Fly Me To The Deity

An unmanned spacecraft from India, the most worldly and yet other-worldly of nations, is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god. The Chandrayaan is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to reach it on a ladder of considerable (but insufficient) length — as my grandmother’s bedtime version of events would have it. So think of this as a modern Indian pilgrimage to the moon. Reverence for the moon is apparent from the website of the Indian Space Research Organisation, the body that launched the Chandrayaan, which includes a verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: “O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect/ You enlighten us through the right path.” One is tempted, in all this, to dwell on the seeming contradiction between religion and science, between reason and superstition. And yet, anyone who has been to India will have noted also its ‘modernity of tradition’. The phrase, borrowed from political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, might explain the ability of devout Hindus — many of them, no doubt, rocket scientists — to see no disharmony between ancient Vedic beliefs and contemporary scientific practice. The Hindu astrological system is predicated on lunar movements: so the moon is a big deal in astrology-obsessed India. That said, the genius of modern Hinduism lies in its comfort with, and imperviousness to, science. A friend tells me of an episode from his childhood in Varanasi, the sacred Hindu city. Days after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a model of the lunar module was placed in a courtyard of the most venerable temple in the city. The Hindu faithful were hailing man-on-the-moon; there was no suggestion that the Americans had committed sacrilege. I might add here, with a caveat against exaggeration that science sometimes struggles to coexist with faith in the United States in ways that would disconcert many Indians. Of course, the Chandrayaan is also a grand political gesture, space exploration in the service of national pride. This kind of excursion may provoke yawns at NASA, but judging from round-the-clock local coverage it has received, the mission has clearly inflamed the imagination and ambition of Indians. Yes, even moon-worshipping ones.—

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Its Hot for all

Radio Mirchi will unveil a visual radio in Delhi by the end of this month, making it the third city in the world to adopt a technology that will open up a new revenue for the private FM radio operator.
Radio Mirchi is partnering with Hutch and Airtel to offer this service. The broadcast will be available on Nokia mobile phones with Hewlett-Packard (HP) as the technology provider.
"We have identified four key markets including Mumbai for launching visual radio. Though it is too early to exploit strong revenues from this medium, it will give us a presence in emerging platforms like mobile phones," says Entertainment Network (India) Ltd managing director and CEO AP Parigi. Radio Mirchi will speed ahead of Virgin Radio which is planning to launch visual radio later this year. "We are doing test runs and will launch it this year," says Virgin Radio UK director of digital media James Cridland. Helsinki in Finland and Singapore are the other two places where visual radio has kicked off commercially. The plan to launch in Delhi was announced today by Radio Mirchi deputy-CEO Prashant Pandey at the India Radio Forum 2006. Radio stations are turning to new revenue streams as they are facing competition from emerging technologies. Specific threats from MP3, which had an estimated 55 million devices in the market in 2005, and internet webcasting are eating into the earnings of traditional radio. So the way out is to adopt into new digital platforms like direct-to-home (DTH) and digital audio broadcasting (DAB). Virgin is moving its content to such platforms. "About 28 per cent of our audience is coming from new platforms. As for visual radio, it is important to have a presence in this segment. Nokia will have 100,000 handsets in UK for visual radio by the end of the year," says Cridland.Radio Mirchi has launched Visual Radio in Delhi India, believe my guys its a great experience, Listening and seeing what song is playing, to know more about it rate the song, participate in Quiz during the breaks you can also see what movies are playing on theatres etc , etc, you should see it to belive it.Posting some pictures of the same,Some more dope on what is Visual RadioVisual radio allows listeners to tune in to local FM radio via the receiver on their Nokia devices while simultaneously receiving interactive information and graphics that are synchronised with radio broadcast through cellular network onto the screen of the handset.Listeners can enjoy engaging and content, participate in radio station promotions, poll, contensts and interact with radio jockeys and special guests. Radio Mirchi becomes the first FM radio station to offer this interactive content.

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Chandrayaan’s orbit raised again

With the fourth manoeuvre to raise the orbit of Chandrayaan-1 successful on Wednesday morning, Chandrayaan-1, India’s first spacecraft to the moon, is racing to reach two-thirds of the distance to the moon. The moon is about 3.84 lakh km away from the earth.
When engineers from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at Bangalore radioed commands to Chandrayaan-1 on Wednesday, the spacecraft’s propulsion system swung into action and fired for three minutes from 7.38 a.m. This led Chandrayaan-1 into a highly elliptical orbit, whose apogee lay at 2,67,000 km and the perigee at 465 km. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the earth once.
(The SCC, the nerve centre of operations under way now to take Chandrayaan-1 into the lunar orbit, is situated at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network - ISTRAC - at Peenya in Bangalore).
M. Annadurai, Project Director, Chandrayaan-1, explained: “The spacecraft will keep moving. Chandrayaan-1 will take three days to reach this height (2.67 lakh km). Again, it will take three days to come back to the earth. So in this orbit, the spacecraft takes six days to go round the earth once.”
When the spacecraft reached the apogee of 2.67 lakh km, it would signify its crossing two-thirds of the distance to the moon. The next firing of the motor on board Chandrayaan-1 would take place late in the night of November 3 or early in the morning of November 4 to take it to the vicinity of the moon, Mr. Annadurai said. An ISRO press release said the health of Chandrayaan-1 was being continuously monitored from the SCC at ISTRAC with support from the two huge radars with diameters of 32 metres and 18 metres, installed at Byalalu village near Bangalore. “All systems on board the spacecraft are performing normally,” the release said.The ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11) put Chandrayaan-1 into its initial orbit of 22,866 km by 256 km on October 22.

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जीने का भी वक्त नही

हर खुशी है लोगो के दामन में,
पर एक हॅसी के लिए वक्त नही
दिन रात दौडती दुनिया में,
जिंदगी के लिए वक्त नही
मॉ की लोरी का एहसास तो है,
पर मॉं को मॉ कहने का वक्त नही

सारे रिश्तों को तो हम मार चुके,
अब उन्हे दफनाने का भी वक्त नही
सारे नाम मोबाइल मे है,
पर दोस्ती के लिए वक्त नही
गैरों की क्या बात करे,
जब अपनों के लिए ही वक्त नही

ऑंखो में है नींद बडी,
पर सोने के लिए वक्त नही
दिल तो है गमों से भरा
पर रोने का भी वक्त नही
पैसों की दौड में ऐसे दौडे,
की थकने का भी वक्त नही
पराए एहसानो की कदर करें कैसे,
जब अपने सपनों के लिए ही वक्त नही

तू ही बता ए जिंदगी,
इस जिंदगी का क्या होगा
की हर पल मरने वालों को,
जीने का भी वक्त नही

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Thinking

Thinking. Can't stop thinking.
Think of you. This. That. That Life. That day.
That dream was mine.
A utopian dream.

Your aura; struck me like lightning to a tree.
Pointy, like a star, you shone.
So bright, yet not shining as a star would,
But as apparent as white chalk on a blackboard.
You would not show off like a star.
Yet you did burn so hot, so fiercely, so explosively -
you were a star in my eyes.

But like all stars, you died.
That gas was gone.
No pull between us.
The atmosphere was dry
and I began to choke.
I was taken from my star -
like a child being taken from its poor,
drunken mother - I did not know what was happening.
Dazed. Confused. Without true reality, I there sat.
Wondering.
The end of my world had only just begun, with yours beginning.

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Poor countries face 'serious' damage from financial crisis: IMF

Developing countries could face the most serious damage from a prolonged global credit crisis as they have fewer resources to prevent their own banks from collapsing, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Sunday.The IMF and World Bank promised to use their "full range of resources" to help countries that cannot manage the spreading financial crisis on their own. Countries promised to maintain aid pledges to poor countries despite the turmoil in their own backyards.Some 30 countries face serious budget shortfalls as exports have dropped and money inflow from foreign investors has slowed. The IMF on Thursday boosted its own lending facilities for struggling countries.Developing countries already hit by surging food and fuel prices "risk very serious setbacks to their efforts to improve the lives of their populations from any prolonged tightening of credit or sustained global slowdown," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said."The poorest and most vulnerable groups risk the most serious - and in some cases permanent - damage."Members of the Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank urged more contributions to a fund to help offset the food crisis. Pledges of some $1.2 billion have been made to date, including $50 million offered this week by Australia.The World Bank is launching a new "energy for the poor" fund, as well as two climate funds to deal with other ongoing problems faced by poorer countries."The financial crisis adds a crisis to a crisis" for the developing world, said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who noted that the "other crises" will stay around as the financial turmoil eases.

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UN creates task force on global economic crisis

Just days after the US and European leaders agreed to an emergency economic summit on US soil, the UN on Monday announced the creation of a task force to review the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the worst global financial meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is to head the group, the Interactive Panel on the Global Financial Crisis, which is to hold its first meeting on October 30 at UN headquarters in New York, said Miguel d'Escoto, the president of the UN General Assembly.Miguel d'Escoto said he set up the panel "in response to the current turmoil in the financial crisis".The precise connection of the project to the economics summit is not clear, but US President George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current head of the European Union (EU), set a tentative date of soon after the November 4 US presidential elections.With the backing of the 27-member EU, which has been scrambling to keep finance systems afloat in the wake of the US economic collapse, Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have called for rebuilding the global fnancial system from bottom up.They have called for international agreement on a new financial order and global capitalism system, similar to the Bretton Woods agreements that founded the IMF and World Bank.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has offered to host the global summit in New York. Sarkozy has made it clear on Saturday that he favours the New York venue because the crisis began there, and should be resolved there. The UN panel is to undertake a "comprehensive review of the international financial system" and suggest steps to be taken by UN members "to secure a more stable global economic order".
Miguel d'Escoto said in a statement that there is growing recognition "that the current turmoil in the financial system cannot be solved through piecemeal responses at the national and regional levels but requires a coordinated effort at the global level". He said developing countries have not been represented in the Bretton Woods institutions to fight for their economies. He said it is time for the world body to seek the design of a new economic architecture that is inclusive and democratic to be "credible and sustainable".
Miguel d'Escoto has called for democratising the UN since he assumed the presidency of the 192-nation assembly in September, criticising the world's major political and economic powers of dominating the UN.He is a former foreign minister of Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s, which fought the US government at the height of the Cold War.

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Commonwealth Games: Private show using public funds

The Indian government is spending huge money from the tax- payer's pockets, without his knowledge, on the Commonwealth Games. According to the document India has paid $ 1,20,00,000 (Rs 50 crore) to the CGF as licensing fee to host the games.
The commonwealth Youth Games began in Pune on October 13, amid much hoopla. Before you sink further in the euphoria of the games, here is something that you need to know as a tax-payer. The huge expenditure on these games and its organisation is being done out of taxpayers' money for the benefit of a handful entities, without the public knowledge. This apart, while Puneites would be happy that CYG is being conducted in Pune, it is interesting to know that Pune was never a part of the games in its planning stage.
India had won the right to host the Commonwealth Games by defeating Canada 46 votes to 22 at the CGF General Assembly held in Montego Bay in November, 2003, which happened after a bidding process from both the countries. The Indian Olympic Committee (IOA) put India's bid forward and the Indian government had agreed to support the bid. In the bid document, the IOA led by Pune MP, Suresh Kalmadi, also the head of the organising committee of the games, had proposed Delhi as the venue for both Youth Games-2008 and the main games to be held in 2010. However, the organising committee thrust the games on Pune because civic infrastructure in Delhi needed time to be built to international standards. The reason for choosing Pune as the alternate venue was that the Congress was ruling in the Pune Municipal Corporation and was controlled by Kalmadi.
According to the bid document, the Indian government, through the IOA, is spending more than $430 million (Rs 2000 crore) on the events, a fact which has been left undisclosed by the organising committee. A quick look at the bid document reveals that apart from the details of the games India is willing to host, the bid document also contains the details of the money, which the Indian Government is spending. According to the document India has paid $ 1,20,00,000 (Rs 50 crore) to the CGF as a licensing fee to host the games. It has donated $1,00,000 to each of the 71 participating countries to support training and preparation of their athletes.
It has spent another $4,90,00,000 (Rs 205 crore) to pay for the accommodation and travel of the participants. The games administration will cost $18,00,00,000, (Rs 756 crore) while capital expenditure like renovation and construction of stadia (in Delhi) will cost $21,00,00,000, (Rs 882 crore) totaling a sizeable $ 42,10,00,000 (Rs 1768, crore). However, after the shift of venue from Delhi to Pune the capital expenditure cost has gone up by another $ 6,00,00,000 (Rs 252 crore), apart from the $ 66,60,000 (Rs 28 crore) that will be spent on the CYG, according to the document.
The document also says that that sponsorships, broadcasting rights, ticket sales, etc will bring in $ 18,00,00,000 (Rs 756 crore). The evaluation commission of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), the body that governs the games, has found inconsistencies in the revenue figures stated by the IOA, which it has said to be 'potentially overstated'. However, it has chose to ignore those, because the government of India has given an undertaking that it will pitch in to fill any kind of revenue shortfall that the organising committee may encounter.
If this is not enough, the organising committee and the Indian government clarified to the CGF that they have provision for upto 30% increase in this expenditure, which has been drafted according to cost prevailing in 2003.

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