Apple iPhone India Launch in September via Vodafone ??

The iPhone’s entry in India has been spoken about since long. And here is yet another - a speculation, a reality or just yet another run-on-the-mill story, you can make your choice!

When the Apple iPhone initially rolled out in June last year, many countries, including India, were said to be next in line to receive the official launch of the highly-anticipated next generation phone.

News about the iPhone’s launch in India is now doing the rounds of the internet. The news states that the iPhone will be out by the first week of September exclusively through Vodafone. The 8GB version of the much-awaited and hyped touch-screen phone might roll out in the country for a price ranging between Rs 27,200 and Rs 28,000.

Depending on the response of the 8GB iPhone, 16GB version of the handset would be made available in mid-2009. This news gained momentum due to Apple retail sources, which apparently stated that the iPhone is expected to launch in India through carrier Vodafone sometime in the first week of September 2008, according to a leading business daily.

When we got in touch with Apple Asia, the reply that we got was “Apple does not comment on rumors or speculation.”

Well if the iPhone officially launches in India, the illegal purchasing of the grey market unlocked version will reduce. However, the case might even get opposite as the locked version is expected to sell for 27,000, whereas the unlocked iPhone comes under Rs. 20,000.

Quote of the Day..

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life - Albert Einstein

Illuminating Change BoGo Lights in the Developing World - by Andrea Verdin

Imagine putting your child to bed and not being able to comfort her with a light in the hall. Imagine trying to help your child after work with his reading and not being able to make out the words on the page for lack of light in the room. In the Western world, a nightlight is nothing more than a source of comfort. Light to read by or to see another’s faces is taken for granted. However, for two billion people around the world, a nightlight is a necessity and the lack of one can be expensive and dangerous. With no other choices other than a kerosene lamp, a candle, or a single-use battery flashlight at their disposal, people in Africa, South America, and the Middle East risk their health and homes while straining their incomes to have access to precious light. And what if they simply cannot afford it? Then they sit in utter darkness.

Mark Bent, a former Marine and oil industry executive, went to Africa and saw the need for a source of light that wouldn’t just last for a few hours nor endanger the people using it. He felt a pull on his heart and said to himself, “I can’t do anything about world hunger; I can’t do anything about racism; I can’t do anything about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I can do something about lighting.’’

Bent and his corporation, Sunlight Solar, have come out with BoGo Light, a solar powered flashlight that will work for up to twenty years before it will need any parts replaced or repaired. The way the light works is by absorbing the sun’s energy from its solar side panels during the day, which then is converted into light emitting diodes, or LEDs. The LEDs power the light for two days before it needs to be recharged again.

For people who, in the past, have spent up to thirty percent of their income on kerosene for their lamps or up to half of their income on a flashlight that will only last for sixteen hours, these lamps are a godsend that not only provide light that is cheap, but also provide a safe way to add hours to their day without negatively impacting their health or security. One major group who will benefit from the use of BoGo Lights is school-aged children in the developing world. Kids who have spent an entire day in the fields have only a small amount of daylight in which to study before it gets dark. As a result, many of these children cannot learn to read, and therefore may never be able to escape a life of poverty. With just a little light, now they have a chance.

Kerosene lamps are not only costly, they’re also hazardous to the users’ health. According to the World Bank, 780 million people in the developing world, the majority of whom are women and children, are exposed to kerosene lantern fumes equivalent to ingesting two packs of cigarettes a day. More than two-thirds of lung cancer victims in the developing world are female, as women are the primary homemakers. Accidental fires kill or wound hundreds of thousands of families and countless homes are destroyed because of their widespread use. Now people in Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, South America, Central America, and Haiti are able to have lights in their homes, and Bent has seen the difference this has made in their lives.

“I went to a refugee camp in Ethiopia where they had been using kerosene, and it would take up such a large portion of their incomes,” he said. “It was terrible. Not only for the user, but for the environment too. The BoGo Light has literally changed their lives.” Bent hopes his light will have an impact on people’s lifestyles in the United States as well.

“What we do with single-use flashlights in the United States is just plain stupid. The light industry functions because of planned obsolescence. We buy something knowing that in about fifteen hours, it’s not going to work anymore. The flashlight patent by Eveready Flashlights has not changed since 1984. The light model hasn’t been changed for over a hundred years, and to me, that’s ridiculous.”

According to the Energizer Corporation Website, six billion batteries are manufactured annually worldwide. And with a majority of these batteries being improperly disposed of, it is no wonder the EPA states that “the single largest source of mercury in garbage is household batteries, especially alkaline and button batteries.” Mercury carries the threat of causing brain and kidney damage after long-term exposure.

People who are environmentally conscious immediately see the benefits of owning a BoGo, considering the longevity of the LEDs (they last up to two years) and the shelf-life of its other parts. What Bent really wants people to understand, however, is that when they decide to be a little bit greener with their lifestyle, they’re also helping someone else receive the gift of light. For every BoGo Light bought, SunNight Solar will give an international assistance group like Feed the Children, Samaritan’s Purse or Invisible Children a light to give to someone in need along with the money needed to ship the light.

But the best is yet to come from SunNight.

Next month, the company will introduce a new BoGo model that is completely waterproof and has even more battery life. SunNight is also teaming up with the Rockefeller Group to come up with a bigger, stronger product that will light up an entire room and possibly ward off certain malaria-carrying mosquitoes in residences. For Bent, the ability to give people the chance to feel secure in their homes and give them the gift of light is a calling that lights up his life.

“I was in the oil industry, and I was very highly compensated, but I viewed God leading me this way,” he said. “I just had to do it. I had to make a change.”

For more information, visit the BoGo Light website at http://www.bogolight.com/. Andrea Verdin is a writer and San Diego native who’s slowly learning more about the changes that need to be made in the world, and is trying every day to make a difference. She can be reached by email at andeys3@gmail.com.

Quote of the Day and for days to come...

One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires.

Albert Einstein

We've Been Changing the Climate for Eons, and That's Reason for Hope

Our epoch needs a new name. You're familiar with, say, the Jurassic? It started 200 million years ago and ended 55 million years later, give or take. For the past 12,000 years, we've been living in the Holocene. But in 2000, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen pitched a new name for our times: the Anthropocene, the epoch affected by people. He dated it to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s — in other words, when we started messing things up. William Ruddiman, a retired climatologist at the University of Virginia, likes the name Anthropocene, too. But he thinks it started much, much earlier — as far back as 6,000 BC, when human beings first discovered agriculture. That's when we started razing forests and burning lots of wood, pumping enough carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere to alter the world's climate.

What's the difference? Scientists still argue — though not as much as deniers would have you believe — about the extent to which climate change is the result of human activity. And they still argue — quite a lot, actually — about how quickly the climate shifts in response to new conditions. As I understand Ruddiman, we humans may have been screwing up the climate for far longer than anyone thought. But that's good — because if we could change things then, we should certainly be able to change them now.

The gist of Ruddiman's argument is that 8,000 years ago, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere began their sharpest increase in 350,000 years — a CO2 spike that correlates with the origins of agriculture. Then, 5,000 years ago, methane levels jumped — at roughly the same moment humans started growing rice in paddies (organic matter decomposing in water emits methane). By 2,000 years ago, agriculture and forest-clearing had added as much as 140 billion tons of CO2 to the air, enough to stave off what would likely have been another ice age.

Since then, the climate has wiggled back and forth between warm and cold. Around AD 800, things got weirdly hot; Antarctic ice cores show atmospheric CO2 peaking then at 285 parts per million. Around 1300, CO2 levels started dropping, and by 1600 that number had decreased to as low as 275 ppm. According to Ruddiman, humans caused that nosedive, too — by dying in large numbers: In the 14th century, about one-third of Europe's population died in the Black Plague, and around the same time, some 50 million Native Americans were being wiped out by European germs. The much-reduced surviving population burned less wood and coal, grew less food, and even allowed wooded areas to grow back.

Today things are heating up again. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been on the steep incline of an exponential growth curve since 1800. Today they're at roughly 380 ppm. How high will temperatures rise as a result of so much carbon? We don't know. But the more you mess up the climate, the more feedback effects there are and the more chaotic it gets, until eventually we reach tipping points, when various important climatic systems — Arctic summer sea ice, for example, or the Indian summer monsoon — suddenly disappear or change dramatically.

But I see hope in Ruddiman's conclusions. If humans have been changing the climate for eight millennia, that means we can keep right on doing it. We can steer the climate back on course. (I should add that Ruddiman's hypothesis is controversial, and he himself interprets his findings much more conservatively.)

So what do we do? You already know the drill: Make machines more energy efficient. Use less fossil fuel. Sequester CO2. Protect rain forests. Develop alternative energy sources like wind and solar power. Build more nuclear plants. Maybe even change the planet through geoengineering, the once far-out idea that the greenhouse effect can be reversed by, say, releasing fleets of mirrors or sulfur particles into the atmosphere. Ruddiman suggests we focus on reducing the concentrations of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, by trapping emissions from landfills and changing the fertilizer used by rice farmers.

The point is, exhorting corporations and governments to act now isn't just ringing a rhetorical bell: We can rescue the globe's climatic system as abruptly as we can push it over the edge. And no matter what we call our current epoch, it would be nice if we kept the planet healthy enough to let us live to see the next one.

Peter Schwartz (peter_schwartz@gbn.com) is a cofounder and chair of the Global Business Network.

Engineers Without Borders Bring Tech to Villages Without Power

Engineers Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming helped design a low-cost turbine that will be deployed in the rural areas surrounding Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second largest city. Photo courtesy Jim Merithew/Wired.com

A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.

After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery that can power simple devices like LED lights.

"They're replacing kerosene lamps, if anything at all," said Matt McLean, a mechanical engineer by day and leader of the wind-turbine project by night. "The biggest driver is just keeping the cost way down. We're shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we're in that range."

The effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the developing world. An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and many of them are forced to light their homes with kerosene. Using one of these lamps is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, says the World Bank, and the lamps present a significant fire risk. That's why many startup companies, such as d.Light, are trying to bring cheaper LED lights to homes, but they still need a solution for producing power locally.

That's where organizations like Engineers Without Borders come in. Founded in 2002 by Bernard Amadie, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, it has grown to more than 10,000 members in over 250 chapters. According to Cathy Leslie, the executive director of the U.S. organization, 340 projects are underway.

The turbine was created by the Appropriate Technology Design Team of EWB's San Francisco chapter. Team members like Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming spend their nights and weekends inside D2M's design shop trying to perfect low-tech gadgets for people 2,500 miles away. D2M, which is Knapp and Fleming's employer, donates the lab space for after-hours use by the EWB team.

Unlike the large-scale assemblies found in wind farms, the roughly two-foot-wide and three-foot-tall turbine has a vertical axis. McLean said that orientation worked better in the choppy conditions likely to meet the turbine out in the field, where it'll be bolted on to buildings, towers or even trees.

The turbine, which Fleming refers to as a "she," is undergoing its final tweaks. Next Sunday, the prototype will undergo its next-to-last build before Fleming and another volunteer head down to the Guatemalan manufacturing facility, XelaTeco, with the building plans in hand.

The engineering team had to make their design simple enough that it could be assembled from cheap and widely available components. As a result, their plans call for building the turbine out of hard plastic (or canvas) bolted on to a steel-tube structure. The rotor, which creates mechanical energy from the movement of the blades, runs into an alternator (actually a cheap DC motor running in reverse), which converts the mechanical energy into electricity.

"We've had to simplify the way we were thinking and get rid of the idea that everything had to be as efficient as possible," McLean said.

For instance, one key obstacle was creating a good bearing system to reduce friction within the turbine. Steel bearings proved unavailable to the Guatemalan manufacturer. Instead, the designers were forced to dig deep into their bag of tricks, eventually pulling out Teflon tape.

"It's normally used for sealing pipes," said McLean. "But it's a very low cost way of reducing friction."

XelaTeco, for its part, received seed funding from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a nonprofit dedicated to incubating for-profit businesses in developing countries. AIDG's goal is not just to bring cheap wind-powered generators to Guatemalan villages, but also to build self-sustaining businesses that are well integrated with the local economy.

"For us, this is hopefully the start of a lot more projects like this in other areas as we start more businesses," said Peter Haas, executive director of the AIDG.

Scientists Build World's Smallest Transistor, Gordon Moore Sighs With Relief

British researchers have unveiled the world's smallest transistor, which measures one atom thick and ten atoms across.

The newly announced transistor is more than three times smaller than the 32 nanometer transistors at the cutting edge of silicon-based electronics.

"It's molecular electronics with the standard top-down approach which can be used in any semiconductor factory," said Kostya Novoselov, a researcher at the University of Manchester and a co-author of a new paper on the transistor in the journal Science.

Transistors form the logic gates that underpin computing. Finding new ways to make them smaller is key to the continuation of Moore's Law, which holds that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. That doubling translates into performance gains for computers. While expected improvements to processes and materials, namely silicon, seem likely to keep the law going for the next ten years, even Gordon Moore questions technology's ability to keep pace after that.

This new transistor may extend Moore's Law for a while longer.

The transistor is made out of graphene, a new material exactly one-atom thick that was discovered by Novoselov' s research team in 2004.

Made of intricately linked carbon atoms, graphene has the ability to retain several important properties when only one atom thick -- most importantly conductivity.

When current silicon transistor technology goes below 10 nanometers in size, it's predicted it will run into the laws of physics and will no longer be able to create reliable transistors.

Graphene, on the other hand, is already seeing working transistors in the sub-10 nanometer range. The researchers say their latest, unpublished work has used graphene to make transistors a single nanometer across. "

From the point of view of physics, graphene is a goldmine," said Novoselov. "You can study it for ages."

The researchers created the graphene transistors using standard semiconductor fabrication technology. They begin with a small sheet of graphene and carve channels into the material using electron beam lithography. What remains is a quantum dot with a tiny circular cage at the center known as the central island. Voltage can change the conductivity of these quantum dots, allowing them to store logic states just like standard field-effect transistors.

In the picture above, the scale bar indicates 20 nanometers, but Novoselov claims the team's recently created one nanometer graphene transistor could represent the end of the line for Moore's Law.

"It's about the smallest you can get," said Novoselov.

With the creation of what could be the smallest possible transistor, the long line of technology that extends from the first transistor, created at Bell Labs in 1947 and (a replica of which is pictured at left), could come to an end.

For all the new transistors' promise, Novoselov noted that it is currently impossible to produce large amounts of graphene. They can only produce graphene crystals about 100 microns or 0.1 millimeters across, far too small for industrial production at Intel's scale. But the scientist believes that a process for producing graphene wafers is already in the foreseeable future.

"Probably this problem will be solved in the next couple of years," he said.

Image 1: Courtesy Mesoscopic Physics group at the University of Manchester

Image 2: Public domain image

Rocket Racing to Take Off This Summer

The Rocket Racing League announced this week that their first Exhibition Race would take place at the famed Oshkosh AirVenture EAA Airshow in Wisconsin August 1-2. Two racers will be on the course which combines the thrill of motorsports with the power of rocket engines in flight. The Rocket Racing League will also hold Exhibition Races this year at the Reno Air Races, at Aviation Nation (also in Nevada), and at the X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Teams can also now opt for rocket engines provided by Doom and Quake creator and president of Armadillo Aerospace, John Carmack. The engines will run on liquid oxygen (LOX) and ethanol and include a special dose of salt water to make the rocket engines flare all the more visible from the ground (think colored smoke from an aerobatic plane). I can't wait to see one in person.

The two planes will race around a two lap course in the sky using heads up displays to see the virtual gates in the sky they must fly through at each checkpoint. Over 700,000 people are expected to watch the races at Oshkosh alone.

The Rocket Racing League was create in 2005 by X Prize Chairman Peter Diamandis and two time Indianapolis 500 winning team partner Granger Whitelaw. There are six teams in the league including former U.S. Navy pilots and former Air Force pilots and the league itself boasts former Space Shuttle Commander Rick Searfoss as a pilot.

The goal? "To advance the technology and increase the publics awareness of space travel." Having a couple dozen more people with extensive day in and day out knowledge of rocket engine design, maintenance, and operation would probably do a lot for aerospace. That is the kind of experience base we are going to need to be a space faring civilization. Then maybe all those video games you have been playing will pay off...

Rocket Racing League Announces First Exhibition Race [Rocket Racing League]

Father of Chaos Theory, Edward Lorenz, Dies

Edward Lorenz, a long-time MIT meteorologist, died in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts today. He was 90.

Lorenz is famous for having introduced the world to chaos theory, which holds that small differences in the initial conditions of a system can have outsized impacts on its functioning, a phenomenon sometimes called the "butterfly effect."

The AP has an obituary out by veteran science writer Seth Borenstein.

Neuroscience Art Show Shows EEG-Driven Robots, Beauty of Brain Scans

Courtesy : Wired Science...

Our New York metro area readers have three days left to catch the Brainwave: Common Senses neuroscience show at the Exit Art gallery, which ends April 19.

In the Scienceline video (sorry, we couldn't embed it) on the topic, we saw beautiful brain scan images by Suzanne Anker, and the robot at the right, which is driven by a computational interpretation of an artist's brainwaves during REM sleep. Its creators, Fernando Orellana and Brendan Burns, hopes the technology will evolve to the point where robots can reenact our dreams.

You're not going to find a ton of science in the video, but we appreciate fresh perspectives on brains from people working with the left right side of theirs.

Japan Captures HDTV of Full Earth "Rise" from Lunar Orbit

The Japanese lunar orbiter "Kaguya" saw earth, moon and sun line up on April 6, 2008 and captured another "Earth-rise" and "Earth-set" HDTV video- this time when the Earth was full. (The original November videos were taken when the Earth was wanning (not quite full).

According to the website, the line up occurs only twice a year and allows the orbiter to take these movies as it comes from around the back side of the moon and into view of the Earth. If you haven't worked out how that happens (I haven't either), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has kindly provided a diagram after the jump... (Thanks to Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society for the montage above).

Ok, I don't quite understand it either. But I love a good thought experiment. So...

For the Earth to look "full" the moon has to be between the earth and the sun and looking at the fully illuminated Earth. When the moon is between the Earth and the sun it would be a New Moon (since we on Earth are looking at its unilluminated side). The moon doesn't block the sunlight from falling on Earth since it's small and orbiting at a 5 degree tilt to the plane of Earth's orbit, so it is usually above or below the line of sight of the sun - see animation link below.) If you look at a lunar calendar April 6th was New Moon and the day these videos were taken.

Now, there is a New Moon every month, so why can it only capture the "Full Earth" twice a year? Check out this link for a cool animation of the moon orbiting the Earth from the perspective of the sun to help visualize why the moon only lines up directly with the earth and the sun twice a year. The animation gives a good sense of why lunar eclipses only happen twice (or four times) a year, but I am not clear about how that relates to Earth's fullness. I welcome comments from people who really know.

Note that the Apollo missions picture of "Earth-rise" did not happen to fall during "full-Earth" and had an Earth that was about 3/4's full. JAXA thinks this is the first full Earth picture to be captured, if not, it certainly is the first full Earth captured in HDTV...

JAXA has a beautiful flash site of the images it has taken with Kaguya. They also have a gallery of HDTV videos from Kaguya that are easier to navigate if you can read Japanese. The HDTV videos are not full resolution. JAXA has not released those versions yet. It is believed that their partner, the Japanese Public Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) are reserving them for future commercial and educational purposes.

I will also update this post as I learn more.

Original Press Release [JAXA] (in Japanese)

Beautiful New Earthrise and Earthset movies from Kaguya [Planetary Society]

Three Smart Things You Should Know About Helium

1 Although helium is the second-most-plentiful element in the cosmos — it's synthesized in stars by nuclear fusion — Earth is running short of the noble gas. Extracted from natural gas, our supply accumulated in the planet's crust over billions of years — the result of radioactive decay. One-third of that stash lies in the Texas panhandle, and if it continues to be consumed at the current rate, it'll be gone in nine years.

2 Macy's is rumored to be the second-largest helium customer in the world — Curse you, Red Baron! — but the element is used for more than just floating things. Two quick examples: It's perfect for pressurizing space shuttle fuel tanks (only helium remains a gas at the frigid temperature of liquid-hydrogen rocket fuel) and for cooling the superconducting electromagnets in MRI devices (helium boasts the coldest liquid state of any element).

3 Inhaling helium lets you croon like Alvin & Co. because the gas is only one-seventh as dense as air. When helium is streaming out of your lungs as you yodel, the sound waves produced by your vocal cords travel much faster, which alters the tone quality of your voice. The result: that endlessly funny squeak.

U Me Aur Hum Watch Download Movie Online

U Me Aur Hum is divided into 2 parts. The first half is basically a simple love story on how Ajay (Ajay Devgan) woos Piya (Kajol). The second half tells us that marriage is not just sharing happy moments together but being there for each other at the time of distress. It’s also about fullfilling each other’s dreams and promises made to each other. On a cruise, Ajay falls head over heals in love with Piya at the first sight. Although his first impression was disastrous, Ajay doesn’t give up and tries everything possible to woo Piya. And by hook or crook he succeeds in paving his way to her heart. The two soon develop a strong and special bond of love but not for long. Lies and deceit puts an end to their newly blossomed yet strong relationship. But love brings them together again and despite the failing relationships of their friends, the two tie the nuptial knot. Soon their marriage becomes the ideal marriage for their friends to look upon and learn. Watch Movie U Me Aur Hum Online [Part-I]

Download U Me Aur Hum Movie Online
Movie Links : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Rapidshare Links : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Alternate Rapidshare Link : 1 2

ZSHARE LINKS : 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12

Are you a Breakthrough Thinker?

Well what can i say.. Another interesting blog from Ken Hudson in his Idea Space.. thought it would interest my readers as well.....

Are you a Breakthrough Thinker? - Kens Blog - The Idea Space

On my business card I have called myself The Idea Space: Chief Breakthrough Thinker. This begs the question what is a breakthrough thinker and why is it important?

I will deal with the second question first. To be a breakthrough thinker is the most important qualification you can have on your resume. In an information rich world, the ability to create new concepts from existing information is vital. More and more, the nature of work in organisations today is generative rather than process. In other-words the people who can generate new ideas, insights and concepts to adapt to a rapidly changing world will be the most valued.

But what is a breakthrough thinker? If you can answer yes to the following five questions then you probably are:

1. Do you generate a regular flow of original ideas?
2. Can you escape from what has gone on in the past?
3. Do you challenge existing assumptions, beliefs and conventions?
4. Can you create big, new ideas quickly?
5. Do you ’see’ opportunities before others?

If the answers are yes to all these questions and you are working for a large organisation. Ask for a pay rise immediately and/or leave. You will have a much better and more enjoyable time running your own business.

Ken Hudson

subramani s has invited you to join Friendster

You're Invited You're invited to join subramani s's network of friends. By joining Friendster, you can reconnect with old friends, meet new friends, start a blog, build a custom profile, keep track of birthdays, and so much more! You can even stay in touch if you move away, switch email addresses, or lose your mobile phone. Join subramani's Network

Copyright 2002-2008 Friendster, Inc. All rights reserved. U.S. Patent No. 7,069,308, 7,117,254 & 7,188,153 568 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Terms of Service

The Duck and the Devil

There was a little boy visiting his grandparents on their farm.
He was given a slingshot to play with out in the woods. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit the target.
Getting A little discouraged, he headed back for dinner. As he was walking back he saw Grandma's pet duck.
Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck Square in the head, and killed it. He was shocked and grieved.
In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the wood pile, only to see His sister watching! Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing.
After lunch the next day Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash the Dishes." But Sally said, "Grandma, Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen."
Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck?" So Johnny did the dishes.
Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go Fishing and Grandma said, "I'm sorry but I need Sally to help make Supper."
Sally just smiled and said," Well that's all right because Johnny told Me he wanted to help." She whispered again, "Remember the duck?" So Sally Went fishing and Johnny stayed to help.

After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally's, He finally couldn't stand it any longer. He came to Grandma and confessed that he had killed the duck.
Grandma knelt down, gave him a hug, and said, "Sweetheart, I know. You see, I was standing at the window and I saw the whole thing, but because I love you, I forgave you. I was just wondering how long You would let Sally make a slave of you."
Thought for the day and every day thereafter?
Whatever is in your past, whatever you have done... And the devil Keeps throwing it up in your face (lying, cheating, debt, fear, bad Habits, hatred, anger, bitterness, etc.) ....whatever it is....You need to know that God was standing at the window and He saw the whole thing..... He has seen your whole life.

He wants you to know that He loves you and that you are forgiven.
He's just wondering how long you will let the devil make a slave of you.
The great thing about God is that when you ask for forgiveness, He Not only forgives you, but He forgets. It is by God's grace and Mercy that we are saved.
Go ahead and make the difference in someone's life today. Share this with a friend and always remember: God is at the window.

Quote of the Day.. !!!

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest. - Albert Einstien

Enough of War - Lets Die in peace

As the flower opens its gates, its sweet fragrance linger and life sweetens
as the war opens its gates, life burns as souls die

upon hearts, and upon the days of unity
will the rising hostility (enemity) be defeated...
Will the whole world changes miraculously
And will it somehow live in peace

Ye human soul, the extinguishing race
Come to consiousness
You'll die every day of fire
Until the world fires with Hatred, belligerence and war

You've shown the way of life for one soul in adversity
by holding high the torch for the whole world to survive
In the world of separation as to this is for u and thats for me
When united will benifit us all and will mitigate our sufferings

The awry of conquering and foraying one country by another
will only result in the tides of the poples tears
ye man searching for divinity and god
Whats better than Man in this world is divine

Ye men uniting in the virtual cyberspace
may you unite with your souls as well...
The world out there is burning daily
may you wet in benignance .

Enough of war dear Friends...
Lets nurture humanity
People of a mother
lets stand united

Lets us Matter... Let us Unite....

போர் போதும் தோழா

I've heard this song which i downloaded from somewhere. Sung by dippu against war... Wonderful lyrics and composition couldn't help but writing lyrics... and it goes like this...

பூ வாசல் திறந்தால் வாசம் மயக்கும் வாழ்கை இனிக்கும்,

போர் வாசல் திறந்தால் வாழ்கை எரிக்கும் ஜீவன் மரிக்கும்

இதயமெல்லாம் இணைந்திடும் நாளெல்லாம்

எழும் பகைமை வீழாதோ ??

அதிசயமாய் அகிலமும் மாறியே

அமைதியிலே வாழாதோ ??

ஓ மனித இனமே , மடியும் இனமே ,

மயக்கம் தெளிவாய் !!

போர், உலகில் வெறியும் எரியும் வரையில்,

தினமும் எரிவாய்.

ஒரு ஜீவன் உயிர் வாழ நீ பாதை காட்டினாய் - முழு

உலகம் உயிர் வாழ வகை செய்தோங்கியே..

இது உனக்கு இது எனக்கு என பிரிக்கும் உலகம்

ஒன்றானால் நன்றாகும் நம் துன்பம் நீக்கிடும்

ஒரு நாட்டை ஒரு நாடு களவாடும் பிழை தான்

இதனாலே மண்மேலே எழும் கண்ணீர் அலை தான்

எது புனிதம் எது புனிதம் என தேடும் மானிடா

இவ்வுலகில் மனிதரைப்போல் ஒரு புனிதம் ஏதடா

இணையங்களால் இணைந்திடும் மாநிடா

இதயங்களால் இனைவாயோ

எரிந்திடுதே அனுதினம் உலகமே

அன்பினில் நீ நனைவாயா

போர் போதும் தோழா

மனிதம் வாழ வைப்போம்

ஓர் தாயின் மக்கள்

ஒன்று சேர்ந்து நிற்போம்...

ஒன்றாவோம் ...

Desparation !!!

Desparation. I wonder how many times in life have you been truly desparate? Begged and pleaded for something? It is interesting to me that human beings do this. We beg, plead, whine, grovel, everything in our power to achieve our desire. Only to want more. I remember many times as a child campaining to the point of my mother's relention to get something I wanted. It drove her nuts. Even to adult hood I do this. Why do we torture ourselves like this? If one is not careful enough, one could lose one's sanity becuase he or she did not achieve the desired goal, or if they did they betrayed, compromised, stabbed too many people they went crazy in their attempt to achieve their goal. Why does mankind stoop to this level? Why is it so hard to let go of so many things?