Stray Thoughts on a Sunday

Many things have been happening over the past few weeks, and I have been too busy trying to appear to be studying to blog. So I’ll just yak about some things that have caught my eye.

• The Kashmir Quake

It was on the morning of 8^th Oct that the earth shook once again under the Beautiful land of Kashmir. The Epicenter was Near Muzzafarabad in POK. Like always, the authorities were slow in realising the true magnitude of disaster. The Numbers slowly rose from 500 to 1,000 to 10,000 and now are hovering about 50,000. These are on the Pakistani Side, while the Indian Numbers are miraculously low of about 1,500.

This figure along with the figure that the Indian authorities had given out during Tsunami, seem fishy.

The Destruction that I had seen along the T.N. coast seemed to warrant a larger toll then the 10,000 dead that were officially mourned. I know something about the geography of the Kashmir region. Muzzafarabad is about 38 K.M from LOC. The style of houses, the mountain ranges, the subsoil, and the deforestation on both sides of the LOC are same. Given this, I fail to understand how the death toll on this side is so small.

Last year I had heard from some Ngo’s in Chennai that the government had been actively suppressing the real number of casualties in the Wake of the Tsunami Disaster. I did not believe them at first, but when I went along the coast, and I saw the destruction with my own eyes, I thought that their conspiracy theory may hold some water. I have not seen the region under question, but my hunch is that it is happening again.

You should just look at the warnings that Aid agencies are giving about POK, on their websites as well as on the BBC and you will truly understand what is happening. Compare that to the News you are getting from Uri, and well it’s a no-brainer. Why are the authorities doing it? I’ll come to that later.

This Earthquake is soon turning into a Blessing in Disguise for India- Pa relations. If there was earlier a ‘thaw’ in Relations, now the situation is warmer then ever. Here lies a great opportunity for leaders of both countries to Tackle the situation head on, and restore Peace to the once ‘Heaven on Earth’

• The Rise of India

The previous NDA government may have tried to win back the last general elections using the “India Shining” campaign, but most of the voters did not buy it because they lived in the “Andhera Bharat”. The Informed already knew that India was on the rise, but were worried about the huge widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Slowly the world too began to take notice of the ‘India story’ and almost overnight, the view about India changed. Earlier India was always viewed through an Indo-Pak prism, and now it began to be compared with China, albeit as an inferior cousin of China. Somewhere about last May, after an in depth article in WSJ, which questioned various economic practices in China, India began to be seen in a favorable light.

For Economic reasons, India became the place to be for all multinationals. The world suddenly realized the buying capacity of the expanding middle class. They began to appreciate the Democracy of the India. The Judiciary and the parliamentary democracy turned out to be assets rather then liabilities of the Indian Nation. With the help of the ‘Incredible India’ add blitz across the world, India became the preferred tourist destination. CNN and BBC started special India commemoratives programs. It seemed India dream of sitting permanently on the Security Council would turn in to reality. India was beginning to Fly. It started to be counted one among the Superpowers. India Had Arrived.

This is not some fantasy, but a reality today. You should go abroad and talk to the people there and they will tell you they hold India in high esteem. Today India is the second most Searched Country on Google. Go to http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

This has been an excellent PR coup and it has not come easy. One of the costs has been under reporting the tolls in various disasters, be it the Tsunami, 26/7 or even the Quake. India in this regard is not much different then North Korea or China. [At last, we have learnt something from China ;-)]

• Mount Everest: 8844
  

Non-Mountaineers among you may not know but the height of Mount Everest is an important figure for mountaineers.

Indian cartographers had measured the height ofMount Everest as 8844m in 1950, using the age-old trigonometric methods (which were perfected by the first Surveyor General of India George Everest). Then Hillary and Tensing summated the world’s highest peak in 1953

The Chinese in 1975 measured it to be 8,848.13 m using new methods. This figure stood for a long time until 1999, when American Scientists measured it to be 8,850m (including the snow) making use of the latest GPS technology along with Radio trigonometry.

In May this year, there was a Chinese expedition, which successfully attempted the peak from the North Ridge, which had not been done earlier. They left some measuring instrument, after clearing the ice and snow on the peak.

They announced their results on the 11^th of this Month. Mount Everest stood 8,844.43 m above sea level, with a margin of error of about 0.21 m, Chen Bangzhu, Director General of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, told a news conference.

The updated figure does not mean the mountain has shrunk over time.

The data is so far the most detailed and precise among (those from) all previous surveys and hence should be seen in that context.

The decrease in height does not affect the real mountaineer. He will have to Take the same efforts, overcome his internal demons and call on all his ‘Super human Strength’ to summit Mount Everest.

• Astrologer wrong on the big prediction.

Hundreds of people flocked to a village in M.P. Near Bhopal, on Thursday to see if an astrologer who forecast his own death would indeed die as predicted.

But the 75-year-old man survived the day. Kunjilal Malviya, who lives south of the Madhya Pradesh state capital Bhopal, had been meditating in his house after announcing he would die Thursday between 3pm and 5pm.

A police official confirmed the astrologer was fine and quoted his family members as saying the prediction failed because many of those gathered had prayed for him to live. “We are afraid of his prediction coming true because all his predictions till date have been correct,” his son Anirudh told reporters. “My father had predicted the death of my grandfather 15 years ago and it came true exactly like he calculated.”

Police have been posted near the house to prevent the astrologer from killing himself, authorities said. Millions of Indians consult astrologers about their futures as well as marriage and job prospects. Malviya’s prediction is not the first of its type by an Indian astrologer. However, in the past, crowds have beaten up astrologers when their predicted demise failed to occur. Sadly, the Times have changed

• The Intricacies of Spanish Language

The word for mother and breast is the same in Spanish. This has led to a humorous thing happening when you use Google’s Translation tool

The instructions as I received Via email are as follows:

1] Go to Google’s Translation tool

2] Write “Aishwarya’s mom is very nice” in ‘Translate text:’ textbox.

3] Select “English to Spanish” in the below combo.

4] Press Translate and wait for translation.

5] Now copy the translated text from the above text and paste it in the ‘Translate text:’ textbox.

6] Select “Spanish to English” in the below combo.

7] Press Translate and wait for translation.

8] Laugh out loud.

I pity the pervert who found this out!