transactions each week, the single use issue has not led to intolerable customer dissatisfaction in this case.
Security tokens are similar in some ways to single-use passwords, but the value to be entered is displayed on a small (generally pocketable) item and changes every minute or so.
Access controls based on public key cryptography e.g. Secure Shell. The necessary keys are usually too large to memorize (but see proposal Passmaze) and must be stored on a local computer, security token or portable memory device, such as a flash disk or floppy disk.
Biometric methods promise authentication based on unalterable personal characteristics, but currently (2008) have high error rates and require additional hardware to scan, for example, fingerprints, irises, etc. They have proven easy to spoof in some famous incidents testing commercially available systems, for example, the gummie fingerprint spoof demonstration,[10] and, because these characteristics are unalterable, they cannot be changed if compromised; this is a highly important consideration in access control as a compromised access token is necessarily insecure.
Single sign-on technology is claimed to eliminate the need for having multiple passwords. Such schemes do not relieve user and administrators from choosing reasonable single passwords, nor system designers or administrators from ensuring that private access control information passed among systems enabling single sign-on is secure against attack. As yet, no satisfactory standard has been developed.
Envaulting technology is a password-free way to secure data on e.g. removable storage devices such as flash drives. Instead of user passwords, access control is based on the user's access to a network resource.
Non-text-based passwords, such as graphical passwords or mouse-movement based passwords. Another system requires users to select a series of faces as a password, utilizing the human brain's ability to recall faces easily.. So far, these are promising, but are not widely used.
Graphical passwords are an alternative means of authentication for log-in intended to be used in place of conventional password; they use images instead of text. In some implementations the user is required to pick from a series of images in the correct sequence in order to gain access. While some believe that graphical passwords would be harder to crack, others suggest that people will be just as likely to pick common images or sequences as they are to pick common passwords.
2D Key (2-Dimensional Key) is a 2D matrix-like key input method having the key styles of multiline passphrase, crossword, ASCII/Unicode art, with optional textual semantic noises, to create big password/key beyond 128 bits to realize the MePKC (Memorizable Public-Key Cryptography) using fully memorizable private key upon the current private key management technologies like encrypted private key, split private key, and roaming private key.
Source: Wikipedia
Mohan Rao.
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud. - Confucius
Abel Prize
Noble prize is the most honorable prize given to people for outstanding contribution to Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, economics and Physics. But there is no Nobel prize award for mathematics(a reason as to why this subject was omitted is still being speculated).
So how can be Mathematicians honoured. Yes there is an international award that is being awarded to mathematicians for contribution to mathematics. It is called the "Abel's Prize".
The Abel Prize is an international prize presented annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. The prize is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829). It has been described as the "mathematician's Nobel" prize and is among the most prestigious awards in mathematics. (Though The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics", but it differs in being awarded only once every four years to people younger than forty years old)
The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth. In 1899, shortly Sophus Lie, the Norwegian mathematician, proposed establishing an Abel Prize when he learnt that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes would not include a prize in mathematics. However, Lie's influence waned after his death, and the dissolution of the Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905 ended the first attempt to create the Abel Prize.
In 2001, after interest in the prize had risen, a working group was formed to develop a proposal, which was presented to the prime minister of Norway in May. In August 2001, the Norwegian government announced that the prize would be awarded beginning in 2002, the two-hundredth anniversary of Abel's birth.
The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress
- Confucius
So how can be Mathematicians honoured. Yes there is an international award that is being awarded to mathematicians for contribution to mathematics. It is called the "Abel's Prize".
The Abel Prize is an international prize presented annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. The prize is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829). It has been described as the "mathematician's Nobel" prize and is among the most prestigious awards in mathematics. (Though The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics", but it differs in being awarded only once every four years to people younger than forty years old)
The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth. In 1899, shortly Sophus Lie, the Norwegian mathematician, proposed establishing an Abel Prize when he learnt that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes would not include a prize in mathematics. However, Lie's influence waned after his death, and the dissolution of the Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905 ended the first attempt to create the Abel Prize.
In 2001, after interest in the prize had risen, a working group was formed to develop a proposal, which was presented to the prime minister of Norway in May. In August 2001, the Norwegian government announced that the prize would be awarded beginning in 2002, the two-hundredth anniversary of Abel's birth.
The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress
- Confucius
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