World's most compact data storage ever

Gone are the days of 5 1/2'' disk, 3 1/2'' disk and even CD. DVD is also on verge of extinction due to threat from HDDVD and Blue Ray. While each of these devices may be capable of handling more data than our brain could ever do, they still pale in comparison with what some scientists have discovered. New wave of super-compact data storage device use as eternal technology as DNA.

That's right, scientists are planning to use bacterial Deoxyribonucleic acid to store large amount of information in smallest space protected under extremes of condition. Specially designed DNA strands contain information in binary form and are inserted in common bacterias. Current use of this technology will not involve storing movies but storing large scientific and historical information to prevent it from destruction under nuclear catastrophe or other humanity shattering events. And bacterias are right tool because they are

good at surviving extreme conditions...can tolerate high temperatures, desiccation, ultraviolet light and ionising radiation doses 1000 times higher than would be fatal to humans.

Each strand is coded to prevent bacteria to identify it as virus and disregard or mutate, thus each generation passes information to next without disruption. With billions of bacterias in a millilitre of liquid, one can only imagine storage capacity of such system. May be one day we'll bacterial USB drive!

Lost in translation

This is what happened when I tried Google Translation successively to come back to where I started from. Frankly I still surprised it kept what it did.

English: I live in house of mud at bank of river.
Arabic: أعيش في بيت من الطين في مصرف لنهر.
Chinese: 我住在一所房子的泥浆，在河岸。
Danish: Jeg bor i en mudder hus til banken.
Dutch: Ik woon in een huis in de modder van de bank.
French: Je vis dans une maison dans la boue de la banque.
German: Ich lebe in einem Haus im Schlamm von der Bank.
Hindi: मेरे जीवन में एक घर में मिट्टी के बैंक है .
Italian: Io vivo in una casa di fango in banca.
Japanese: 私の家に住んで泥の銀行です。
Portuguese: Eu vivo na lama-casa bancária.
Spanish: Yo vivo en casa de barro banco.
English: I live at home mud bank.

Single step English-Hindi-English was better.

मेरे जीवन में मिट्टी के घर पर बैंक की नदी है .
I live in mud homes on the banks of the river.

I wonder which trajectory leads to minimum loss of information for given set of languages. It would be an interesting exercise for sure. Anyone has time?

Of men and women, and preference thereof

Today our college kicked off talent-night, an event to showcase talent for incoming batch and to have fun booing them for senior batch. In a horrendously noisy environment where air is reverberating with tempo shouts of performing students and booing noises of audiences, only one thing typically works in calming audience. Bring on ladies. In college where men-women ratio is disproportionately against fairer sex, only beauties on stage can make people pause and listen. I can admit that women may get more than fair representation in any such performance because typically women tend to be good at dance stuff or because any duet song requires performance of both genders. But what ends up having is something akin to mujra where audience whistle and ladies on stage dance to popular item numbers. To my mind this very sexist and I find this disconcerting. But what perplexes me more is that women in audience too enjoy that and women at stage are willing to go to any extent in displaying their seduction. Perhaps my sense of gender fairness is stronger than what even women prefer, or may be it's wrongly applied here and I have conceptual misunderstanding.

On a related note, I find signals that women convey when they expect men to treat them like human beings and not just sex-objects very mixed up. I am sure I am generalizing it a lot but somehow I feel that their civilized sophistication (which warrants non-sexual treatment) is at odds with their biological wiring (which warrants wooing partner with baser of instincts). I remember reading somewhere that our society is progressing faster than what our biology can cope with.

Power of inanities

It has happened with me many a times. You too would have noticed it sometime or other. Sometimes silly and cliched acts when done with gusto end up having their desired effect.

A speaker rises on the platform and says hello. Audience yell back, somewhat disinterested, half-heartedly. Then speaker speculates on unfortunate event of audience missing their breakfast/lunch that day and urges them to again say with more enthusiasm. This time, roar is louder. Rinse and repeat. Even louder. Do audience really become energetic by this act of speaker? Or they just do that to stop him/her to repeat endlessly? I have a feeling that it's former and yet I also know annoyance that arises from such actions of speaker.

Once a professor found us students drowsy at 8'0 clock class in the morning. She asked us to clap thrice in rhyme of 1-2 1-2-3. Yeah right, we are 5 years old. Yet you know, we were awaken. Was that energy in professor's voice, novelty of her approach, mere noise of our clapping, or, as appears to me, real abandonment of laziness?

Consider annoying as hell 'good morrrrrrrrrrrrrrrning' of Lagey Rahe Munnabhai. As irritating it may be, I expect it to have effect of refreshing listener.

Seems like that enthusiasm, howmuchever over the top it may be, tends to diffuse to audience, even when they don't want it. It's a good thing, I think. Same, of course, applies to hatred. We are not in as much control of ourselves as we'd like to believe.

I am telling you right now

You better not press this big red button. I am seriously warning you. Yeah, well, as if you will listen to me. Go ahead and click it. Now do it, damn, why are you so afraid. Just don't tell me when you have to buy new mouse that I didn't tell you before because I am telling you right now.

Global Dimming

It's certain that you've heard of global warming. It's not certain that you worry about it. It's possible that you believe there is not much you can do. Like all national or international problems, efforts of one individual are like drop in a ocean in solving these problems. I am not sure whether I should worry about it. I do believe that prophesies of global warming and impending doom are real but I am pretty sure that this won't happen within my lifetime - and science backs me up here - and I am in general not much concerned about what happens after my death. Question is, should I be? It's my responsibility that not to exploit earth yet should I go out of my way to save it for future generations who have no real bearing on me? Of course, there is one school of thought which believes in self-extinction of human race. Argument is that humans have lived long and well on this planet and they should voluntarily extinct and give up world for other species. I actually find idea fascinating and am not averse to it. After all, why bother with what happens after me? Am I selfish for thinking so?

There was a time though, starting in 1950 or before and ending around 1990, when global warming was competing with global dimming. What happened was that some aerosols particulars were absorbing and reflecting sunlight back and hence there was decrease in energy on earth. Scientists now claim that that might have been factor in clouding effect of global warming for them to observe. More about this in this interesting piece on Guardian.

Who can take life?

Case of Niketa and Harish Mehta to fight India's abortion law brings back age old debate in all societies to the forefront in India. India is quite relaxed in abortion laws, were one to compare them to United States, because abortion is legal for pregnancies less than 20 weeks old, and for cases where having child will lead to health hazard or mental trauma (rape cases) for mother or risk of life to newborn. Typical rational response - to which I subscribe - to such case is that parents of the child are best to decide whether to abort or not, since they will be ones bringing the baby in the world and taking care of him/her throughout. Yet, some people argue against this because they believe that killing someone is crime even if it is a unborn foetus.

What it ultimately boils down to is when one considers beginning of life. A murder of newborn will chill heart of even most coldhearted, yet is pain felt any less few hours before birth? What about few days? Who decides at what point a senseless cell becomes feeling human being. Arbitrary boundaries at birth worked well before science gave us those mushy pictures and sounds of heartbeats in sonograms. Yet just conceived foetus can hardly be life since it is no different from thousands of cells in over body which one kills by mere scratching of nose. It is true that border of life is ambiguous yet to put order to such cases, birth can reasonably be made the beginning and for all practical purposes couple should be give right to decide to bring their baby in the world or not. In India, and in many societies this right is maternal prerogative. Contributed of husband is not taken into account since he doesn't bear the child. Is he at fault for not doing what he cannot do? This will be subject of some other discussion.

A comprehensive analysis of issue is at Elekhni's blog.

Update 14/08/2008: In a dramatic climax to the saga, Niketa suffered a miscarriage today. While my sympathies are still with parents, doubt remains whether miscarriage was real or planned after unsuccessful attempt at going legal.

Horror Movies

I am sucker for horror movies even though very few, and I mean I can count on my fingers, movies have been able to really scare me. My problem is that if horror is explicit in form of ghosts or monsters, I find it unrealistic and hence not scary. And when it is subtle in form of creepiness or eeriness of tone of movie, I find it slow and and boring. What works for me is abruptness, ghastliness and unimaginably of sudden acts. Hence true-like tone of Blair Witch Project, overall helplessness and suddenness of acts in The Descent, beyond imagination brutality of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, novelty of 1408 and creepiness of The Ring have propelled them to be top of my list. Fascination with what can shake me to the core has led me to watch as stupid movies as The Deadwood Park. So that's what I watched today, am still wondering even after 5.0 out of 10.0 in IMDB why did I do it? By the way, you can see my Horror favourites here.

First!

This is my third blog after premature death of short-lived English blog All That Bothers and currently defunct Hindi blog कतरने (snippets). I still hope to revive Hindi one sometime, and hence haven't declared it dead yet. Meanwhile, let's keep our fingers crossed for how long this one survives. I plan to force myself to post one post a day, except when I am computer-challenged. What that means is that you may find a post but content may be limited to what I ate for dinner. Okay, that's it then. शुभारम्भ।

हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन

हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन...आराधन ॥२॥

तन से मन से धन से
तन मन धन जीवन से
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन...आराधन
अंतर से मुख से कृति से
निश्‍छल हो निर्मल मति से
श्रद्धा से मस्तक नत से
हम करें राष्ट्र अभिवादन...अभिवादन

हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - ४
तन से मन से धन से
तन मन धन जीवन से
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - ३
आराधन...करें राष्ट्र आराधन

अंतर से मुख से कृति से
निश्‍छल हो निर्मल मति से ॥२॥
श्रद्धा से मस्तक नत से
हम करें राष्ट्र अभिवादन - २
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - २
आराधन...हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन

अपने हँसते शैशव से
अपने खिलते यौवन से ॥२॥
प्रौढ़ता पूर्ण जीवन से
हम करें राष्ट्र का अर्चन - २
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - २
आराधन...हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन

अपने अतीत को पढ़कर
अपना इतिहास उलटकर ॥२॥
अपना भवितव्य समझकर
हम करें राष्ट्र का चिंतन - २
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - २
आराधन...हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन

है याद हमे युग-युग की
जलती अनेक घटनाऐं
जो माँ की सेवा पथ पर
आई बनकर विपदाऐं
हमनें अभिषेक किया था
जननी का अरि शोणित से
हमने शृंगार किया था
माता का अरिमुंडो से
हमने ही उसे दिया था
सांस्‍कृतिक ऊच्च सिंहांसन
माँ जिस पर बैठी सुख से
करती थी जग का शासन
अब काल-चक्र की गति से
वह टूट गया सिंहांसन
अपना तन मन धन देकर
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - ४
तन से मन से धन से
तन मन धन जीवन से
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - ३
आराधन...हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन - ३

Hum Kare Rashtra A...

यहाँ से डाऊनलोड करें।