Quote unquote

The wind drops, but the petals keep falling
The bird calls, and the mountain becomes more mysterious

The Ethics of Ambiguity

Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny. “Rational animal,” “thinking reed,” he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things. At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence. But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.

- by Simone de Beauvoir, 1947

Read the free online book here

Butterflies reveal secret!

Protest against Nature's Evolutionary Mechanism called!

The latest research on Butterflies by the Harvard University biologists have found the reason for 'speciation' (how new species are formed from old existing species)! The research found one particluar type of butterflies developing distinct wing color patterns different from their closely related family, possibly setting them apart as a new species over time, offering clues to this much talked about evolution subject.

Quoting BBC, with all due copyrights recognized,

"The Harvard team made the discovery while studying the butterfly genus Agrodiaetus, which has a wide ranging habitat in Asia. The females are brown while the males exhibit a variety of wing colours ranging from silver and blue to brown. Dr Kandul and his colleagues found that if closely related species of Agrodiaetus are geographically separate, they tend to look quite similar. That is to say, they do not display a distinctive "team strip". But if similarly closely related species are living side-by-side, the researchers noticed, they frequently look strikingly different - their "teams" are clearly advertised. This has the effect of discouraging inter-species mating, thus encouraging genetic isolation and species divergence."

"For me, this is a big discovery just because the system is very beautiful" says Dr Nikolai Kandul of Harvard.

Hmm, beautiful indeed. But what I just can't accept is how did the process get reversed when it came to humans? Well, am not talking about speciation and stopping interbreeding but this male female color thing! If you notice, in other animals, it is the males of the species that is more colorful -It preens, sturts and what not to attract the attention of the females. Take Peacock, Lions, Sparrows or any of the million others creatures, save for humans!

How did the human females alone end up being expected to be more colorful? Hmm, evolution has been unfair to the human female, I say! This simply cannot happen. I call a meeting of the feminist community to conduct a protest meeting. ...... :))

Namma Bengaluru - Timeline

850 AD ' Bengalooru ' appears on Mauryan empire milestone
1015 Chola Empire takes over City
1120 Veera Ballala II calls it ' Benda Kalooru ' or 'Town of Boiled Beans ' (after a poor woman feeds him beans in the forest)
1537 Kempe Gowda I designs City as it exists today. (KG II builds the 4 towers)
1638 Shahaji Bhonsle ( Shivaji's father) captures City for Adil Shah who gifts it to him
1640 Shivaji marries Bangalore girl
1687 Aurangzeb's army captures City
1690 Sells it to the Wodeyars for 3 lakhs !
1759 Wodeyar gifts it to Hyder Ali who builds Lal Bagh
1791 Cornwallis defeats Tipu but returns City to him
1799 Tipu dies. City returned to Wodeyar
1800 Bangalore GPO opened
1809 Cantonment established
1812 St. Mark's Cathedral built St. Mark's Cathedral
1831 British take-over administration
1853 Sunday declared weekly holiday
1859 1st train steams out of City
1864 Sankey builds Cubbon Park
1867 Attara Kacheri built
1887 Bangalore Palace built
1898 The great plague. Another plague and the 1st telephone rings.
1903 1st motor car pollutes city
1905 India 's 1st electric bulb lit in Bangalore City Market
1909 Indian Institute of Science built
1940 1st flight Bangalore /Bombay
1948 Deccan Herald launched
1954 Vidhana Soudha built
~Circa 2000 Bangalore attains glory again. "Yours truly", "Gracious Highness", "Maata Supreme" decides to honour the city with her presence ;) :))

Not feeling well?

Not feeling well? Use colors to heal yourself dude!
Employees leaving? Get those energies right man!
This one is not new - I have heard of using colors to accompolish things including increasing the insulin production/reducing blood sugar levels in your body (called The Green Therapy - this would involve surrounding yourself, your home, your environment with the color green and you can see your diabetics threat going down drastically before your eyes!) , explanations on why Sadhu's wear the color Saffron (this color is supposed to evoke peace), reasons to wear white during meditation, so on and so on...

But this one is not so common. Not because it talks about color but it talks about it in such a way that I like it :) It says "Your personal choice of wearing a certain colour is actually a message from within that your body needs more energy of that frequency and wavelength." True, I think.

Light, after all, is what everything is made of. It's either lack of light, illusion or differntly vibrating photons that decides the way we (illusion again?) percieve things - including colors! ("After all, colour is the name we give to light energies of different frequencies")

But what is more interesting is this - "Environics" - the new science of energies, which studies various sources of subtle energies in the environment, their interaction with people and spaces, and the effect it has on them. The next fad (I mean no disrespect!) after Vaastu Shastra & Feng Shui! What's surprising though is companies like Nicholas Piramal taking heed of this to correct problems in their workplace!
- read source article

And what tickles me is this possibility- This may very well become the next big "HR weapon" to motivate employees and if your employees are leaving or not performing well, what you know, you can blame it on those negative energies in the office, not your managerial skilss :))

Let me fly away

There is no time to feel tired, neither do I want to
I got to live this illusion through because I have beautiful places to go to
Beautiful people to see, and beautiful dreams to make true
All I ask is for my smile to remain and the world will be mine
Let me start right now - hop a little, jump a little and just fly away

The Kauveri River Bank

I'm Significant!

Kapi, anyone?

Item ----------------------- Rs. 7.85
Sales Tax------------------ Rs. 0.16
Other Charges------------- Rs. 0.01
Total ---------------------- Rs. 8.02
Rounded off to 0.25 ps.
Total---------------------- Rs. 8.00

The price of one good Coffee at the Chennai Central Railway Station!

Bury your cellphone

Bury your cellphone and get a Sunflower plant in your garden, for free!

"You may need to give a decent burial to your discarded mobile phone or electronic gadget if you want to escape the wrath of environmentalists. Scientists have found a novel way to solve the problem of e-waste....

....the concept of putting a sunflower seed in the cover was developed by researchers at the University of Warwick"

">-From Economic Times

Way to go :))

Covering a hundred miles from Sunset to Sunrise

"...Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now at the peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this old body no higher..."

"...Irresponsibility? My brothers!" he cried. "Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free! Give me one chance, let me show you what I've found..."

"...If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?..."

"Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such place as heaven?"

"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "You are a very fast flier, aren't you?"

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

"To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all"