Kaleidoscope

Today in the headlines, I came across the news - Wildfires blaze across California. From BBC ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7055721.stm ), I learnt that  40,000 acres  of land was burnt and that 250,000 people had to evacuate their homes.

It is a sad news that made me think about how and why forest fires occur ( other than deliberate attempts and carelessness by human ). I visited Wikipedia to learn more about the cause of wildfires - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire

Interesting information from wikipedia as below. For the full information, feel free to visit the above URL.  

Some plants encourage fire ( example: Eucalyptus has flammable oils in their leaves ) to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant fellow species.

Plants have come up with defense mechanisms too , to combat this wildfire. Some plants possess reserve shoots that sprout after a fire, some possess fire resistance seeds

When the evaporation of water in plants is higher than the absorption from the soil, the plants dry out and release the flammable gas ethylene. Thus it also is due to a natural imbalance.

The fire that spreads from tree tops ( known as crown fire ) is the deadliest type of forest fire as it can spread rapidly as opposed to the 'Lower' - Bushes fire or 'Jumping or Spotting fire' which is caused by the carry over of burning leaves and branches by wind from one spot to other.

Thanks to BBC for the picture and Wikipedia for the information.

In the dance studio that I visited for the second time, I found this informative brochure on the various dance programs they conduct.

What started out as a birth preparation exercise regime, this mystical dance course focuses on calculated pelvic movements and body undulations.

Surprised, I visited wikipedia to find about the origins of Belly Dance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belly_dance

I did find references in Wiki for this theory, though other theories of how this dance would have originated were also mentioned.

It is indeed an interesting theory, and well supports human creativity, that is inspired by any observed phenomenon.

After two and a half years I watched a theatrical performance,

Waves of Love

The World of the Whirling Dervishes by Istanbul Historical Turkish Music Ensemble.

The program is also in celebration of the 800th anniversary of Rumi's birth.

It is on a sufi ritual, inspired by Rumi. Though I did not understand the meaning of the words, the visual display did communicate brotherhood, love and tolerance.

It started with people worshiping and then bowing to each other out of respect. And then, the whirl began. Wow! 7 people, with beautiful long white skirts, whirling for more than 30 minutes for the music in unison was indeed a sight to watch.

For me, it also symbolized a scientific understanding and a respect for the Nature which is governing all the whirling planets.

At the end of the program, the organizers gave a gift pouch. Of the gifts, the one that got my attention was a small box, beautifully printed or painted with the picture of the whirls.

On the back side of the box, 7 advices of Rumi are found in print as well.

1. In generosity and helping others, be like a river.

2. In compassion and grace, be like the sun.

3. In concealing others; faults, be like the night.

4. In anger and fury, be like the dead.

5. In modesty and humility, be like the earth.

6. In tolerance, be like the sea.

7. Either appear as you are, or be as you look

I like the 7th one very much.

I turned to my friend and colleague and asked

What is this P.S. thing we write at the end of a message?

An intelligent man who has answer or who will find an answer for any question I ask, he instantly told me that it means Post Script.

We both could not come to an agreeable conclusion ( imagination!) on how this word would have been derived.

I googled a while ago and came across interesting perspectives on this term.

* It is derived from the latin word Post Scriptum which means 'After Writing'.   Funny! Some say that it is meant for mentioning something hastily and i   incidentally

* It is used always after Signature ( Post Signature? )

* http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/post_scriptum offers another interesting    perspective. When an article which is already published and known is appended, the appended portion is referred as P.S. ( Post Script )   I think this makes more sense. This distinguishes the difference between  what was original or the first version and what was added so that one could appreciate the evolution in the thinking ( for all streams ) or discovery ( in case of a    scientific finding- for example )

When I use P.S. in my email, it is usually an information not asked directly or not the main content of my message. It is an useful supplementary information to the subject matter.

Today I thought of writing an article. But changed my mind to post some insightful, useful quotes after I looked at one of the quotes that I printed and displayed at my eyesight in my office.

The same quote looked very meaningful and deep to me today. ( the first one ).

So, It is quotes time in Kaleidoscope.

Thanks to Ayn Rand, Gandhi for the originals and www.brainyquotes.com for the online version.

I told my grandfather that it was so important to have a walkman to learn English! I thought he believed me and bought me one!

This was in my college days and the first thing I did with my walkman was to listen to songs.

That experience was so vivid and memorable. Suddenly, amidst the voices, I heard the sound of drum in one ear; from there it was rolling to the other. Somewhere at the center of my head, I heard voices. wow!

I was listening to the songs from an audio cassette all along the night of my travel from my home town to my college town. That was fascinating!

After college, I landed up in a job. The first gadget that I bought was a Sony stereo system. My second job was in States, the gadget country. I bought 3 ipods so far, sold one, lost one and gifted the last one. From 12 songs an audio cassette to 10,000 in a device smaller than the audio cassette in size! Never have I imagined that I would get hold of such a device in hand. At this juncture, I recollect what one of my friends said. He said, America is a land of technology and invention; that is inherent in the land and it will be so for future.

True it is. Now, we are in the era of Ipod touch, Zune, Zen and what not. What I learnt is that Asian companies are also catching up; come up with their own creativity in the models. Recently I bought a Samsung MP3 2 GB player that can hold 500 songs, so tiny and with a distinct feature called 3d sound. Personal musical players' market is indeed competitive, with a lot of choices for the buyers.  Every product has one or two unique features, a style and a memorable name. Hats off to competition! I do not want to do a gadget review here, but simply to express my admiration for these devices and thank the creative spirit of their producers!

Thanks to apple, creative, microsoft and samsung websites for the pictures.

        Shakespeare's sonnet 16 - This itself will ring a bell to most avid readers of poetry, even to people who are not much into poetry.

       The metaphors that he used are thought provoking, especially this one 

-       It is the star to every wandering bark,
        Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

       What does Shakespeare refer by the star's height? Does he refer to the physical proximity between the lover and the beloved? or what else could it be? And what a fantastic metaphor to say 'whose worth's unknown' - how beautifully he weaves the importance of star to a bark! Here is that famous sonnet!

 
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
        Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
        Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
        That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
        Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
        Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
        But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
        I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Thanks to Shakespeare for this wonderful work! 

My grandfather used to tell me what he could buy in his time for the same money we now use to buy a product. It is always mind boggling.  I used to think that we are paying way too much now, often forgetting the fact that we also earn that much proportionately.

This popped a question in my mind. What is the necessity to increase salaries and also increase the price of the commodities? Is it because man wants a change always, despite the natural changes?

Are common people confused with terms such as inflation and more frightening terms from Economics and thus evade their understanding of what might be very simple to follow? And because we don't understand, we run along on this non-stop treadmill of man made economical changes!

While these could apply to products, one of the alarming facts is that we need to buy drinking water, which definitely was not the case during my grandfather's childhood times!  How would it be like if we were to buy oxygen also to survive?

The release of new products and a subsequent price rise, salary rise to account for the cost of living while seem to be interconnected to man created need to keep upgrading things, surely a short supply of natural resources contribute to the price rise.

Short supply is due to several reasons. Gandhi mentioned one prominent reason. "The earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed"

While it is easy to look at the cultural differences among people in different parts of the world, also easy is to learn the similarities.

I learnt the similarities from the movies to begin with and then by observing lives of people in the countries I visited.

1. Love, Helping Others, Hero saving the world, community from villain - common themes in movies - everywhere.

2.School system - despite some minor differences most school systems are same - memory based education.

3."Going to job after graduation"  mentality

4. "Own a house, Have a family " goals

5. Similar government structure despite different ideologies

6. Handful of great people in inventors, scientists, idealogic leaders in every country

7. Insanity :-)

Many more can be listed here, but I will leave that to your imagination.

Thanks to all the producers of the movie stills for the captivating images. All these movies exhibit the strengths and the beauty of humanity.

Thanks to Star Trek, I learnt a new word "ANTI MATTER".  But WHAT IS IT? I could not understand the meaning just from the term.

Curious to find what this means, I googled for ANTI MATTER and found this wonderful website http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch

Imagine a hot metal sheet in a coin factory ('energy'). When you stamp out a coin from a metal sheet, you are left with a coin and a hole in the sheet.You could call this hole an "anticoin".

The education from this site starts with the above simplistic anology to understand what antimatter is. In this journey I also learnt the below, which are intriguing concepts to me

The deeper we look into space, the further we look back in time. So is time travel just the travel deeper into space?

The symmetry between matter and antimatter is broken and thats why we exist. How puzzling and intriguing is this?

Thanks to Rolf Landua and Cern  for this information. Thanks to www.crystalinks.com/matter_antimatter.jpg for the picture.

In my work life in States, we, friends who worked together would often go for afternoon lunch together. It was in one of those times, I learnt a phrase, "Let us go dutch". I was told that the meaning of that phrase was that each of us would pay our individual bill. 

Yesterday, in one of the trading books, I came across a term 'Dutch Auction'.

Wondering if these two were interconnected, I browsed wikipedia "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction".  

The description in wikipedia is : 

Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.

Interestingly, The Dutch auction is named for its best known example, the Dutch tulip auctions. However, in, the dutch land - Netherlands this type of auction is actually known as a "Chinese auction". 

There is more information in wikipedia on the usage of 'Dutch Auction' in "Public offerings" and on "Share repurchases".

In general, I find a theme that this term is used to describe quick auctions in all contexts.

Thanks to wikipedia for the information and freefoto.com for the picture.

There is a dish they use effectively in Indian marriage feasts to substitute the main course if the crowd turned up is more than expected. That dish, when so simple, is tasty, nutritious and always achieves its purpose.

In a sense, Such are the quotes of wisdom from wise people when it comes to my today's blog. I thank the contributed people for helping my blog today!

Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate or value into your life - Northrup Christiane

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome - Arthur Ashe

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's mind, stretched by a new idea, can never go back to its original dimension - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere - Martin Luther King

Thanks to microsoft for the beautiful sun set picture.

I googled for "Water Scarcity" and clicked one of the first sites that came up as a result of the search. http://www.promembrane.info/56.0.html

Thanks to http://www.depts.ttu.edu/CASNR/Water/water1.jpg for the picture. 

While reading an article titled Current Water Scarcity Situation, I remembered my child hood days. In the village where I grew up, we had to walk for atleast a mile and sometimes two, to fetch water for domestic purposes. Sometimes, the municipality ( local governing body ) opens up the taps near by our house( 100 feet away ) and at those occasions, almost every time, what I witnessed along with the lengthy queue was a quarrel on who would fetch first. Sometimes these quarrels would move from verbal exchange of unpalatable words to a physical fight.

I realized that the fight has already begun, many years ago. It is just that I did not take it seriously. This realization matches with the information from the article

 In particular in the Middles East region, most of the water that runs is located in three major waterways: the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile and Jordan River systems. Mutual dependence on these resources has made water a catalyst for conflict, occurring 21 armed disputes over water in recent history (i.e. 1967 War, the Iran-Iraq War, Israel-Palestinian Authority) (Darwish, 1994).

When I was young, I was greatly disturbed by the situation in my village. But after I moved out and after enjoying a comfortable supply of water at my disposal wherever I went and whenever I wanted, I truly forgot my past. From yesterday, it hits me on my head not only whenever I buy a water bottle  but also when I use water for free.

Thanks to the website for promembrane.com for the statistical information. The complete article further divulges statistical information on per capita figures of water available in certain regions in the world and also about the efforts that are underway in the 'water scarce countries'.

I came across a sensitive message today, a presentation made by India's former president Abdul Kalam in the form of a letter from a man from 2070. The letter speaks for itself.

Tribute to him for his sensitivity and creativity.

Please scroll down to view all the slides in this presentation 'WaterinYear2070'.

• September 2008 [1]
• August 2008 [4]
• July 2008 [17]
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• May 2008 [28]
• April 2008 [31]
• March 2008 [20]
• February 2008 [9]
• January 2008 [3]
• December 2007 [10]
• November 2007 [17]
• October 2007 [23]
• September 2007 [30]
• August 2007 [15]
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• June 2007 [13]
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• April 2007 [2]

• Quotes [91] 
• Poetry [44] 
• General [117] 
• People [1] 
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