Black & White: a movie on Islamic terrorism with a different end

Last updated on: May 12, 2008 at 4:41 am By Desh Kapoor

Last night I watched Black & White - a Subhash Ghai movie. It is a story of a boy from Afghanistan whose parents are killed in some bombings and is finally recruited into terrorism by the vast network of ISI and then tranferred to India (Delhi specifically) with papers establishing that he is from Gujarat and his parents died there and that he is in Delhi looking for a job. He stays with some young guys who are his local contacts who live with their grandfather Gaffar Bhai - played by theater veteran Habib Tanvir. Anil Kapoor is Professor Mathur a professor of Urdu at Dr. Zakir Hussain College and can recite verses from Quran and explain them as well. His wife is a social worker who lands up in soup all the time with her forthrightness. Anurag Sinha plays the terrorist young guy named Numair Qazi. He is very focused and lands in Delhi in the first week of August with the mission to blow himself up on Independence Day and has planned everything well. He has a certain version of Islam and does not feel any remorse in shooting his own team members for transgressing that interpretation of Islam. He looks very believable with his intense eyes and very powerful dialog delivery. The film is about the transformation of this young focused fundamentalist Muslim boy whose only mission is to kill the Kafirs and Hindus because they are anathema to Islam. Even Shagufta a beautiful girl played by Aditi Sharma who falls in love with Numair does not change him. Read more

Talented kid: speaks multiple languages to sell peacock feathers

Last updated on: May 10, 2008 at 9:18 pm By Desh Kapoor

In Delhi near our house, in Karol Bagh many Russian tourists used to come. After some years one saw some signs in Russian come up in many shops and also people were talking fluent Russian around there. Selling makes one learn new and new languages and things. Here is an interesting kid who sells his peacock feathers in (I am assuming in Calcutta) - he speaks in Japanese, French, Italian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, and of course English. He is probably not too perfect but at his young age he has mastered the bit that matters to him. I am sure he uses that to great effect. A Must watch!! Read more

Mujhe mere haal pe chhod do by Mukesh

Last updated on: May 10, 2008 at 7:51 am By Desh Kapoor

Music Director : Sankar Jaikishen; Lyrics: Shailendra; Singer: Mukesh This is one of my all time favorites of Mukesh. I can listen to this again and again at one stretch. The emotions and pathos of the character has been very well brought out by Mukesh in this song.. Read more

The curse of memory

Last updated on: May 10, 2008 at 6:11 am By Desh Kapoor

Her name is Jill Price. Her disease is called hyperthymestic syndrome (from the Greek thymesis, for remembering, and hyper, meaning well above normal). She can remember EVERY detail from the age of 14. Every means every detail! Like what time she got up, who she met, what she did, what she ate. It is so bad that she cannot sleep as every memory keeps her awake. Every smell and thought or event or place brings the memories flooding in. Read more

Soon, send scented messages from your cell

Last updated on: May 10, 2008 at 5:28 am By Desh Kapoor

Institute of Sensory Analysis and Marketing Consultancy in Göttingen (ISI) and the Oberhausen-based specialist for interactive services Convisual, announced the patent for the smart card-sized chip on Tuesday. So, now soon, you would be able to send not just SMS but also some scents. The customers would have 100 prefabricated scents to choose from. These scents could now accompany the MMS and SMS. This chip has been in development for 8 years. What this means is something interesting - that Chemical structure is created from electrical impulses. Now, that sounds very interesting. It is something akin to delibrately changing the matter into energy and then back into matter. What do you think? Will you be sending some of these scents messages? What would you use it for and most importantly, what scent would you be want? Read more

New Dimensions: Will the new Hadron accelerator change our world?

Last updated on: May 10, 2008 at 5:14 am By Desh Kapoor

Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider - cost between $5-10 billion - will be ready this year and the world may never be same again. The believers in the many dimension explanation for Quantum Physics are increasing. And there is some belief - if not acceptance - for the String theory. There are are many who now believe that there might be 11 dimensions to this creation. Einstein made one spacetime continuum and we already had 3 space dimension. So how will these dimensions look like? One way to understand is to understand how you understand something. Lets take a product - like marketers do - and assess it on 5 dimensions: User Friendliness; Features; Quality; Cost; Looks. Some would give a score of 5, 6, 3, 6, 4 on a scale of 10. So that is akin to how we find the coordinates of something on the 3 space dimensions and the time dimension. Read more

Love

Last updated on: May 8, 2008 at 2:51 pm By Desh Kapoor

Love is something that knows no measure, that cannot be put together by the mind, cannot be cultivated, something which is not sentimental, which has nothing to do with emotionalism and nothing whatsoever to do with good works—the village reform and so on. When you have that feeling then everything in life is important, significant; therefore you will do that which is good. But without knowing the beauty, the depth, the vigour of it we are trying to reduce love into something which the mind can capture and make respectable. Read more

Top Soil Erosion: An "Under-the-radar" Environment threat

Last updated on: May 8, 2008 at 2:47 pm By Desh Kapoor

If you thought that Global Warming itself was the worst thing aroung harming the environment - think again! There is one other thing that is harming the liveable environment very clearly specifically in South Asia and no one is quite talking about it! Its the top soil erosion. After population growth, top soil erosion is second biggest factor affecting the Climate. Annually the earth loses 1% of topsoil mostly due to agriculture. According to the National Academy of Sciences the cropland in the U.S. is being eroded at least 10 times faster than the time it takes for lost soil to be replaced. The situation is even worse in developing and poor countries. In his book "Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" - Lester R. Brown says: As soils erode, land productivity falls. An analysis of several studies on the effect of soil erosion on crop yields in the United States concluded that for each 1 inch of topsoil lost, wheat and corn yields declined by 6 percent. A 1982 USDA Natural Resource Inventory, which measured the loss of topsoil from U.S. cropland at 3.1 billion tons per year, found that excess erosion was concentrated on a small share of the land. It set the stage for the landmark 1985 Conservation Reserve Program.9 Ethiopia, a mountainous country with highly erodible soils on steeply sloping land, is losing an estimated 1 billion tons of topsoil a year. This is one reason why Ethiopia always seems to be on the verge of famine, never able to accumulate enough grain reserves to provide a meaningful measure of food security. Read more

Turn Cell Phone into a Spy Device

Last updated on: May 8, 2008 at 6:58 am By Desh Kapoor

Most of the terrorists in South Asia are using cell phones to carry out their discussions and plan their moves. Now, in the age of technical expertise, its easy to not only locate where a person is.... but also listen to what is going on around and with that person through a stealth way that turns the cell phone into a microphone/listening device - so YOU can listen to what is going within the ear shot of that cell phone.. UNBEKNOWNST to the cell phone owner!! So, here is how it works: 1. Locate where the cell phone holder is: You don’t have to plant a CIA-style bug to conduct surveillance any more. A service called World Tracker lets you use data from cell phone towers and GPS systems to pinpoint anyone’s exact whereabouts, any time — as long as they’ve got their phone on them. Read more

Hindi translation from Google

Last updated on: May 7, 2008 at 4:11 pm By Desh Kapoor

Now Google has added Hindi Translation to its translation functionality. I think it was long due and now, I am sure other Indian languages will join in as well! Have you tried this? Just one thing - this translation functionality assumes that the person knows the devanagiri script - and if that be true, then would you need translation? In some cases perhaps for difficult words.. in any case, its a boon for the Hindi knowers! Read more