Sun Spot 1302

sunspot 1302 has already produced two X-flares (X1.4 on Sept. 22nd and X1.9 on Sept. 24th 2011).

Our Sun has unleashed a massive sun's spot 1302 which is so large, clearly visible to naked eye during sun rise and sun's set.


An Important Note: Sun is safe to be seen with naked eye only for few seconds after sun rise and before sun set. Don't try to watch sun with any other way directly or indirectly except using proper filtering and that too for few seconds at a time even with filters you are risk of loosing your eyes permanently.

some details of the sun's image:

The image was taken using a Semi DSLR camera on Tripod on 25/09/2011 at 5.55 am in Kairambedu Village, some 60 Kms south of Madras, South India. 

The sheer size of the sun spot region suggests the odds might be even higher than that. Sunspot 1302 has already produced two X-flares (X1.4 on Sept. 22nd and X1.9 on Sept. 24th 2011). Each of the dark cores in this snapshot is larger than Earth, and the entire active region stretches more than 100,000 km from end to end. The sunspot’s magnetic field is crackling with sub-X-class flares that could grow into a larger eruption as the sunspot continues to turn toward Earth. A sun's spot of this size can hold several thousands earths and few Jupiters.When the X class flare hits earth there is a fair chance of Aurora hitting upto latitude of California and disruption of power, communication services. Passengers in aeroplane are also at risk of exposing to solar radiation.

The Image has been placed on APOD discussion forum: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=22862#p142677

How our British rulers “legalised” bribery

Thanks & Courtesy: M. B. Lal

The year was 1943 when World War II was at its peak. The place, Kanpur, then one of the premier industrial cities of India. I was living in a college dorm and visiting an elderly relative who was posted in the city as one of the engineers building the well-known Hallet Hospital, named after the British Governor of the province, who had earned notoriety for ruthlessly crushing Gandhiji's ‘Quit India' movement in 1942.

The hospital project had been given to a construction company floated by a former chief engineer, who had been awarded the title of “Raja” by His Majesty for his distinguished services to the Empire. My relative was living with his family in houses built in advance for doctors. We were all taken by surprise when Raja Saheb walked into the engineer's house and made this proposition to him: “I know normally a contractor pays five per cent as commission to the engineer supervising his work but this is a big project and it is difficult to calculate each engineer's share. You being the seniormost among them, I shall bring you on the first of every month a packet containing an amount equal to twice the salary of each member of the engineering staff here and you can distribute it among them.” After consultations with his colleagues, the engineer conveyed their acceptance of his proposal.

The fact is that in 1943 a government officer accepting money for favours rendered in his official capacity was as legal as the unwritten British Constitution, regardless of the stringent punishment provided against it in the written law.

When marrying off a daughter to a government employee the parents always enquired openly about the “outside income” of the prospective bridegroom. Historians specialising in British rule in India are aware of how East India Company agents worked their way into the hearts and minds of Moghul kings and other sovereign potentates throughout the country by liberally bribing the courtiers.

When Her Majesty's government took over the reins of the government from the Company, it applied the same principle to its own Indian staff through whom it ruled this huge (then undivided) nation from Peshawar to Dhaka to Kanyakumari. “Keep the officers and men happy to win their loyalty” was their motto. What is called bribe today was then called a “fee” or “commission”, and was given openly across the table and not, as now, under it.

This policy proved a boon to the British Government during critical times like the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and again during World War II. In the 1840s, my great-grandfather was a supervisor under a British engineer during the construction of the historic dam on the Ganga above Haridwar. Every few months he would trudge about 30 miles through dense jungles carrying on his head a large wicker basket packed with one-rupee notes and concealed in grazing grass to escape being waylaid by robbers.

Those days two rupees was the monthly salary of a labourer was two rupees. What my ancestor carried was presumably money earned by making fictitious muster rolls. Despite this, he was a favourite of the British engineer. My ancestor gave ample proof of his loyalty to the Englishman by concealing him in a secret place during the Mutiny and thus saving his life.

As a reward for this service, he was awarded an estate in the form of zamindari rights over scores of villages. The family never looked back. This is just one example to show that the British rulers could not have succeeded in crushing the Mutiny without the active support of their loyal Indian employees.

The strategy was applied manifold during World War II when all that the Viceroy had to do was to print currency notes in unlimited numbers and leave it to the Indians to spend them on the “War Effort.” Prices shot up by eight to 10 times during the six-year war as contractors, goods suppliers, transporters, bureaucrats, engineers, freshly created industrialists, aristocrats, traders, ration shop owners and other supporters of the regime gobbled up the money but at the same time ensured that work for the War was accomplished in full and beyond the expectations of their masters.

Indians worked day and night at breakneck speed to build aerodromes, hospitals, whole cantonments, new railway yards and a host of other facilities not only to defeat the Japanese attack on India but also to feed the war machine on the western front.

So far as the British rulers were concerned, bribery was not an issue at all. It only enabled the government to keep its employees contented with small salaries and run the administration on a low budget while allowing the employees to help themselves with extra pickings from the public as perks of their jobs.

Partition and the mass genocide that followed it opened the floodgates of corruption on a massive scale. The “war efforts” drill of the British days was revived with redoubled vigour. We were fighting on two fronts now, the war with Pakistan over Kashmir and the campaign to rehabilitate millions of refugees in the shortest possible time. This included providing temporary camps and permanent townships, cleaning vast tracts of forest land, rebuilding swathes of marshes to make them cultivable, expansion of health education, transport and other facilities. Involving oneself in refugee relief work became the shortest route to ‘netagiri' as well as becoming rich overnight. Money flowed like water. An allied field of added attraction was allocation of millions of homes and establishments left vacant by Muslims who had fled to Pakistan. If World War II bred large-scale corruption during the British rule, the aftermath of Partition institutionalised and formalised it. The same administration which had ‘delivered' results during the War came in handy for repeating and multiplying its ingenious practices.

Stingy texts in vogue, God save the English language!

Thanks & Courtesy: Ms. Ashwini C. N., through The Hindu's Opinion » Open Page of September 18th, 2011

You aren't going to get a Nobel prize for spelling words the way they are; yes, but you aren't going to get a prize for omitting letters either.

We all know that English is a funny language. Because it is the only language where your nose runs and your feet smell. But what has become of this language now? Especially in a country like India, where people are known to speak English well? Thanks to the SMS feature in our cell phones, people are redefining the ways in which a word can probably be spelt.

Cn u plz tke dis wid u n w8t fr sumtim der? Ey rply fst, I hve wrk.

This is how people, not just a few, but a majority send text messages (I'm not talking about Twitter, because we still have the 140 word limit). Sometimes, when I get such texts from my friends, I find it difficult to resist the temptation of deleting that message and not bother to leave a reply. Curbing my irritation, I try not to get irritated and try to read what they could have possibly wanted to convey. And, somehow, I find myself getting these messages when the situation is tense.

Not all are to be blamed, actually. Some people are better; they are a bit more generous with the usage of alphabets than the other stingy ones. It at least makes some sense. I heard from someone that the letter ‘E' was the most widely used alphabet in the English language. Not anymore, is my guess. First E, then to an extent A. What did these poor alphabets do? Huh? Seriously. My heart goes out to them. They were the most popular ones and today they hardly find a place in our texts and messages. What did they do? As a true citizen who abides by the laws and regulations of this country, by making use of the T9 mode, and making sure that I do not miss the As and Es and other alphabets, I have a right to know why some of you are so biased against them. And for those of you who doubt me, I always make use of the T9 mode, and I will continue to use them, till my last.

When I was talking to a few people about this, I was told that earlier people used to be charged for their texts based on the number of characters used; hence, in an attempt to save as much money as possible, people started using all these short forms and found it convenient to drop the vowels. That made some sense. If I belonged to that era, I would probably have done the same thing. Considering that the main purpose of this is just to communicate your thoughts. Agreed. But if you could do that without spoiling the core and essence of the language, it would be better.

These days, we have messages which can be sent free of cost, or we are charged per message. So it doesn't make a difference if we type with a conscious effort to include all the vowels which were taken for granted. You might as well ask me, ‘If it doesn't make a difference, why can't I stick to that I like?' But do you realise that if you type the way I had pointed out at the beginning, it has a direct influence on the way you write? You don't believe me, right?

Ok. Here's a small activity for you. Take a pen/pencil and paper and write something. Since we all have the so-called ‘starting trouble,' I'll give you a suggestion. Write a review about a film which has touched you deeply. If I know my friends, well I'm sure half of them reading this, would never try it in the first place, some would say that they never saw any movies which affected them, some would find it difficult to find a piece of paper and pen. Even after having found the paper, some might not be able to proceed after, ‘One day I went to the theatre and watched a film.' Write about 10 lines, don't worry about the grammar. I'll deal with that in my next post. Just write. You find yourself using wat, der, ther, awesum, pls, oly, don't you? This is what I was talking about. And it is not good for you.

If it so happens that the other person whom you text falls in the same category as you (stingy texts), God be with you. If the person at the receiving end is someone like me, someone who prefers not to butcher the English language, and spell the words properly, please have some consideration. You aren't going to get a Nobel prize for spelling words the way they are; yes, but you aren't going to get a prize for omitting letters either.