Himalayas : Trees

50 YEARS OF 007 :: 'Ve know your sekret, Mr Bond'

( Anvar Alikhan | August 25, 2012)


Exactly 50 years ago, Dr No hit cinema screens around the world, featuring the unknown young Sean Connery, and the James Bond phenomenon began, quite literally, with a bang. Since then, James Bond films have grossed $5 billion -the second biggest grossing film series of all time after Harry Potter - and, as someone calculated, 25 per cent of the world's population has watched at last one James Bond movie. As a result, James Bond is no longer just a fictional spy, or even a cult figure, but a superbly managed global business;he's come a long, long way from that day in 1952 when author Ian Fleming sat down at a typewriter intending, simply, to write "the spy story to end all spy stories". Ian Fleming himself had worked for Naval Intelligence during World War II, and was responsible for thinking up some of the War's most imaginative intelligence operations, like "Operation Mincemeat" - an ingenious plot to parachute the dead body of a British naval officer, carrying a briefcase of fake plans, designed to deceive the German High Command about the planned Allied landings in Sicily. Apart from being known as an ideas specialist in British Intelligence, Fleming also, significantly, authored a paper on the formation of an intelligence agency, which was the blueprint on which the CIA would be set up. There's even an intriguing conspiracy theory that he led a team of crack commandos to snatch Hitler's aide, Martin Borman, from Berlin in 1945. It's important to remember this when reading the James Bond novels, because it reminds us that, however fantastical their story-lines, they were, in fact, never too far removed from possibility.

Fleming based James Bond on various intelligence agents he'd known personally during the War (most of all, a dashing Yugoslavian double agent, code named 'Tricycle' for his sexual preferences). Fleming then gave the character his own tastes and foibles, like his weakness for gambling and his passion for vodka martinis. But, ironically, he intended his spy to be a neutral figure, "an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a government department", to whom exciting things happened. Hence he gave him the deliberately dull name 'James Bond' (in reality, the name of a well-known American ornithologist), and the number 007 (which were the last three digits of his literary agent's phone number). Sitting in his Jamaica home, Fleming would turn out a new Bond novel every year, for the next twelve years.

The first few Bond novels were modestly successful, but when, in 1961, President Kennedy listed From Russia With Love as one of his ten favourite books, sales skyrocketed, and the Bond cult began to take shape. (When From Russia With Love was filmed, an advance print was sent to the White House in late 1963, and it may have been the last film Kennedy watched before being assassinated. )

With James Bond's leap from the printed novel to the cinema screen, he began to acquire important new dimensions to his persona - and also to the nascent 'brand personality' that was taking shape around him. Fleming may have written the action, sex and sophistication into the basic Bondian script, but other members of the team contributed other key elements: Terence Stamp, the first film director, gave Bond his own dry, double entendre-laden wit (missing from Fleming's original version); Saltzman and Broccoli, the producers, added the stateof-the-art gadgets and special effects;the young Sean Connery defined Bond's brooding, sensuous look. These elements were skillfully packaged with the help of distinctive touches like Monty Norman's dark, visceral theme music, and designer Maurice Binder's trademark opening graphic of Bond being tracked through an assassin's gun-barrel. These would coalesce over the years to shape one of the world's most recognisable brands, summed up by the famously monosyllabic theme line, "The name's Bond, James Bond. "

The early Bond films were hugely successful and they triggered a whole new genre of secret agent movies and TV serials (including the original Mission Impossible TV serial). But by 1970 the genre seemed to have exhausted itself through sheer surfeit and deja vu, and John Le Carre began a deliberate counter-movement against the glamorous Bondian spy model with his own faceless George Smiley. When Sean Connery announced, after You Only Live Twice, that he would no longer play the role, it seemed to be the end of the Bond phenomenon. And by then Ian Fleming himself was dead of a premature heart-attack so, in any case, there would be no more new Bond books to make movies from.

But, as Fleming memorably wrote, "You only live twice. Once when you're born, and once when you look death in the face. " Somewhere along the line, Bond had begun the crucial transference from fictional character to brand icon. The people who inherited the rights to Bond after Ian Fleming's death were smart enough to recognise that they were sitting on an enormous business opportunity : not just a matter of books or films but, rather, valuable intellectual property assets, that could be skillfully monetised.

Fleming, as an author, had walked in the footsteps of Raymond Chandler, Eric Ambler and even Hemingway, so artistic integrity was important to him. His successors, however, were business-people who had no such finicky sensibilities, and they essentially handed over the creative role to marketing professionals. Thus, while Fleming had wanted Hitchcock to direct his films and Richard Burton to play James Bond, pretty soon we had the light-weight Lewis Gilbert directing and Roger Moore playing the role, to cater to the tastes of the mass-market audiences. In cinema industry parlance, therefore, the James Bond films are politely referred to as "producers' films" - as entirely distinct from "directors' films". In other words, they're not about art, but business management. One of the pleasures of reading Fleming's novels, for example, had always been the hedonism, and the exotic brands that Fleming worked into his narratives: the Rolex watches, Bentley sports cars, Leica cameras, Wolfschmidt vodka, Lentheric after-shave, and Morland's cigarettes with three gold rings around the tip. (In fact, it was Bond's taste for vodka that is said to have been a major factor behind the popularisation of the drink in Cold War 1960s USA. ) Fleming's obvious enjoyment of brands was a unique mark of his writing style, and he did it all, of course, for free.

But early on in the filmmaking business, the producers realised the commercial potential of this: in Goldfinger, they replaced Bond's trademark Bentley with the new Aston Martin DB5 - a product placement deal made long before the term itself was invented. It was the shape of the things to come. And it was at this juncture that the aficionados of Ian Fleming's James Bond books began to part ways with the rest of the fan following: it was the literary purists versus the mass-market audiences.

And yet, it was precisely this shift - from fictional hero to brand icon, from literature to "content" - that has been responsible for keeping James Bond fresh and contemporary for half a century. For it was the stimulus to view Bond pragmatically, and to evolve and reinvent him continually, with an eye to the consumers' changing tastes, lifestyles and fantasies, while yet carefully protecting the core Bondian brand values. In other words, the process is not very different from managing any aspirational brand like, say, Rolex watches or Bentley cars or Heineken beer. The kiss of the brand therefore proved, for Bond, to be the kiss of immortality. The Bond brand - that potent contemporary expression of machismo, sophistication, sex and high living - is the reason why James Bond still connects so powerfully with audiences of all ages, from London to Lingampalli, while his literary contemporaries from the 1950s, like Mickey Spillane's popular fictional detective, Mike Hammer, and Erle Stanley Gardener's legendary lawyer, Perry Mason, retired onto the back shelves of second-hand book shops long, long ago. In fact, the Bond brand has been so successful that the model has been studied for the development of other cinematic icons, like Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne.

However, the Bond business model has a unique advantage that Indiana Jones or Jason Bourne can't emulate: the sophisticated, highliving lifestyle that is such an integral part of its brand equity positions it ideally for tie-ups with aspirational brands, whether BMW, Calvin Klein, Rolex or Omega. And the revenues from that stream both subsidise the production of the films and make the brand more profitable. Brilliant!

Most serious Bondophiles agree that the definitive James Bond was Sean Connery's portrayal of him. This was followed by the wooden George Lazenby and Roger Moore, who gradually turned Bond into a parody of himself. Moore was ultimately replaced by Timothy Dalton, arguably the finest of all the Bond actors but, unfortunately, he wasn't given a chance to put his stamp on the character. Pierce Brosnan, who followed, was fairly good, though a bit too pretty-looking for the role. And Daniel Craig? He seems to have connected with today's audiences - so he has done his job. But purists sigh that he's not Bond at all: that he looks, and behaves, like a blonde version of Mike Tyson. And perhaps they do have a point.

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Dr No, the twenty-third James Bond film, Skyfall, is being released this year. It will, no doubt, like its predecessors, make a billion dollars, not merely through box-office sales, but through a variety of innovative business channels, from co-branding deals to digital promos. I'm not sure Ian Fleming would have particularly liked the film. But, given the fact that he had always been an avid consumer and proponent of brands himself, I'm sure he'd have been amused at his own, inadvertent, role in the creation of a meta-brand. Zo, velkom back, Mr Bond, ve vere expekting you!

Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cents Coins

( Mercifully, in India, any payment in coins exceeding, I think Rs 200, is NOT legal tender ::RSK) 

Posted on the 28 August 2012 by Jesusmsanchezl

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived atApple’s headquarters in California. Initially,  the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that  they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

the funny part is that the signed document does not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send the creators of the iPhone their billion dollars in the way they deem best. 

This dirty but genius geek troll play is a new headache to Appleexecutives as they will need to put in long hours counting all that money, to check if it is all there and to try to deposit it crossing fingers to hope a bank will accept all the coins.

Lee Kun-hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, told the media that his company is not going to be intimidated by a group of “geeks with style” and that if they want to play dirty, they also know how to do it.

You can use your coins to buy refreshments at the little machine for life or melt the coins to make computers, that’s not my problem, I already paid them and fulfilled the law.

A total of 20 billion coins, delivery hope to finish this week.

Let’s see how Apple will respond to this.

MySnap : Two Friends in Valley of Flowers

Turkey is homeland of Hindi, English: Researchers

The origins of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, German and English have been traced to Anatolia, which is present-day Turkey, with researchers saying that this Indo-European family of languages spread out from the western Asian region about 8000 to 9500 years ago.

The researchers, led by evolutionary biologist at New Zealand's University of Auckland Quentin Atkinson, during a new study have used computational methods to analyse words from more than 100 ancient and contemporary languages.

Through this method, the scientists say they have identified Anatolia, an ancient region of western Asia which covers most of modern Turkey as the homeland of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken on every continent by a total of three billion people.

The study, published in the journal Science said there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family.

The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago, while an alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago.

The researchers used a complex technique which studies the evolution and spread of disease as well as basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses.

"We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago," the study said.

Linguists have believed that the first speakers of the mother tongue were chariot-driving pastoralists who moved from their homeland on the steppes above the Black Sea about 4,000 years ago and conquered Europe and Asia.

A rival theory holds that, to the contrary, the first Indo-European speakers were peaceable farmers in Anatolia, now Turkey, about 9,000 years ago, who disseminated their language by the hoe, not the sword.

While English, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Greek and Hindi may sound very different, researchers said there are several commonalities in a host of words in these languages. In the study, researchers examined cognates or words that have a clear line of descent from the same ancestral word.

The word 'mother', which is 'mutter'in German, 'mat' in Russian, 'madar' in Persian, 'ma' in Hindi and 'materi in Latin are all cognates derived from the proto-Indo-European word 'mehter'.

"These methods pave the way for reconstructing human prehistory in other parts of the world, using the legacy of our past that is documented in our languages," said Atkinson.

"It allows us to place these language family trees on a map in space and time and play out histories over the landscape," he said.

An Engineer Proposes ......

Changing Fantasies

       Age       Women's FAVORITE FANTASY

        17         tall, dark and handsome
        25         tall, dark and handsome with money
        35         tall, dark and handsome with money and a brain
        48         a man with hair
        66         a man

Islam and technology ( from the Economist)

The online ummah

Aug 18th 2012 | BEIRUT | from the print edition

FOR one household a cannon blast signals the end of the daily fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, just as it has done for many years. For another the beep of an iPhone does the job, thanks to a smartphone application called Ramadan Times. The app sets the fasting times depending on the location of the device. People are surprised at their smartphones’ capabilities, says Arif Hisam, head of PakData, the Pakistani company that created the app.

Islamic hardliners may have issued a slew of fatwas against digital technology, including chat programmes (they could lead to flirting) and the use of Koranic verses as ring tones (disrespectful). But Muslims have embraced the internet and smartphones just as the rest of the world has—and, in some ways, even more.

Muslims use their gadgets in much the same way as everyone else: they text, they use social networks, they buy online. But the adoption—and Islamification—of the technology has a deeper meaning, says Bart Barendregt of Leiden University, who has studied South-East Asia’s growing digital culture. “Muslim youngsters are adopting technology to distance themselves from older, traditional practices while also challenging Western models,” he argues.A recent survey by Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that rich Muslim-majority countries boast some of world’s highest rates of smartphone penetration, with the United Arab Emirates ahead at 61%. But even in poorer Muslim lands adoption is respectable: 26% in Egypt, not much below Germany’s 29%. More than a third of people in the Middle East now use the internet, slightly above the world average.

Many smartphone apps cater to religious needs. Some show mosques and halalbusinesses close to a user’s location. Salah 3D is an iPhone guide to how to pray. Another app, Quran Majeed, includes text and audio versions of the Koran not only in Arabic, but other languages, making the holy book more accessible to Muslims whose first language is not Arabic. It has been downloaded more than 3m times.

Websites tailored to Muslims also abound. Artik Kuzmin, a Turkish entrepreneur, will soon launch Salamworld, a Facebook for Muslims. “People told us that they worry about moral standards on the internet. They don’t feel it is safe for them,” he says. Salamworld’s moderators will try to allay such fears by taking down photographs with too much flesh and deleting swear words. Online dating services are multiplying. 

Social media’s role in the Arab spring has been widely discussed. But even more important may be how the technology is changing Islam itself by creating a virtual version of the ummah, the single nation of Muslims that Islam’s followers consider themselves to be part of. All kinds of online forums allow open discussion of religious questions.

For the first time, lay people can easily separate religious commands from tradition by looking at holy texts and scholarship rather than relying on their local preachers. “The digital revolution has given a voice to young Muslims. It is allowing us to criticise the religious establishment and create our own interpretations,” explains Amir Ahmad Nasr, a 25-year-old Sudanese blogger. He says that discovering the internet was the reason for his personal journey from devout Muslim to atheist and then to Sufi, adhering to a mystical version of Islam—an experience he describes in a forthcoming book, “My Isl@m”.

Faith in progress

Facing a threat to their authority, some Islamic scholars have called for a ban on certain sites, and a handful even a ban on the entire internet. But many more are embracing new media to avoid being sidelined. Muslim scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo run an “Islamic Hotline”. Users call or e-mail a question, which is answered within 48 hours. Other muftis upload lectures to YouTube.

The internet’s impact is even greater for Muslim women. “You can look after your family, have a job, and avoid workplace problems with the hijab [veil],” says Kimberly Ben, a convert and freelance copywriter in Alabama, who publishes tips for Muslim women (sometimes called Muslimahs) on running a business from home on MuslimahsWorkingAtHome.com.

Being able to study religious teachings for themselves, Muslimahs are also chipping away at the predominantly male, orthodox domination of Islamic thought. The Prophet’s first wife, Khadija, for instance, has become something of a role model. She is said to have been a successful businesswoman when she married Muhammad. Last year, in protest against Saudi Arabia’s ban on women behind the wheel, Manal Al-Sharif uploaded a video to YouTube showing herself driving (which duly went viral and earned her nine days in detention).

As always, however, technology cuts both ways. Long before social media helped to usher in the Arab spring, jihadis used ghastly video clips and online forums to attract foot soldiers to their cause. More recently, the internet has led to shows of rabid intolerance. Earlier this year, when Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi writer, was deemed a blasphemer by his country’s authorities for a poem, the internet was filled with hate speech against him.

Yet as more and more Muslims buy smartphones and get online, it is unlikely that radicals will benefit most. Hatred and extremism fester in closed polities, whereas the internet tends to strengthen the tolerant and open-minded. Mr Nasr, the Sudanese blogger, even thinks that digital media will be to Islam what the printing press was to Christianity—and ultimately lead to a Reformation. “We’re still in the early stages,” he says, “but we’re going to see many eclectic versions of Islam.”

Is it time to update the Olympic credo?

Athletic performance

Faster, higher, no longer

Aug 4th 2012 | from the print edition of the Economist 

ON AUGUST 5th millions of people will watch the 100-metre final at the London Olympics. Many will wonder if anyone can repeat Usain Bolt’s feat in Berlin in 2009, when the Jamaican clocked 9.58 seconds, lopping 0.11 seconds—aeons in a sprint—off the previous world record, which he set at the 2008 Beijing games.

One person who thinks this unlikely is Mark Denny. Another 0.11 seconds would take the time below what Dr Denny, from Stanford University, reckons is the absolute limit of human athletic performance in the 100-metre dash.

Predicting the limits of human athletic prowess has been a popular parlour game among number crunchers. One study from 1992 had female marathon runners drawing level with men by 1998, to complete the 42.195km (26.2-mile) course in just under two hours and two minutes. (The current male record remains 1.5 minutes slower; for women it is 12 minutes slower still.) A more recent analysis from 2004 suggested that male and female 100-metre times will converge in 2156, at 8.08 seconds.In 2008 Dr Denny published a paper in which he crunched through the highest speeds achieved each year in running events from sprints to the marathon, some dating back to 1900 (see chart). A statistical technique called extreme-value analysis discerned trends and the maximum possible deviations from them. For the 100 metres, the human speed limit is 10.55 metres per second. This translates to 9.48 seconds.

Nowadays sport statisticians view such calculations as flawed because they relied on linear extrapolations. They prefer to fit data to variants of a “logistic” curve. This produces an S-shaped plot more in line with the intuition that performance starts off relatively flat. It then goes through a period of rapid improvement as more people take part and more systematic approaches to training and nutrition get more out of them. It finally levels off as athletes inch towards the most a body can manage.

This already seems to be happening. According to Dr Denny female marathon runners have, in effect, reached their peak. In a 2010 study Geoffroy Berthelot, of France’s National Institute of Sport, showed that performance in 23 out of 36 track-and-field events has stagnated since 1993. The remaining 13 have seen only small increments.

Pool performance

In swimming, Dr Berthelot found that all 34 events have seen improvements since 2000, though this may have been aided by the now banned slick, full-body swimsuits which helped competitors in Beijing smash 22 world records. Before 2000, performance in 16 events had been becalmed, though not in the 400-metres individual medley, which may explain why China’s 16-year-old Ye Shiwen shaved a second off the world record and in the final leg stoked controversy by being quicker than the men’s medley champion. But Alan Nevill, of Wolverhampton University in Britain, reckons this is within the bounds of possibility for the 400-metres women’s freestyle: a proxy, albeit an imperfect one, for the last leg of the medley.

Drugs and technological tricks aside, ensuring that future Olympics live up to their motto of “faster, higher, stronger” may thus require some other performance-boosting tricks. Steve Haake, of Sheffield Hallam University in Britain, points to a notable blip in the figures for the 100-metre dash. In 1968 the average of the best times of the top 25 athletes was much better than trend. This, Dr Haake explains, is because those Olympic games were held in Mexico City. At an altitude of 2,240 metres the air there is a fifth thinner than at sea level, providing 20% less drag—a boon to sprinters who, unlike their endurance counterparts, run anaerobically, and so need not worry about the diminished supply of oxygen.

Eight of the 25 best times that year were recorded at the games, and most of the remaining 17 were at higher-than-usual altitudes where athletes prepared for the main event. The reduced drag may have helped Bob Beamon’s 8.9-metre long jump, in which the American added 55cm to the world record. Of that, 31cm was down to a tail wind combined with the altitude.

Statistics suggest that feats like those of Messrs Bolt and Beamon are increasingly improbable. But are they impossible? Peter Weyand, of Southern Methodist University in Texas, has shown that whereas the peak force which elite sprinters apply to the track is more than four times their body weight, they can squeeze even more out of their muscles. Dr Weyand found that the forces generated while athletes hopped on one leg as fast as they could on a high-speed treadmill were roughly twice as high as during running at top speed. This translated into 30% more ground force.

Since ground force is the main determinant of sprinting speed, Dr Weyand’s results imply that human muscles are capable of producing enough oomph to propel sprinters one-third faster than Mr Bolt’s 2009 record. The reason they have not is that in the normal, two-legged gait the foot is in contact with the ground for only around one-tenth of a second, 0.05 seconds less than when hopping. As a consequence, muscle fibres do not have enough time to contract to their full potential. Although tapping all this force while sprinting seems biomechanically inconceivable, there may be scope for slight alterations in training and gait, focused on increasing the peak power available to sprinters. For his part, Dr Denny would be thrilled to see any athlete breach his limits, but he isn’t putting any money on it.

Presentation : Stockholm

The city of Stockholm asked an Advertising agency to develop a presentation about the city.
 
Click on the link below to see this  hi-tech presentation.

 

http://bit.ly/GT6c4K

Very Important : Save Money on Medicines

This is to inform you that medicines are prescribed  by brand name & not by the generics (Ingredients). Hence we end up paying more money for the same medicine. Follow these few steps to know more & start saving on your medical bills.  1. Log on to www.medguideindia.com 2. Click on 'Drugs' 3. Click on 'Brand' 4. Type the brand name which you are using (e. g. Metocard XL (50 mg). The site will also help you with drop down menu) & Click on 'Search' 5. Click on 'Generics'. It will display the ingredients of the tablet. 6. Click on 'matched brands' 7. Don't be surprised to see that same drug is available at very low cost also. And that to by other reputed manufacturer. e. g. Metocard XL 50 is for Rs. 62.00 & same drug by Cipla (Mepol) is available ONLY @ Rs. 7.00

A Rare Compliment .......

India shining (in the dark)

SIR – I understand your concerns about what the recent power cut in India tells us about the country’s energy infrastructure (“Blackout nation”, August 4th). Yet India’s response was remarkable. The power cut affected 680m people, more than double the entire population of the United States, but energy was restored to 80% of those people within half a day.

Electricity is the most fragile and least protected of all infrastructures in all countries around the world. A technician’s error in America’s Midwest shut down the entire electricity grid along the eastern seaboard in 2003, for example. John McCreary, an intelligence analyst, once said that every complex system will fail, but the speed of recovery is the best measure of a healthy system.

Bernabé Gutiérrez C.
Valencia

( from the Letters to the Editor, the Economist) 

Fun Puns

 

• I  changed my iPod's name to Titanic.  It's syncing now.
• I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid.  He says he can stop any time.
• How does Moses make his tea?  Hebrews it.
• I stayed up all night to see where the sun went.  Then it dawned on me.
• This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.
• I'm reading a book about anti-gravity.  I just can't put it down.
• Why were the Indians here first?  They had reservations.
• I didn't like my beard at first.  Then it grew on me.
• Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?
• When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.
• England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.
• I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
• I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.
• All the toilets in New York's police stations have mysteriously vanished.  Now the police  have nothing to go on.
• I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.
• Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes.
• Velcro — what a rip off!
• A cartoonist was found dead in his home.  Details are sketchy.

Independence Day: Why Partition was a good thing for India

( from the Economic Times )

15-Aug-2012 6:41 AM

Today we celebrate the 65th anniversary of India's independence. Some mourn it as the 65th anniversary of India's partition, which killed a million people and forced 10 million to flee across borders for safety.

Utopians wish Partition had never happened. Supposed realists say Partition was inevitable. I would go a step further and say it was desirable.

Had the British left without Partition, Hindu-Muslim antagonism would have escalated into civil war, leading ultimately to an even bloodier Partition. The civil war would have converted India into a hotbed of Hindu communalism and violence, with secularists sidelined as traitors or worse. Partition, warts and all, has been a better outcome.

Some well-meaning Hindus want the two countries to unite again. They have no idea how utterly insulting the suggestion seems to Pakistanis. For Pakistan, Independence Day celebrates independence from Hindu dominance no less than British dominance. To suggest returning to an undivided India means, to them, a return to Hindu dominance. This is as insulting to most Pakistanis as suggesting a return to the British Raj would be to Indians.

Partition was not inevitable. One myth fed to youngsters is that Britain forced Partition on India. That's wrong. After arguing for years that Hindus and Muslims could work together, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel failed the acid test of working with the Muslim League when the British put them together in the interim Cabinet of 1946-47.

Muslim League finance minister Liaqat Ali riled Congress ministers by holding up financial sanctions for even minor things they proposed. Liaqat then presented a high-tax budget in 1947 to soak businesses that had made huge profits in World War II. Congressmen interpreted this as an attack on Hindu businessmen by a Muslim finance minister.

This was an unwarranted, communal interpretation: the high taxes fell equally on Hindu and Muslim businesses. Yet, Congress stalwarts concluded it was impossible to work with Jinnah, and that a clean Partition would be better. That's how Partition happened, through the voluntary agreement of both the Congress and the Muslim League.

Today, we are used to coalition governments kowtowing to minority partners. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi kowtowed to the Left Front in 2004-09 and to Mamata Banerjee after 2009. In retrospect, it seems amazing that Nehru and Patel could not put up with Liaqat's needling. If only they had kept their cool and accommodated the Muslim League, some people argue, Partition would have been avoided, and the subcontinent would have been a far better, more peaceful place.

Sorry, but this totally ignores the desire of Muslims for a nation of their own, and their willing to make great sacrifices for that end. A Pakistani once told me that every time they hear of a communal riot in India, they thank Allah that they achieved liberation from Hindu domination and hypocritical crap about secularism.


Had the British left undivided India in 1947, the Muslim League would have continued its struggle for separate nationhood. Direct Action Day in 1946 was a Muslim orgy of violence aimed to demonstrate that Muslims would not sit by idly and acceptance Hindu dominance. That violence would have been repeated a thousandfold after the British left. With each new riot, communalism would have deepened, and inevitably overthrown secular forces.

We saw this in a microcosm in Yugoslavia. When communism and autocracy ended there, secular camaraderie soon gave way to sectarianism. Communities that had lived peacefully together for decades sought separate nationhood, and that turned them into bloodthirsty killers. Earlier, people of different communities had intermarried and had been comrades. But once violence began, it could not be stopped, and Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims went into a hate-filled spiral of violence. That gives us a small taste of what might have happened in an Indian civil war.

MySnaps : Trip to Himalaya

Ten Scientific laws & theories

10 Scientific laws & theories you should know…!

Scientists have many tools available to them when attempting to describe how nature & the universe at large work. Often they reach for laws & theories first. What's the difference? A scientific law can often be reduced to a mathematical statement, such as E = mc²; it's a specific statement based on empirical data, & its truth is generally confined to a certain set of conditions. For example, in the case of E = mc², c refers to the speed of light in a vacuum.

A scientific theory often seeks to synthesize a body of evidence or observations of particular phenomena. It's generally -- though by no means always -- a grander, testable statement about how nature operates. You can't necessarily reduce a scientific theory to a pithy statement or equation, but it does represent something fundamental about how nature works.

Both laws & theories depend on basic elements of the scientific method, such as generating a hypothesis, testing that premise, finding (or not finding) empirical evidence & coming up with conclusions. Eventually, other scientists must be able to replicate the results if the experiment is destined to become the basis for a widely accepted law or theory.

In this article, we'll look at 10 scientific laws & theories that you might want to brush up on, even if you don't find yourself, say, operating a scanning electron microscope all that frequently. We'll start off with a bang & move on to the basic laws of the universe, before hitting evolution. Finally, we'll tackle some headier material,                             delving into the realm of quantum physics.

10: Big Bang Theory

If you're going to know one scientific theory, make it the one that explains how the universe arrived at its present state. Based on research performed by Edwin Hubble, Georges Lemaitre & Albert Einstein, among others, the big bang theory postulates that the universe began almost 14 billion years ago with a massive expansion event. At the time, the universe was confined to a single point, encompassing all of the universe's matter. That original movement continues today, as the universe keeps expanding outward.

The theory of the big bang gained widespread support in the scientific community after Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson discovered cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965. Using radio telescopes, the two astronomers’s detected cosmic noise, or static, that didn't dissipate over time. Collaborating with Princeton researcher Robert  Dicke, the pair confirmed Dicke's hypothesis that the original big bang left behind low-level radiation detectable throughout the universe.

9: Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion

Let's stick with Edwin Hubble for a second. While the 1920s roared past & the Great Depression limped by, Hubble was performing groundbreaking astronomical research. Hubble not only proved that there were other galaxies besides the Milky Way, he also discovered that these galaxies were zipping away from our own, a motion he called recession.

In order to quantify the velocity of this galactic movement, Hubble proposed Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, aka Hubble's law, an equation that states: velocity = H₀ Ã— distance. Velocity represents the galaxy's recessional velocity; H₀ is the Hubble constant, or parameter that indicates the rate at which the universe is expanding; & distance is the galaxy's distance from the one with which it's being compared.

Hubble's constant has been calculated at different values over time, but the current accepted value is 70 kilometers/second per megaparsec, the latter being a unit of distance in intergalactic space [source: White]. For our purposes, that's not so important. What matters most is that Hubble's law provides a concise method for measuring a galaxy's velocity in relation to our own. And perhaps most significantly, the law established that the universe is made up of many galaxies, whose movements trace back to the big bang.

8: Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

For centuries, scientists battled with one another & with religious leaders about the planets' orbits, especially about whether they orbited our sun. In the 16^th century, Copernicus put forth his controversial concept of a heliocentric solar system, in which the planets revolved around the sun -- not the Earth. But it would take Johannes Kepler, building on work performed by Tyco Brahe & others, to establish a clear scientific foundation for the planets' movements.

Kepler's three laws of planetary motion -- formed in the early 17th century -- describe how planets orbit the sun. The first law sometimes called the law of orbits, states that planets orbit the sun elliptically. The second law, the law of areas, states that a line connecting a planet to the sun covers an equal area over equal periods of time. In other words, if you're measuring the area created by drawing a line from the Earth to the sun & tracking the Earth's movement over 30 days, the area will be the same no matter where the Earth is in its orbit when measurements begin.

The third one, the law of periods, allows us to establish a clear relationship between a planet's orbital period & its distance from the sun. Thanks to this law, we know that a planet relatively close to the sun, like Venus, has a far briefer orbital period than a distant planet, such as Neptune.

7: Universal Law of Gravitation

We may take it for granted now, but more than 300 years ago Sir Isaac ewton proposed a revolutionary idea: that any two objects, no matter their mass, exert gravitational force toward one another. This law is represented by an equation that many high schoolers encounter in physics class. It goes as follows:

F = G × [(m1m2)/r²]

F = G Ã— [(m₁m₂)/r²]

F is the gravitational force between the two objects, measured in Newtons. M₁ & m₂ are the masses of the two objects, while ris the distance between them. G is the gravitational constant, a number currently calculated to be 6.672 × 10-¹¹ N m² kg^-2 [source: Weisstein].

The benefit of the universal law of gravitation is that it allows us to calculate the gravitational pull between any two objects. This ability is especially useful when scientists are, say, planning to put a satellite in orbit or charting the course of the moon.

6: Newton's Laws of Motion

As long as we're talking about one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, let's move on to Newton's other famous laws. His three laws of motion form an essential component of modern physics. And like many scientific laws, they're rather elegant in their simplicity.

The first of the three laws states an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. For a ball rolling across the floor that outside force could be the friction between the ball & the floor, or it could be the toddler that kicks the ball in another direction.

The second law establishes a connection between an object's mass (m) & its acceleration (a), in the form of the equation F = m Ã— a. F represents force, measured in Newton’s. It's also a vector, meaning it has a directional component. Owing to its acceleration, that ball rolling across the floor has a particular vector, a direction in which it's traveling, & it's accounted for in calculating its force.

The third law is rather pithy & should be familiar to you: For every action there is an equal & opposite reaction. That is, for every force applied to an object or surface, that object pushes back with equal force.

5: Laws of Thermodynamics

The British physicist & novelist C.P. Snow once said that a nonscientist who didn't know the second law of thermodynamics was like a scientist who had never read Shakespeare [source:Lambert]. Snow's now-famous statement was meant to emphasize both the importance of thermodynamics & the necessity for nonscientists to learn about it.

Thermodynamics is the study of how energy works in a system, whether it's an engine or the Earth's core. It can be reduced to several basic laws, which Snow cleverly summed up as follows [source: Physics Planet]:                         

• You can't win.
• You can't break even.
• You can't quit the game.

Let's unpack these a bit. By saying you can't win, Snow meant that since matter & energy are conserved, you can't get one without giving up some of the other (i.e., E=mc²). It also means that for an engine to produce work, you have to supply heat, although in anything other than a perfectly closed system, some heat is inevitably lost to the outside world, which then leads to the second law.

The second statement -- you can't break even -- means that due to ever-increasing entropy, you can't return to the same energy state. Energy concentrated in one place will always flow to places of lower concentration.                         

Finally, the third law -- you can't quit the game -- refers to absolute zero, the lowest theoretical temperature possible, measured at zero Kelvin or (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius & minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). When a system reaches absolute zero, molecules stop all movement, meaning that there is no kinetic energy, & entropy reaches its lowest possible value. But in the real world, even in the recesses of space, reaching absolutely zero is impossible -- you can only get very close to it.

4: Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle

After he discovered his principle of buoyancy, the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes allegedly yelled out "Eureka!" & ran naked through the city of Syracuse. The discovery was that important. The story goes that Archimedes made his great breakthrough when he noticed the water rise as he got into the tub [source: Quake].

According to Archimedes' buoyancy principle, the force acting on, or buoying, a submerged or partially submerged object equals the weight of the liquid that the object displaces. This sort of principle has an immense range of applications & is essential to calculations of density, as well as designing submarines & other oceangoing vessels
.

3: Evolution & Natural Selection

Now that we've established some of the fundamental concepts of how our universe began & how physics play out in our daily lives, let's turn our attention to the human form & how we got to be the way we are. According to most scientists, all life on Earth has a common ancestor. But in order to produce the immense amount of difference among all living organisms, certain ones had to evolve into distinct species.

In a basic sense, this differentiation occurred through evolution, through descent with modification

[source: UCMP]. Populations of organisms developed different traits, through mechanisms such as mutation. Those with traits that were more beneficial to survival such as, a frog whose brown coloring allows it to be camouflaged in a swamp, were naturally selected for survival; hence the term natural selection.

It's possible to expand upon both of these theories at greater length, but this is the basic, & groundbreaking, discovery that Darwin made in the 19^th century: that evolution through natural selection accounts for the tremendous diversity of life on Earth.

2: Theory of General Relativity

Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity remains an important & essential discovery because it permanently altered how we look at the universe. Einstein's major breakthrough was to say that space & time are not absolutes & that gravity is not simply a force applied to an object or mass. Rather, the gravity associated with any mass curves the very space & time (often called space-time) around it.

To conceptualize this, imagine you're traveling across the Earthin a straight line, heading east. After a while, if someone were to pinpoint your position on a map, you'd actually be both east & far south of your original position. That's because the Earth is curved. To travel directly east, you'd have to take into account the shape of the Earth & angle yourself slightly north. (Think about the difference between a flat paper map & a spherical globe.)

Space is pretty much the same. For example, to the occupants of the shuttle orbiting the Earth, it can look like they're traveling on a straight line through space. In reality, the space-time around them is being curved by the Earth's gravity (as it would be with any large object with immense gravity such as a planet or a black hole), causing them to both move forward & to appear to orbit the Earth.

Einstein's theory had tremendous implications for the future of astrophysics & cosmology. It explained a minor, unexpected anomaly in Mercury's orbit, showed how starlight bends & laid the theoretical foundations for black holes.

1: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

Einstein's broader theory of relativity told us more about how the universe works & helped to lay the foundation for quantum physics, but it also introduced more confusion into theoretical science. In 1927, this sense that the universe's laws were, in some contexts, flexible, led to a groundbreaking discovery by the German scientist Werner Heisenberg.

In postulating his Uncertainty Principle, Heisenberg realized that it was impossible to simultaneously know, with a high level of precision, two properties of a particle. In other words, you can know the position of an electron with a high degree of certainty, but not its momentum & vice versa.

Niels Bohr later made a discovery that helps to explain Heisenberg's principle. Bohr found that an electron has the qualities of both a particle & a wave, a concept known as wave-particle duality, which has become a cornerstone of quantum physics. So when we measure an electron's position, we are treating it as a particle at a specific point in space, with an uncertain wavelength. When we measure its momentum, we are treating it as a wave, meaning we can know the amplitude of its wavelength but not its location.