Opiniating

Now I am not sure whether Opiniating is a word in Dictionary or not, nor do I want to look it up. I define Opiniating as an action to express ones views (they may be correct or incorrect, educated or a plain simple guess or gas :-) ) on any topic in Universe. It may make sense or may not, but that is not important at all. What counts is that you have something to say about the topic under discussion and you say it in a manner which atleast appears intelligent !

There are no set topics for Opiniating, but generally people are found opiniating about Politics, Government - its policies and performance, Weather, Movies, Sports and CRICKET! While opiniating a person wears the "Expert Hat", i.e no one knows about that topic better than he does(it may be a different matter that he/she may be hearing about that topic for the first time or that the opinion he/she is passing is what was opiniated by someone else). I consider Opiniating to be very healthy. It opens your mind and brings in thoughts which you may never have thought about. It is a challenge to your intellect. One thing that I have observed is that a good opiniator generally comes out with good ideas too (also good excuses to help him/her escape from dicey situations).

Opiniating should be done keeping in mind the environment surrounding you. It can sometimes turn out to be hazardous. For example in Chennai if you adversly opiniate about Rajanikant or Kamal Hassan, even the holy lords may not be able to save you( just wondering why would anyone adversly opiniate about Rajani or Kamal? ).

One topic that I always find difficult to opiniate upon is Cricket, Indian Cricket in particular. The simple reason for my difficulty is that everyone else is an expert on this topic (or so it seems) and I am a total novice. So here is a tip to you all who find opiniating on some topic difficult, do what I do with Cricket. I find one person whom I feel to be an expert opiniator on the topic, hear his opinions and then consider them to be words from Bible. It helps me to opiniate with others :D.

The real so-called experts opiniating can sometimes be real interesting, for e.g a scientist was asked "How can you tell the age of snake?", and his expert opinion on the question was "It is extremely difficult to tell the age of a snake unless you know exactly when it was born !! ".

So dear friends do develop the habit of opiniating (if you don't have it already). For starters you could opiniate by posting a comment on this post :-).
Cherio ...

Mars Hoax

I am sure you would have received an Email about Mar's close encounter with Earth on 27th August, and reading that did you remain awake last night waiting to see the spectacular Red Planet being the second moon of earth for the night. Well I was going to do just that, but then a thought stuck me. "If such a big event is going to happen, how come none of the news channels are not reporting it"? When I shared my thought with my roommates who were also eagerly waiting to see Mars, they suggested lets search on the net about this. A simple search for "Mars Hoax" on Google turned up about 186,000 results in 0.33 seconds. We had to read only the first link to know the truth that the whole thing is a host. It makes an interesting reading NASA - Beware the Mars Hoax

Hoax mails filling up our mail boxes is not something new, and I guess its not going to end anytime too. Some diligently read such mails and forward them to 10, 20 or all the people in their address book, hoping for some kind of good luck or a windfall or even save planet earth! Well next time you come across any such mail, before you believe it why not check it out on Hoax Busters, you might just find out that your mail is a listed hoax, as the Mars Mail is !!

Cherio..

Happy Janmashtami!!

A very happy Janmashtami to everybody!

Avyukta now has a sister blog Avyukta - 2 which is a photo blog. Quite neat, do check it out. The above image is courtsey Avyukta - 2. By the way Avyukta is a one of the numerous names of Lord Krishna.

World War III is On !

World War III is On and it has been going on for past four years!!! That is if you believe what President Of The United States (POTUS) George W Bush says! Justifying the need of American Troops to stay on in Iraq till 2009, the POTUS in his speech compared the fight against terrorism to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century. Bush reminded his listeners of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — reciting the date five times in a 30-minute speech. "We're not yet safe," Bush said. "Terrorists in foreign lands still hope to attack our country. They still hope to kill our citizens. The lesson of September 11, 2001, is that we must confront threats before they fully materialise." Besides his references to 9/11 and the war on terror, Bush also spoke of earlier global fights.

If the War against Terrorism is anything like the World Wars, then the Alies this time around are surely getting the short end of the stick. With Osama being captured only in cartoons and bombed in Flash toons, and radical Islam spreading accross the globe, this war will go on forever if what Bush and his trigger happy gang keep on doing. Well I am not the one to come out with a solution to this and nor is this post for that reason, but what reading Bush's comments reminded me today were of Bushisms

Where as President Clinton's actions made him one of the favourite of joke and cartoon targets, POTUS G.W.Bush has gone one step forward and started a whole new form of entertainment called Bushism. Bushisms are bloopers that POTUS keeps making frequently (almost daily) that they are coined as The president's accidental wit and wisdom.. My favourite Bushism so far is :

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein."—Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004

Its sad that searching for Miserable Faliure on google and clicking on I'am Feeling lucky dosen't bring the Home Page of the POTUS anymore, but brings up a Blog which discusses How long can POTUS survive !

You can get a complete list of Bushisms (updated frequently) Here. Have fun reading them.
:)

Little Boy - Fat Man

Six decades is a long time. But when the scar is as deep as the one caused by nuclear-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no amount of time is long enough to heal the scars. In the past few days the 60th anniversary of b-bombings (6th Aug Hiroshima and 9th Aug Nagasaki) were observed, with world leaders reaffirming their pledge of a nuclear weapon free earth. But six decades on where are we headed?

6th Aug 1945, 8:15am, Little Boy the Uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by Enola Gay the B-29 bomber. About 40,000 died instantly, another 100,000 had died by end of 1945. The count today is 242,437 dead, and unnumbered injured or deformed for life.

9th Aug 1945, 11:02am, Fat Man nicknamed after Winston Churchill, the plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki by Bock's Car the bomber. Total estimated dead are 240,000.

Apart from the five permanent members of the UN Security council, who posses Nuclear arsenal, India and Pakistan have shown their capability of making a N-Bomb. Israel, Iran and North Korea allegedly have the capability of making Nuclear Weapons. In the days leading up to the anniversary, negotiators from the US, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea were fighting a losing battle to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme, and Iran has rejected the EU's proposal for ending the stand-off over its own nuclear programme. While every Nuclear country reaffirms that their Nuclear capability is for peaceful purposes and will only be used for generating energy, who can guarantee that with the existence of Nuclear Weapons on Earth, there will never be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki!

At the ceremony at Nagasaki Memorial, Fumie Sakamoto, a 74-year-old woman representing the survivors, recalled being thrown into the air at her home and coming to in her garden 10 metres away. "As far as I could see, everything had been reduced to rubble," she said. "Together with some 260,000 A-bomb survivors ... I swear in the presence of the souls of the victims of the atomic bombing to continue to tirelessly demand that Nagasaki be the last A-bomb site." Let us say Amen to that.

Return to Flight (GodSpeed Discovery)

I had started writing this post a day before the Launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, to commomerate the two and half years of hard work put in by the managers, engineers, technicians and others concerned with the Herculean task of restarting the space missions. These missions had ground to a halt after the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia. Somehow I was not able to complete the post, and next day the take off Discovery had some problems, similar to those of Space Shuttle Columbia because of which I did not have the heart to write anything further on this. Subsequent to that a lot of developments have taken place. There have been three space walks, and the Gap filler which was exposed during the take off and could have caused excessive heat and burning during re-entry has been removed. Now the Discovery with its seven crew members is on its way back and re-entry is scheduled at 4.46am(EDT) which is 2.16pm(IST). Let us all wish luck to Flight commander Elieen Collins and the six crew members on board for a safe return home.

GodSpeed Discovery

If you want to Enjoy a space trip sitting right in front of your PC, then just Click Here

Return to Flight (Delay in Re-Entry)

An update on the Return of Space Shuttle Discovery :
Discovery and its astronauts are now set to return to Earth Tuesday morning, with the first attempt at Kennedy Space Center at 5:08 a.m. EDT (2.40 pm IST). Weather prevented a landing attempt today.

There are several opportunities to land tomorrow, including two at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and two at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Once more... GodSpeed Discovery

Mumbai!!

The Fury of Nature !! The wrath of Rain Gods !! But Mumbai lives on.....

Following are few of the Snaps that I have received over the past few days of the devastation and plight caused by killer rains in Mumbai.

Having lived in Mumbai for some years, knowing the spirit of Mumbai and Mubaikars, I am sure the great city of Mumbai will rise out of this hour of darkness, like a Pheonix and reach new glorious heights.