Going To Kodai

I'll be out on a team outing to Kodai.
We hope to get the accurate rain measurement over there.
Coz we are almost sure that its gonna rain while we are there :-D

Thursday night we are off.
And Sunday early morning we are back.
Two days in Kodai - Friday and Saturday.

Itz gonna be fun :-)
_____________________________________________________

Tail:
1. What was the rain-water-measurement-instrument called? Hygrometer??
2. This is my 2nd visit to Kodai. Earlier one was part of MUA :-)

Once in a 'Blue Moon'

N7W has already gone into memories... The 'life expectancy' of any news these days is a few days. Its only once in a blue moon that a story (aka news) comes and makes a big national impact and stays alive for a few weeks, if not months. One such news was the Jessica Lall case.

Well, I'm not here to do a flashback into any sensational news.

The topic, now, is "Once in a blue moon".
Rather, to be specific, "Blue moon".

I had been using this phrase many a times, without knowing the origin. For sure, I knew what it meant. But how it came into existence? This thought never flashed into my mind. Of course, as with any other thing, my mind keeps making assumptions. And the usage 'once in a blue moon' would give me the visual of me on terrace, cloudy sky, and a bluish moon playing hide and seek behind the dark clouds. Well, its only recently that I found the actual 'blue moon'

Yes, I really found it! And captured it.
Here it is :-)



One more:



(This one is a real 'blue' moon) :-D

And trivia says, "the second full moon, in the same month is called a blue moon. Though its called 'blue' moon, its not blue in color"

New Seven Wonders of the World

or "New Seven Blunders of the World?"

Now that I have too many questions to answer, thanks to my previous post, this post becomes inevitable. This should very well trigger a war of all sorts (At least in my limited space. The war is very much on, in the public spaces). And point of discussion is: "The New 7 Wonders"

The best way to take this forward would be with bulleted points!
-> What was the need of it?
How many of you know the answer to this question – “How many 7 wonders lists are currently existent?". Even I'm unsure of the answer. I remember doing a research on this long back, when this question was put to me. And I recollect finding out that there are THREE such lists - 7 Wonders of Ancient World, 7 of Medieval World, 7 of Modern. Keep guessing, which list has Taj Mahal, and which one has Eiffel Tower*. Do we need one more list to trouble the students? Of course, we have a new list titled New Seven Wonders of the World.
I fail to understand the logic of launching such a campaign. Did the organizers feel that the creators of earlier list of wonders missed a few, or was it that they considered the old wonders to be very old (even the Seven Wonders of Modern World). I just don’t know why they started this whole campaign, but I feel that its absolutely unnecessary, insane, stupid, incomprehensive, imperfect, disappointing, abhorrent, repugnant, disgusting, nauseating, I simply fall short of words.

-> What should New Seven Wonders of the World ideally indicate?
Normally, something new means which didn’t exist previously or more precisely having come into existence in the recent past. Can anyone tell me which of these seven can be categorized under the category of new? The work on Great Wall of China started in 5th century BC (Listed in 7 Wonders of Medieval World), Petra in Jordan was discovered in 1812 and till date no method has been able to determine its birth, Christ the Redeemer was constructed in 1931 (finally something almost new), Machu Picchu was constructed around 1450 (declared World Heritage Site in 1983), Chicken Itza rose to prominence somewhere around 600AD, Colosseum of Rome was constructed during 80AD (Listed in 7 Wonders of Medieval World), Taj Mahal stood up by 1648, Great Pyramid (Honorary Candidate) was constructed by 2560BC (Fit to be called a New Wonder. It is also listed in the Seven Wonders of Ancient World). Except for the statue of Christ the Redeemer I’m unable to find any one wonder which is not older than a century. Is this what we call NEW? Maybe, I need to go to primary classes once again.
Ironically, the oldest member in Seven Wonders of Modern World – Panama Canal was build in 1914. As mentioned earlier other than Christ the Redeemer is there any other wonder which was constructed after that even after considering the oldest in Wonders of Modern World.
It would be better to call them the New Seven Infatuations of World.

-> Who runs this campaign?
The campaign is run by a Swiss non profit group. I forgot the name. To find it please do a Google. When we say 'non profit' group, I wonder what that means. From what I know, the only free vote you can do is the FIRST online vote. (If you have money lying idle in your bank account, you can cast a SECOND, THIRD....and keep counting....N number of votes). Where does this money go? There are other means of voting - telephonic and SMS. I donno if telephonic voting earns them any currency. But SMS votes do! This is mentioned in their site itself.
[Do telephone calls and SMS generate revenues for New 7 Wonders?
Yes. We have, in partnership with our technical telephone partners, established the world's first global premium voting platform. A very small portion of the revenue from each call or SMS is goes to New 7 Wonders and will help to fund the entire project.]

Assuming 'contest-charges' for SMS votes to be at 3 Indian Rupees, and assuming just 10% of votes were SMS votes, do this math:
10/100 * (100 million votes) * 3 Indian Rupees
That’s only 30 million Rupees. Very Less!

Let them make profit. Why do you bother? They need money to run the campaign.

-> Culmination of a World Wide Opinion Poll? Who, Where, How?
The organizers are celebrating the massive participation of 100 million people (Just 10% of Indian population). See the global reach of the poll!
What reach? I live in a slum. No electricity. How do I vote? I'm from a rural area. No internet. I don’t wanna waste money on this. How do I vote?
On the other side, see the developed countries.
They boast of connection speeds unthought-of, in India. Every house, every shopping centre has multiple kiosks. Is this a fair deal? The US citizens or citizens of developed nations have more privileges in this respect, to cast their vote. But, they get defeated by certain countries when it comes to population.
Though India is not very well 'connected' as the US, considering the population, there is high probability that a good number of votes would have come from this subcontinent. Same with China. And to think that an Indian would waste their 'free vote' by voting for some hanging airport in Uzbekhstan would be wild. So rather than looking it from a logical view point, majority of the voters would have taken up a patriotic stance. Where would such a poll lead to? Only an idiot would say that it’s unbiased. The decision is not based on facts and figures but patriotism and money power.

So the point -> the greater the population, the greater the reach of internet, the more the number of votes the wonder of that country gets!

And the bigger picture -> the voting system is absurd.

-> Why consider again
Last but not the least... Did I say "The New 7 Wonders of the World?" Yes I did. And I'm wrong. There are 8 listings under the heading "The New 7 Wonders of the World". Weird? (Well, if there can be 12 'Navratna' companies, why not 8 seven wonders?) :-D
Well, the story behind this is interesting.
Egypt protested against the 'inclusion' of the Pyramids of Giza into the competition. For the record, this monument is the only remaining one, from the original "7 Ancient Wonders of the World" list. So the n7W team (as quoted in the website) "designates the Pyramids of Giza as an Honorary New 7 Wonders Candidate, and removed it from voting."
Note: I read, saw and heard in all places ( I had no choice, every news channel - particularly Headlines Today - reported nothing else, but the n7W on that dreaded 7/7/7 day) that the contest is organized by a Swiss (?) non-profit (!!) committee/organization. And on that day, after the results were announced, I checked their official site, out of curiosity. There were no ads :-) I wonder if the SMS's were charged the nominal 2 rupees, or the contest-charge of 6. I donno, coz I dint send any!

An interesting point Gasper made the other day, during a casual discussion:
“Have you ever seen a Miss universe or a Miss world contesting again for a similar title?”

*Real Wonders which should have found a place in this list
-> Alta Igloo Hotel: Ice Hotel in Finnmark which is rebuilt yearly since 2000. The 2000 square metre hotel has 30 rooms, including 2 suites and it is decorated with numerous ice sculptures and ice furnishings, including lighting systems which enhance the different types of crystalline formations. The Alta Igloo Hotel has a changing theme every year.
-> Internet
-> Mobilephones
-> KVLY-TV Mast: Tallest standing structure (621m) located in North Dakota, US
-> Kansai International Airport: An international airport located on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka Bay, Japan. It was opened in 1994. During FY2005 it had 112,579 aircraft movements, 16,428,399 passengers, 843,368 tonnes of freight. On January 17, 1995, Japan was struck by the Kobe earthquake, whose epicenter was approximately 20km away. The airport, however, emerged unscathed, even the glass in the windows stayed intact. Later in 1998, the airport survived a typhoon with wind speeds of up to 200km/h.
-> Nanotechnology
-> Artificial Heart by Robert Jarvik in 1982


Comments please !!

Tail piece: People have (and the news channels too) now forgotten about the poll and the results. The hot news of the day is “Bipasha Basu, Ronaldo’s new lover?”. What crap!

Credits: Thanks to Vimal Gasper, for co-authoring the article.
And for a black-on-white version of the story, pls follow this link

New 7 Wonders of the World

Bullshit!