Monday, December 7, 2009

Miraculous Water

I guess, water plays a pivotal role in all our lives. To say it in brief , water is a perfect example of what we call a "perfect-balance" in this world. The nature is in a peaceful harmony , everything has been precisely designed.

So is water,which is composed of 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It's a universal solvent,ie, dissolves almost anything. What miracle I am talking about, is that, water is the only substance whose solid state(ice) is lighter than its liquid phase. As a consequence, ice floats on water. Why was this to be an exception? When every solid state is heavier than its liquid phase then why ice had to be lighter?Uh, the answer lies in the arctic poles. The temperature over there is so damn low that it can almost freeze anything(yeah, including water)! However, the irony is that marine life....yeah "marine life" exists over there. The reason? I mean, how is it possible? You know what, the temperature starts freezing the ocean surface (surface turns into ice), the ice floats on water, being lighter, and prevents further freezing!! It actually keeps the ocean below isolated as well as warm! If this exception wasn't there , life in arctic poles would have ceased to exist(no seals,no Eskimos as there wont be any fishes,the primary source of food there)!!

Thanks for reading,
Shahnawaz

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Sehwag goes boom boom!

At the mumbai stadium today, the audience witnessed an extremely thrilling innings from probably the best batsman at present, Nawab of Najafgarh, Virendra Sehwag. . He scored an unbeatable 284 leaving the Sri Lankans helpless and tired.

Music maestro nominated for grammy!!

Double-deck oscar winner gets 2 more nominations..... and this time its the Grammy's for the 44 year old A.R. . With him are competitors , Bruce Springsteen's title track for 'The Wrestler', 'Once in a Lifetime' from film 'Cadillac Records', 'Decode' from 'Twilight' and 'The Client' from 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'. The song nominated is "Jai Ho" written by Samparan Gulzar from the movie "Slumdog Millionaire".

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Miracle of Creation-DNA

Uh, guys i usually read more and write less.(indeed i can write!).It was, i guess when i was in class 9th, that i looked around and observed what had to be observed,serving some purpose. Really, i started liking "science"and then I started reading debates(darwinism vs creation) and came to some sort of conclusions.
Questions like why is earth the only planet having life, troubled me a lot.Anyways without deviating you all from the topic i would like to give you sort of some mind blowing evidences of creation, yeah , the miracle in the creation of DNA.(no it didn't come into existence by chance ,as claimed by some scientists!!, there was a divine intervention, for sure !)

Mmmm.... lemme give you a background. Our body is made of organs,organs comprise of tissues, the tissues are made up of cells, each cell has a nucleus and each nucleus is comprised of a DNA. Imagine how small a cell is, and then within the cell we have a small nucleus, and then again within the nucleus we have A DNA. I wont tell you to imagine the size of A DNA, because you cant, so spare it!

Now see the irony(dont kick my ass off),cuz that DNA resting in that small nucleus is 3 meters(about 6 feet) in length!!You want more??Our entire DNA sequence would fill 200 1,ooo New York city telephone directories!!And if you unwound the entire DNA in our body it would reach the moon 6000 times..whoa...It would take a person typing 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome(our DNA sequence), man, it contains so much info..... and you say life on earth came into existence by chance??If all three billion letters in the human genome were stacked one millimeter apart, they would reach a height 7,000 times the height of the Empire State Building(try it,dude!!) Man... and guess what , when a cell replicates itself in our body(a constant process, happens almost all the time) the enormous info is actually copied to the new cell in a time impossible for the fastest computers to attain, without any errors!!
This is certainly not occurring by chance,and yeah are we controlling the cell mechanisms by any means? But its happening,yeah it is!.... without we being informed about it. Guys, we are very complex, you cant even imagine!!

There are many more amazing facts about the DNA....but then i just wanted 5 mins of yours not 5 hours(the facts are too vast).

Thanks for reading,
Shahnawaz

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Paa: A Bachchan movie minus Big B

For the first time, the Shehanshah of Bollywood, will not play himself. Most filmmakers cast the big B for his sheer personality, aura and more so his characteristic. But this time round round, the big B of advertising has decided to take that creative risk, and convinced the bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan to be “under wraps”.

R Balakrishnan better known as Balki, the chairman of Lowe Lintas and the director of Cheeni Kum in his secondmovie Paa, has taken the creative liberty that most filmmakers dare not dream to do. Not only is Mr. Bachchan not in his regular avatar, Balki has also ensured that the film’s marketing campaign has Mr. Bachchan conspicuously missing.

A modest Mr. Bachchan responds, “ The advertising fraternity’s job is a lot more challenging. I’ve always believed that the ad world is filled with professionals and extremely talented people, and they have certain in built qualities which are commensurate with filmmaking The fact that they manage to tell a compelling story in 30 seconds is fascinating, that would just mean for them to extend it to three hours would be a fantastic product.

Part produced by AB Corp, Amitabh Bachchan’s film production company, which was on the brink of bankruptcy some time back, may just finds its fortunes changing with Paa, a project that AB Corp has taken on after three years. Ask why and Mr. Bachchan has lots to say.

“The whole business of owning your creativity has been far too stagnant in our country. If I am giving my creative input, and the product is going to have a certain amount of life, that I should also be beneficiary of that life. I was paid a lakh of rupees to act in Sholay, and 30 years hence, the value of that film has increased multi fold, but I was just paid a lakh. If today there is a value attached to me, and that value and enhanced since the days of Sholay, I should be remunerated accordingly.”

The film was conceptualized in a rather odd way. Balki flashes back, “I was sitting in Amitji’s office one day and Abishek walked in. Amitji was in his element and Abhishek was in of his rare mature moods and a thought just flashed through my mind. If I can in some way reverse the roles of this father son duo, it would make for a compelling film.”

Prod a little more and Balki reveals that after a month of that conversation, he came with a rather light hearted script.. A disallusioned Balki walked out of Mr. Bachchan’s office, when the Bollywood icon failed to show the enthusiasm that Balki felt. “When it comes to a script there are always sensitivities involved. I was in love with my script and was peeved that Mr. Bachchan didn’t share the same emotion. So essentially, I wrote two scripts for Paa, the first was c%#p, the second is this.”

Soon, your cell phone no. may have 11 digits


NEW DELHI: All 500 million mobile users in the country may have to change their phone numbers from January 1, 2010, and adopt a 11-digit cellularnumber if a DoT proposal is accepted by the industry. But, all leading operators said that it would be ‘next to impossible’ for the country to move to a 11-digit mobile number by January 2010 as this would involve making massive technical changes to both softwares and mobile network configurations, while adding that this process could take up to 12 months.

The DoT has prepared a draft notification in which it wants all mobile users to adopt a 11-digit numbering plan by pre-fixing ‘9’ to their existing cellphone numbers. A DoT official said that the country will eventually have to move to a 11-digit cellular numbers system.

The logic: Under the current 10-digit numbering scheme, only a maximum of one billion mobile numbers can be issued and the mobile connections in the country will cross this mark in the next couple of years. Pre-fixing an additional digit will allow the Indian telecom operators to issue up to 10-billion individual mobile numbers.

The existing numbering plan that was fixed in 2003 was expected to be in place till 2030. This is because, based on 2003-projections, India was expected to touch 500 million mobile customers only by 2030, but the country has reached this mark 21 years ahead of the projected date. India has been the world’s fastest growing cellular market for the last three years. Thirteen mobile phone firms are jostling for space in the Indian market that most analysts feel can support only 4-5 operators. India is adding an average of 15 million new cellular customers every month.

When contacted, all service providers denied having received any ‘formal’ notification to move to 11-digit mobile numbers from January 2010. “The proposal to migrate to 11-digit numbers from next year has been under discussion for a long time, but the government and telecom companies have not reached any consensus,” a top executive with one of the country’s largest operators said.

“It is impossible to migrate before January 2010 because all telecom networks have to be reconfigured. We also have to change all roaming agreements, both within India as well as with other telcos globally. Termination and interconnection agreements with global operators must also be changed so that incoming calls from abroad are directed to the new numbers and therefore the entire process will take about 10-18 months,” added the chief technological officer of a pan-India operator.

While the country has only about 500 million cellular customers, an industry analyst said that operators have already exhausted about 800 million cellular numbers. “A significant bulk of mobile phone users have changed their mobile operators over the last couple of years and some customers have done multiple changes — this has rendered these mobile numbers useless as most telcos discontinue a number that has been allotted once,” explained an industry executive.

The regulatory head with a telco pointed out that a lot of numbers were wasted in India because it was very cheap to get a new connection here. “There is no reward for refund. Numbers are not treated as a scarce resource. In most countries, governments are a little bit cautious before doling out huge numbers. If we had deposits on numbers, then people would cancel non-used numbers to get that deposit back. About 20% of numbers that have been allotted have not been used,” this executive added.