Gynephobia or Gynophobia- Fear of women.

Gynephobia or Gynophobia- Fear of women.

Yes, this is one of the phobias listed under THE PHOBIA LIST. quite an interesting website. here is the link and more details>>

http://phobialist.com/

Some of the phobias listed are as follows, though the list is endless. Quite interesting.

A-

Ablutophobia- Fear of washing or bathing.
Acarophobia- Fear of itching or of the insects that cause itching.
Acerophobia- Fear of sourness.
Achluophobia- Fear of darkness.
Acousticophobia- Fear of noise.
Acrophobia- Fear of heights.
Aerophobia- Fear of drafts, air swallowing, or airbourne noxious substances.
Aeroacrophobia- Fear of open high places.
Aeronausiphobia- Fear of vomiting secondary to airsickness.
Agateophobia- Fear of insanity.

Another interesting article lists THE FEAR OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.

Caligynephobia: The Fear of Beautiful Women

Not many people might know this but there are people out there who are ever scared of pretty women. Defined as "a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of beautiful women", each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress. Known by a number of names - Caligynephobia (pronounced cal-e-guy-nah-foe-bee-uh), Venustraphobia, and Fear of Beautiful Women being the most common - the problem often significantly impacts the quality of life. It can cause panic attacks and keep people apart from loved ones and business associates.

Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread, although everyone experiences caligynephobia in their own way and may have different symptoms. For anyone earning a living, the financial toll of this phobia is incalculable. Living with fear means you can never concentrate fully and give your best. Lost opportunities. Poor performance or grades. Promotions that pass you by.
Like all fears and phobias, caligynephobia is created by the unconscious mind as a protective mechanism. At some point in your past, there was likely an event linking beautiful women and emotional trauma. Whilst the original catalyst may have been a real-life scare of some kind, the condition can also be triggered by myriad, benign events like movies, TV, or perhaps seeing someone else experience trauma.
So long as the negative association is powerful enough, the unconscious mind thinks: "Ahh, this whole thing is very dangerous. How do I keep myself from getting in this kind of situation again? I know, I'll attach terrible feelings to beautiful women, that way I'll steer clear in future and so be safe." Just like that caligynephobia is born. Attaching emotions to situations is one of the primary ways that humans learn. Sometimes we just get the wiring wrong.
The actual phobia manifests itself in different ways. Some sufferers experience it almost all the time, others just in response to direct stimuli. Everyone has their own unique formula for when and how to feel bad. Then there is the fear of women in general, gynephobia, which could create a very scary world!

http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/11/caligynephobia-fear-of-beautiful-women.html

Some more interesting links>>>>

http://psychology.about.com/od/phobias/a/phobialist.htm

http://www.phobiaguide.com/

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How India missed another Nobel Prize

Here is an interesting article I found while reading online news. One of the unsung heros of India >>> Read On>>>

 

First, it was Jagadish Chandra Bose at the turn of the century, who was the first to demonstrate wireless signaling in 1895. Later, he even created a radio wave receiver called the 'coherer' from iron and mercury. Though he showed no interest in patenting it, Bose demonstrated his inventions in Kolkata [ Images ] and London [ Images ].

Sir Neville Mott, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978, in fact commented that Bose had foreseen the 'n' and 'p' type semiconductors, and was 'sixty years ahead of his time.' However, the Nobel Prize in Physics for wireless communication was awarded to Guglielmo Marconi in 1909, 14 years after Bose had demonstrated the possibility.

Then came Satyendranath Bose, who sent a paper on the statistics of quanta of light–photons to Albert Einstein.

Einstein supported the paper and got it published in Zeitschrift der Physik in 1924, and that in turn gave birth to the now famous Bose-Einstein statistics and the term 'Bosons' for all those elementary particles that follow it.

Even though three Nobel Prizes have been awarded for works based on Bose statistics, the originator of the idea was never awarded one.

Moving on, G N Ramachandran deserved a Nobel for his work on bio-molecular structures in general and, more particularly, the triple helical structure of collagen. E C George Sudarshan produced pioneering contributions to Quantum Optics and coherence, but his work was ignored, and Roy Glauber was awarded the Physics Nobel in 2005 for the same work.

And so to this week: The press release issued by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the Nobel Prize for Physics for 2009 says 'one half' of the prize has been awarded to Charles K Kao 'for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.'

What the Academy omitted to note was that Moga, Punjab-born Narinder Singh Kapany, widely considered the Father of Fibre Optics, and, in this capacity, featured in a 1999 Fortune magazine article on the 'Unsung Heroes of the 20th Century', had far the stronger claim.

Charles Kao in a 1996 paper put forward the idea of using glass fibres for communication using light; he tirelessly evangelised it and fully deserves a share of the Prize. However, the fact remains that it was Kapany who first demonstrated successfully that light can be transmitted through bent glass fibres during his doctoral work at the Imperial College of Science in London in the early fifties, and published the findings in a paper in Nature in 1954.

Since then, Kapany irelessly developed applications of fibre optics for endoscopy during the fifties and later coined the term Fibre Optics in an article in Scientific American in 1960. His body of work provided the basis for the developments of any and all applications in communications.

In a book published in 2003 by Rupa & Co titled Sand to Silicon: The Amazing Story of Digital Technology, I had written of the respective contributions of Kapany and Kao to the field of Fiber Optics. A relevant excerpt (pages: 154-159):

'Very few Indians know that an Indian, Narinder Singh Kapany, a pioneer in the field, coined the term (Fibre Optics) in 1960. We will come to his story later on, but before that let us look at what fibre optics is. It all started with queries like: Can we channel light through a curved path, even though we know that light travels in a straight line?'

'Why is that important? Well, suppose you want to examine an internal organ of the human body for diagnostic or surgical purposes. You would need a flexible pipe carrying light. Similarly, if you want to communicate by using light signals, you cannot send light through the air for long distances; you need a flexible cable carrying light over such distances.'

'The periscopes we made as class projects when we were in school, using cardboard tubes and pieces of mirror, are actually devices to bend light. Bending light at right angles as in a periscope was simple. Bending light along a smooth curve is not so easy. But it can be done, and that is what is done in optic fibre cables.'

'For centuries people have built canals or viaducts to direct water for irrigation or domestic use. These channels achieve maximum effect if the walls or embankments do not leak.'

'Similarly, if we have a pipe whose insides are coated with a reflecting material, then photons or waves can be directed along easily without getting absorbed by the wall material.'

'A light wave gets reflected millions of times inside such a pipe (the number depending on the length and diameter of the pipe and the narrowness of the light beam).'

'This creates the biggest problem for pipes carrying light. Even if we can get coatings with 99.99 per cent reflectivity, the tiny 'leakage' of 0.01 per cent on each reflection can result in a near-zero signal after 10,000 reflections.'

'Here a phenomenon called total internal reflection comes to the rescue. If we send a light beam from water into air, it behaves peculiarly as we increase the angle between the incident ray and the perpendicular.'

'We reach a point when any increase in the angle of incidence results in the light not leaving the water and, instead, getting reflected back entirely. This phenomenon is called total internal reflection.'

'Any surface, however finely polished, absorbs some light, and hence repeated reflections weaken a beam.'

'But total internal reflection is a hundred per cent, which means that if we make a piece of glass as non-absorbent as possible, and if we use total internal reflection, we can carry a beam of light over long distances inside a strand of glass.'

'This is the principle used in fibre optics.'

'The idea is not new. In the 1840s, Swiss physicist Daniel Collandon and French physicist Jacques Babinet showed that light could be guided along jets of water.'

'British physicist John Tyndall popularised the idea further through his public demonstrations in 1854, guiding light in a jet of water flowing from a tank.'

'Since then this method has been commonly used in water fountains. If we keep sources of light that change their colour periodically at the fountainhead, it appears as if differently coloured water is springing out of the fountain.'

'Later many scientists conceived of bent quartz rods carrying light, and even patented some of these inventions. But it took a long time for these ideas to be converted into commercially viable products. One of the main hurdles was the considerable absorption of light inside glass rods.'

'Narinder Singh Kapany recounted to the author, "When I was a high school student at Dehradun in the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas, it occurred to me that light need not travel in a straight line, that it could be bent. I carried the idea to college. Actually it was not an idea but the statement of a problem. When I worked in the ordnance factory in Dehradun after my graduation, I tried using right-angled prisms to bend light.'

'However, when I went to London to study at the Imperial College and started working on my thesis, my advisor, Dr Hopkins, suggested that I try glass cylinders instead of prisms. So I thought of a bundle of thin glass fibres, which could be bent easily. Initially my primary interest was to use them in medical instruments for looking inside the human body. The broad potential of optic fibres did not dawn on me till 1955. It was then that I coined the term fibre optics."'

'Kapany and others were trying to use a glass fibre as a light pipe or, technically speaking, a 'dielectric wave guide'. But drawing a fibre of optical quality, free from impurities, was not an easy job. Kapany went to the Pilkington Glass Company, which manufactured glass fibre for non-optical purposes. For the company, the optical quality of the glass was not important.'

'"I took some optical glass and requested them to draw fiber from that," says Kapany. "I also told them that I was going to use it to transmit light. They were perplexed, but humoured me."'

'A few months later Pilkington sent spools of fibre made of green glass, which is used to make beer bottles. "They had ignored the optical glass I had given them. I spent months making bundles of fibre from what they had supplied and trying to transmit light through them, but no light came out. That was because it was not optical glass. So I had to cut the bundle to short lengths and then use a bright carbon arc source."'

'Kapany was confronted with another problem. A naked glass fibre did not guide the light well. Due to surface defects, more light was leaking out than he had expected. To transmit a large image he would have needed a bundle of fibres containing several hundred strands; but contact between adjacent fibers led to loss of image resolution.'

'Several people then suggested the idea of cladding the fibre. Cladding, when made of glass of a lower refractive index than the core, reduced leakages and also prevented damage to the core. Finally, Kapany was successful; he and Hopkins published the results in 1954 in the British journal Nature.'

'Kapany then migrated to the US and worked further in fibre optics while teaching at Rochester and the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1960, with the invention of lasers, a new chapter opened in applied physics. From 1955 to 1965 Kapany was the lead author of dozens of technical and popular papers on the subject. His writings spread the gospel of fibre optics, casting him as a pioneer in the field.'

'His popular article on fibre optics in Scientific American in 1960 finally established the new term (fibre optics); the article constitutes a reference point for the subject even today. In November 1999, Fortune magazine published profiles of seven people who have greatly influenced life in the twentieth century but are unsung heroes. Kapany was one of them.'

'If we go back into the history of modern communications involving electrical impulses, we find that Alexander Graham Bell patented an optical telephone system in 1880. He called this a 'photophone'. Bell converted speech into electrical impulses, which he converted into light flashes.'

'A photosensitive receiver converted the signals back into electrical impulses, which were then converted into speech. But the atmosphere does not transmit light as reliably as wires do; there is heavy atmospheric absorption, which can get worse with fog, rain and other impediments.'

'As there were no strong and directional light sources like lasers at that time, optical communications went into hibernation. Bell's earlier invention, the telephone, proved far more practical. If Bell yearned to send signals through the air, far ahead of his time, we cannot blame him; after all, it's such a pain digging and laying cables.'

'In the 1950s, as telephone networks spread, telecommunications engineers sought more transmission bandwidth. Light, as a carrying medium, promised the maximum bandwidth. Naturally, optic fibres attracted attention. But the loss of intensity of the signal was as high as a decibel per metre.'

'This was fine for looking inside the body, but communications operated over much longer distances and could not tolerate losses of more than ten to twenty decibels per kilometre. Now what do decibels have to do with it? Why is signal loss per kilometre measured in decibels?'

'The human ear is sensitive to sound on a logarithmic scale; that is why the decibel scale came into being in audio engineering, in the first place.'

'If a signal gets reduced to half its strength over one kilometre because of absorption, after two kilometres it will become a fourth of its original strength. That is why communication engineers use the decibel scale to describe signal attenuation in cables.'

'In the early 1969s signal loss in glass fiber was one decibel per metre, which meant that after traversing ten metres of the fiber the signal was reduced to a tenth of its original strength.'

'After twenty metres the signal was a mere hundredth its original strength. As you can imagine, after traversing a kilometre no perceptible signal was left.'

'A small team at the Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in the UK was not put off by this drawback. This group was headed by Antoni Karbowiak, and later by a young Shanghai-born engineer, Charles Kao.'

'Kao studied the problem carefully and worked out a proposal for long-distance communications through glass fibres. He presented a paper at a London meeting of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1966, pointing out that the optic fibre of those days had an information-carrying capacity of one GHz, or an equivalent of 200 TV channels, or more than 200,000 telephone channels.'

'Although the best available low-loss material then showed a loss of about 1,000 decibels/kilometre (dB/km), he claimed that materials with losses of just 10 to 20 dB/km would eventually be developed.'

'With Kao almost evangelistically promoting the prospects of fibre communications, and the British Post Office (the forerunner to British Telecom) showing interest in developing such a network, laboratories around the world tried to make low-loss fibre. It took four years to reach Kao's goal of 20dB/km.'

'At the Corning Glass Works (now Corning Inc), Robert Maurer, Donald Keck and Peter Schultz used fused silica to achieve the feat. The Corning breakthrough opened the door to fibre-optic communications. In the same year, Bell Labs and a team at the Ioffe Physical Institute in Leningrad (now St Petersburg [ Images ]) made the first semiconductor lasers, able to emit a continuous wave at room temperature.'

'Over the next several years, fibre losses dropped dramatically, aided by improved fabrication methods and by the shift to longer wavelengths where fibers have inherently lower attenuation.'

'Today's fibres are so transparent that if the Pacific Ocean, which is several kilometres deep, were to be made of this glass we could see the ocean bed!'

'Note one point here. The absorption of light in glass depends not only on the chemical composition of the glass but also on the wavelength of light that is transmitted through it. It has been found that there are three windows with very low attenuation: One is around 900 nanometres, the next at 1,300 nm and the last one at 1,550 nm.'

'Once engineers could develop lasers with those wavelengths, they were in business. This happened in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to Herbert Kroemer's hetero-structures and many hard-working experimentalists.'

The excerpt ends here. While working on this book and particularly this chapter, I had thought that with the world now firmly ensconced in the era of communications, it wouldn't be long before Narinder Kapany's pioneering work in the field was recognised with the Nobel Prize.

Now, two years later, I find that the name of the pioneer of fibre optics has been added to a very long list of Indians who, though richly deserving of the ultimate accolade, the Nobel Prize, have been mysteriously passed over by the august members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Images: Top: Dr Narinder Kapany today. Photograph: Palashranjan Bhaumick/Business India [ Images ]. Bottom: Dr Kapany at work in his lab in the 1950s.

I have read this article by Shivanand Kanavi on Rediff.com and here is the link to the same >>>

http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/oct/08/how-india-missed-another-nobel-prize.htm

Pranav Mistry :: SixthSense

Pranav Mistry, a PhD student in Pattie Maes' Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab, is the genius behind SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.

SixthSense was voted the Invention of the Year by Popular Science magazine in the United States, and Mistry won one of Technology Review's TR35 Young Inventor Awards in August this year.

Mistry developed the SixthSense device to satisfy his impulse to paint the physical world with digital information.

"I notice that it's hard to for these kind of things to market in some sense. . . because I don't want this to comply with some of kind of corporate policy," he told PTI in Mysore on Friday on the sidelines of TED conference being held in India for the first time.

If Pranav Mistry has his way, people around the world can build their own wearable 'SixthSense' -- which uses a camera that understands human gestures -- at a cost of less than Rs 15,000 ($300) by obtaining the software he developed for free in the next few months.

"Rather than waiting for that time to come, I want people to make their own system. Why not?"

"People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software...give them basic key software layers. . . they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything".

Photographs: Courtesy, www.pranavmistry.com

SixthSense is going to be open source very soon, said Mistry, who is passionate about integrating the digital informational experience with real world interactions.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a small non-profit organisation devoted to ''ideas worth spreading.'' It started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago.

Explaining the concept, Mistry said: "SixthSense is an inexpensive wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

"By using a camera and a tiny projector mounted in a pendant like wearable device, 'SixthSense' sees what you see and visually augments any surfaces or objects we are interacting with. It projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets us interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or our interaction with the object itself."

'SixthSense' attempts to free information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer, he said.

"I am working on that to make it open source", he said, adding, it would take 2-3 months for that to happen as "I have to do a lot of things before making it open source."

On the estimated cost of the device, he said: "Cost will be mainly hardware because software. . . I am going to give it free. Hardware cost will be around $300 at minimum. This will go down for sure."

SixthSense, which redefines how we uses objects and gestures to interact with the digital world, was cobbled together with components that are off-the-shelf.

Likewise drawing an @ symbol lets the user check his mail.

The digital world has power because it has dynamic information, but it's important that we stay human, instead of being another machine sitting in front of a machine," said Mistry who, before his studies at MIT, worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher. Some previous projects from Mistry's work at MIT include intelligent sticky notes, Quickies, that can be searched and can send reminders; a pen that draws in 3D; andTaPuMa, a tangible public map that can act as Google of physical world. His research interests also include Gestural and Tangible Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, AI, Machine Vision, Collective Intelligence and Robotics.

Image: SixthSense can just project a dailler on your palm and you can call a number by tapping on the keys on your hand!

From Pranav Mistry’s Website>>>>>

http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/

'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

We've evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it; that information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Although the miniaturization of computing devices allows us to carry computers in our pockets, keeping us continually connected to the digital world, there is no link between our digital devices and our interactions with the physical world. Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. SixthSense bridges this gap, bringing intangible, digital information out into the tangible world, and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. ‘SixthSense’ frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.

Read More at >>

http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/

Sex Pistol Ice Cream!

Forget viagra potions and even sex toys. A new flavour of ice cream has been unveiled which could leave you hot under the collar. The Sex Pistol ice cream contains natural stimulants including ginkgo biloba, arginine and guarana and is served with a shot poured over the top. Creators of the dessert claim it enhances blood flow and increases energy levels and the results are so electric that customers are limited to just one serving per person

The Sex Pistol, which costs $11.99 per portion, is the first creation of The Icecreamists, a pop-up installation in London department store Selfridges - the only place where the ice cream will be available. Matt O'Connor, founder of The Icecreamists said: "This is the perfect apres-shopping treat. Just one Sex Pistol will leave you feeling energised and confident - but please, don't pester the staff!".

Packed with ingredients said to increase the libido, such as guarana, it is served with a shot of absinthe. The treat will be limited one for the customers, and you must be over 18 to try the 'vice cream'. The Sex Pistol launches on September 10 in The Ultralounge at Selfridges and will be available until November 1. The Viagra ice cream is served in a glass accompanied by the shot of absinthe in a pink water pistol.

The Icecreamists will operate from a subterranean 'God Save The Cream' themed ice cream and entertainment installation in the store's Ultralounge. It is aiming to be ‘the ultimate ice cream boutique’, offering an array of ‘vice creams’ and including molecular cryogenic cocktails served at -196c degrees, artisan ice cream flavours from around the world, pure frozen yogurt; all freshly prepared every morning by a master mixologist.

Matt O'Connor, founder of The Icecreamists, says: "This is the perfect après shopping treat. Just one Sex Pistol will leave you feeling energised and confident - but please, don't pester the staff!"

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“” THE KRAAL”” :: Mahatma Gandhi's House In South Africa Up For Sale

Monday, July 27, 2009

http://www.hotklix.com/link/news/India/Gandhis-house-in-S-Africa-up-for-Sale

A house in Johannesburg, where Mahatma Gandhi had lived for three years when he was in South Africa, has been put up for sale by the owner, but it has so far found no takers with even the Indian-origin community members showing little interest in buying it.
Hidden away on a quiet street in Orchards, north of central Johannesburg, the house was designed by Gandhi's confidant and architect Hermann Kallenbach.
Its distinct thatched roofs and rondavel style gave the house its informal name "The Kraal". Gandhi lived in the house with Kallenbach for three years from 1908.
The owner of the house Nancy Ball, who has been living in the house for the past 25 years, wants to move to Cape Town and she has put the house on the market after failing to attract someone with an interest in preserving its historical legacy, the Times newspaper reported.
However, she did not reveal the price of the house.
She enlisted the support of Stephen Gelb, founding director of the Centre of Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, on a voluntary basis, to try to find a suitable buyer.
Gelb tried to solicit the interest of prominent Indians in South Africa and even explored the possibility of Wits acquiring the property for use as a residence for visiting professors.
"There is little interest among members of the Indian-origin community and also from Wits University," Gelb told the Times.
Ball said: "Mahatma Gandhi left a lot of his peace here. It's a very special place."
The House in Orchards in Johannesburg is one of several legacies left by Gandhi in South Africa. In Johannesburg, there is another area known as Gandhi Farm, where Mahatma Gandhi and his followers stayed and practiced their philosophy of Satyagraha.
In Durban, the most famous Gandhi legacy is the Mahatma Gandhi Settlement in Phoenix, north of Durban, where Gandhi initially devised his Satyagraha philosophy.
Gandhi's fight against racial discrimination in South Africa in the late 1800s and early 1900s is today recognized with several institutions, streets and religious and cultural organisations named after him.

 

30 Jul 2009

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Philanthropist-to-buy-Gandhis-house-in-S-Africa-gift-to-GOI/articleshow/4838460.cms

MUMBAI: A philanthropist plans to buy the house in Johannesburg where Mahatma Gandhi had stayed for over three years and give it to the Government of India for preserving the same as a memorial.
City-based businessman Pradeep Bhavnani, in a letter to President Pratibha Patil, has requested her to give him permission through the official channel for transferring money to the owner of the house in order to finalize the deal.
Bhavnani said in the letter that he would donate the house to the government so that it could be preserved as a museum or a memorial as a tribute to the nation.
"The buyer has accepted my offer of Rs 2.5 crore for the house. I now look upon the government to grant me official permission so that I can dedicate this house to the nation", Bhavnani said.
The owner of the house, Nancy Ball, who lived in this house for the last two decades, has decided to move out and put it up for sale.
Known as "The Kraal", the house is located on a quiet street in northern Johannesburg suburb of Orchids. Mahatma Gandhi had stayed there for three years since 1907.

 

Can someone sent me pictures of Mahatma's House in South Africa. Kindly mail the pictures at >> rmbawa@hotmail.com. Will upload the pictures on this blog.

Antarang :: India’s First Sex Museum

Antarang, India’s first Sex Museum, opened in Mumbai in 2002. Antarang is the country’s only sex museum, but surprisingly very few people know about its whereabouts. It is purposefully located in Kamathipura, Mumbai's red-light area. “It is ironic that in the land of Kamasutra, we have sex dealt with in a prudish way. Very few people are aware of the museum's existence. The museum is run by the government as a part of anti-HIV program.

Antarang is a one-room exhibition displaying models of human anatomy and illustrations. This is the only sex museum in India. Since the museum is located in the red light district a great bulk of its visitors are prostitutes who visit the museum together with their partners being taken there by health workers.

Antarang, whose floor tiles are painted to look like sperm, was opened in 2003. It became popular among prostitutes and some of their clients after health workers began taking them there.

News as on January 12, 2008 >> Antarang, India’s only sex museum at Kamathipura, will be shifted inside the premises of Wadala's leprosy hospital for the next two years.  A ward inside the leprosy hospital will be the new  house the museum. The  museum was started by the Mumbai State Government in 2002, following a sudden surge in HIV/AIDS cases in the city. It was abruptly shutdown in July last year citing maintenance problems.

Akshardham

The Akshardham temple, in New Delhi, built without steel, is entirely composed of sandstone and marble. It consists of 234 ornately carved pillars, 9 ornate domes, 20 quadrangled shikhars, a spectacular Gajendra Pith (plinth of stone elephants) and 20,000 murtis and statues of India’s great sadhus, devotees, acharyas and divine personalities.

Click to Enlarge>>

The monument is a fusion of several architectural styles of pink stone and pure white marble. Pink stone symbolizes bhakti (devotion) in eternal bloom and white marble of absolute purity and eternal peace. The monument was built after over 300 million man hours of services rendered by 11,000 volunteers, sadhus and artisans.
It is the one of the wonders of the modern world, and the wonders of modern India.It is one of the biggest and most intricate religious places of worship ever constructed. Combining several completely different and contrasting architectural styles of Hindu temple architecture of northern India -- Rajasthani, Oriya, Gujarati, Mughal and Jain -- the Akshardham Monument is entirely constructed of marble and the red-sandstone that Delhi is famous for, and that so many of her monuments are constructed of.

Built in 5 years of non-stop, round-the-clock construction, the massive and awesome Akshardham Temple Monument to World Peace was completed. The Akshardham Temple in New Delhi, India, has been constructed by the BAPS foundation -- the builders of the various Swaminaryan Temples across the world, is truly a modern day Wonder of the World.

Sonic Boom : Audio Visual Phenomenon.

U.S. Navy photo by Ensign John Gay:::Off the coast of Pusan, South Korea, July 7, 1999 -- An F/A-18 Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One (VFA-151) breaks the sound barrier in the skies over the Pacific Ocean. VFA-151 is deployed aboard USS Constellation (CVN 64).

The term sonic boom is commonly used to refer to the shocks caused by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion.

The term supersonic is used to define a speed that is over the speed of sound (Mach 1). Mach 1 speed is when an object in dry air at 20 °C (68 °F) travels at 343 m/s, (1,125 ft/s, 768 mph or 1,236 km/h). Speeds greater than 5 times the speed of sound are often referred to as hypersonic. Mach 1 barrier when crossed by supersonic jets can be an interesting visual as well as an audible phenomenon.

This picture shows an Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

This kind of visual phenomenon can also be seen with nuclear blasts, at the time of space shuttle launches, modern firearm bullets and rifle shots. The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it's thought to be created by what's called a Prandtl–Glauert singularity.

As per the scientists a layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air. In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can.

Most modern fighter aircraft are supersonic, but Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144 were the only supersonic passenger aircraft. Since Concorde's final retirement flight on November 26, 2003, there are no supersonic passenger aircraft left in service. Some large bombers, such as the Tupolev Tu-160 and Rockwell/Boeing B-1B are also supersonic-capable.

Original Story: What Supersonic Looks Like :: www.livescience.com The site chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. They take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style.

Flower Carpet :: Unbelievable..

Every two years, the Grand Place in Brussels is decorated with over 700,000 “Begonias” that are arranged into a beautiful carpet design. The design of the carpet to be made is prepared in advance and later the entire thing only takes four hours to execute. Unbelievable.

Officially, the first Floral Carpet as its present-day form was created in 1971 on the Grand-Place by the landscape architect E. Stautemans. Stautemans, who was born in Zottegem, and graduated from the Ghent Horticultural College, had been experimenting since the early 50's making simple small carpets, more like rugs, mainly consisting of begonias but realized that floral carpets would be an excellent vehicle for the promotion of his beloved begonias which he had always worked with, both technically, economically and aesthetically.

After years of attempts and calculations, this architect, who was inventive and imaginative, and knew how to make the most of the numerous resources of begonias, became an expert in the creation of superb floral carpets with sophisticated colors and complicated designs.
His fame spread and he was asked to make carpets not only in Belgium but worldwide (Cologne, Hamburg, Luxemburg, Paris, London, Breda, Amsterdam, The Hague, Vienna, Valencia, and as far afield as Buenos Aires and Colombus, Ohio).

Some of these carpets were bigger than the ones created in Brussels (77 x 24 m), like the 1973 masterpiece at Sint-Pietersplein, Ghent that reached a gigantic 164 x 42 m. However, as E. Stautemas himself says, "Nowhere is the carpet more beautiful and distinguished than in the unique, ancient surroundings of the Grand-Place in Brussels".

Click To Enlarge >>

 

Link>>

http://www.flowercarpet.be/frdernanne.htm

The Fourteenth magnificent Flower Carpet is to be made at Grand-Place of Brussels in 2010. The invitation is already online for the Weekend of the 13th to the 15th of August 2010.

Invitation Link>>

http://www.flowercarpet.be/site/main.php?lg=en&otm=3&mtm=1&hst=_01&pg=141

 

So who is taking the flight to Brussels to see the 2010 Flower Carpet..

Bandra Worli Sea Link

 

The Bandra Worli Sea Link, an engineering marvel and the first ever open Sea Bridge of its kind, is one of the most complex and advanced construction projects implemented in India. The Bandra Worli Sea Link is a 8-lane twin carriageway built over the Mahim Creek, in Mumbai, India which will reduce the travel time between the two points from 60-90 minutes to 6-8 minutes.

Special features :-

• The bridge took 2,983 days, 2.57 crore man hours, 3,000 men from 11 countries, a bill of Rs 852 crore to come into existence. It was conceived 46 years ago and will be inaugurated on 30/06/2009 by Smt.Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of UPA.
• It was first time in 1963, the US-based planning firm Wilbur Smith, in a report titled Planning of Road System for Mumbai Metropolitan Region recommended a road through the sea from Versova to Nariman Point. In late ’90s the said report which was gathering dust all these years was discovered by the incumbent Government. (claimed by Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.). Officially the construction of the Bandra-Worli Sealink was announced only by the Congess-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government on October 1, 2000.
• The contract for Rs 400 crore was bagged by Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) and was handed over for construction only in May 2001. By this time many environmentalists and fishermen had moved court against the project which caused excessive delay in completion of the project. The Sea link has been constructed by the Hindustan Construction Company and its foreign partner, the China Harbour Engineering Corporation. HCC has the responsibility of maintaining the bridge during the damage liability period of five years.
• The sea link’s basic design was changed time and again even after the construction had begun due to which the cost escalated to Rs 815 crore and subsequently to Rs. 1,650 crore.
• The bridge at the Worli end was pushed 150 meters into the sea, away from a fishing village. The main Bandra cable-stayed part was changed from a single-towered, eight-lane bridge to double-towered, with two four-lane bridges.
• The Bandra Cable Stay section of the BWSL spans 600 m in length and towers to a height of 126 m (equivalent to a 43 storied building). The Cable Stay system comprises 2,250 km of high strength galvanized steel wires which support the Cable Stay Bridge weighing 20,000 ton.
• The sea link is a state-of-the-art alternative to the Mahim Causeway, a 1930s colonial-era bridge that is today the main link between Mumbai’s western suburbs and its southern part. Presently the motorists have to cross signals to reach Worli from Bandra whereas the sealink will provide a smooth 15-minute drive.

• It is projected that the bridge will carry 90,000 of the 1.3 lakh vehicles that travel from the western suburbs to South Mumbai. The drive from Bandra to Worli using the sea link may be over in 7-10 minutes, which covers appx. 6 KMS over the sea.
• The authorities will charge a one-way toll of Rs 50 for every car/LMV, Rs 75 for mini-buses, and Rs 100 for heavy motor vehicles like buses and trucks.
• The Bandra-Worli sea link would be equipped with state-of-the-art systems for traffic monitoring, emergency support and an automated toll system.
• The illumination of the bridge done at a cost of about Rs 9 crore will be an added attractiveness to the bridge.

 

Enjoy your ride…..

Lotus Temple

The Lotus Temple in Delhi, India is known so, due to its flowerlike shape, is a Bahai’s House of Worship . I have been there long time back, but would rate it as one of the best monuments to visit while someone is in Delhi.

Some interesting features of the Lotus temple are :-

It was completed in 1986 and serves as the Mother Temple of the Bahai’s in the Indian subcontinent.

It is inspired by the lotus flower.

The design is composed of 27 free-standing marble clad "petals" arranged in clusters of three to form nine sides.

Bahai’s scripture states that no pictures, statues or images be displayed within the House of Worship

There are nine doors of in the Lotus Temple which open onto a central hall, capable of holding up to 2,500 people. The central hall is slightly more than 40 meters tall and its surface is made of white marble. The Temple along with the nine surrounding ponds and the gardens around comprise 26 acre of land.

Since its inauguration to public worship in December 1986, the Lotus temple has attracted attracted more than 50 million visitors, making it one of the most visited buildings in the world. About four million visitors visit the place of worship each year i.e about 13,000 every day or 9 every minute.

As with all other Bahai’s Houses of Worship, the Lotus Temple is open to all regardless of religion.

No musical instruments can be played inside. Furthermore no sermons can be delivered, and there can be no ritualistic ceremonies practice

The site is in the village of Bahapur, in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

The architect named Fariborz Sahba, was an Iranian, who now lives in Canada. He was approached in 1976 to design it, later oversaw its construction and saved money from the construction budget to build a greenhouse to study which indigenous plants and flowers would be appropriate for the site. International Federation for Religious Art and Architecture, based in the United States, conferred upon Mr. Sahba the award for "excellence in religious art and architecture for 1987".

The major part of the funds needed to buy this land was donated by Ardishír Rustampur of Hyderabad, who gave his entire life savings for this purpose in 1953.

In 2000, GlobArt Academy of Vienna, Austria, granted its "GlobArt Academy 2000" award in recognition of "the magnitude of the service of Taj Mahal of the 20th century in promoting the unity and harmony of people of all nations, religions and social strata, to an extent unsurpassed by any other architectural monument world-wide".

 

Do not miss to visit it on your next visit to Delhi…

Open Living Statues Championship

 These are pictures from “”Yevpatoriya”” Open Living Statues Championship, Ukraine.

Yevpatoriya ,Ukraine,  is a Black Sea port, a rail hub, and a vacation and health resort. Yevpatoriya stands on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Kerkinitida, founded in the 6th cent. BC.

In the 1st cent. BC the area was captured by the Pontian king Mithradates VI (Mithradates Eupator), for whom the city is named.  The name of the city is sometimes transliterated Evpatoriya or Eupatoria.

The championship takes place annually in May between the 1st and the 7th and is open to all countries.