For my school project I made a PPT on the ancient Indian tradition of installing Hero Stones in memory of those who sacrificed their life in defense of their community, village, kingdom or country. As I compiled the presentation I realized that I have a pretty good repository of pictures of different types of Hero Stones. I thought it would be a good collection to share on this blog.
Hero Stone in Tumkur district, Karnataka, India
Damaged Hero Stone in Tamil Nadu
Today has been by far the coldest day in Dallas since I moved here two years ago. The precipitation was so high that there was black ice all over the roadways which resulted in couple of accidents. Our college closed for the day so as all the schools and few offices. Driving was supposed to be a pain in the metroplex... I was wondering how it would be in far northern parts of the US where it snows for 6 months and there is freezing temperatures.
I received a link to this video as an e-mail forward. This video shows the amazing dare devil car driver Travis Pastrana jumping 269 ft in his car to make a new world record on New Year eve. An amazing feat indeed, something that needs courage, confindence and of course a fantastic car... and youtube to make it popular in the internet.
I received this Banta Singh joke as an e-mail forward and thought I'd post it here. This is completely hilarious and only a totally innocent and naive individual can think so much out of the box. The writer of the joke displays a child-like innocence in this letter to Bill Gates.
Dear Mr. Bill Gates,
We have bought a computer for our home and we have found some problems, which I want to bring to your notice.
1. There is a button 'Start' but there is no 'Stop' button. We request you to check this.
2. One doubt is whether any 'Re-scooter' is available in system? I find only 'Re-cycle', but I own a scooter at my home.
3. There is 'Find' button but it is not working properly. My wife lost the door key and we tried a lot trace the key with this 'find' button, but was unable to trace. Please rectify this problem.
4. My child learned 'Microsoft Word' now he wants to learn 'Microsoft sentence', so when you will provide that?
5. I bought computer, CPU, mouse and keyboard, but there is only one icon which shows 'My Computer': when you will provide the remaining items?
6.. It is surprising that windows says 'MY Pictures' but there is not even a single photo of mine. So when will you keep my photo in that.
7. There is 'MICROSOFT OFFICE' what about 'MICROSOFT HOME' since I use the PC at home only.
8. You provided 'My Recent Documents'. When you will provide 'My Past Documents'?
9. You provide 'My Network Places'. For God sake please do not provide 'My Secret Places'. I do not want to let my wife know where I go after my office hours.
Regards,
Banta
P.S.
Last one to Mr. Bill Gates: Sir, how is it that your name is GATES but you are selling WINDOWS?
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Pexagon Technology. All opinions are 100% mine.
After investing 100s of $s I wouldn't want my iPhone to fall and get damaged. But most protective cases/ boxes are bulky and take away the style quotient that surrounds the device. This was the case until recently and iPhone enthusiasts were risking their devices by handling them without protective cases.
Today is the first day of the New Year 2010 and the second decade of the 21st century. The next few decades will be momentous in terms of the direction they are going to steer the world. Whether the world will be a peaceful place or a turbulent strife-torn land mass will be decided in the next couple of decades. Whether global warming will pose greater threats to human existence or whether new technologies will help rejuvenate the earth's biosphere, time alone can answer.
I would simply say enjoy the present with what you have because the future may turn out in any way and we may not enjoy what we can today.
Laughter all the way
Cast: Ramesh Arvind, Mukhyamantri Chandru, Umashree and others;
Director: Ramesh Arvind
All through my college days I would hear about the loss of quality in the Kannada cinema. I was never a big time movie watcher and hence it didn't do much to change my opinion. Now after coming to the US I actually started watching movies of all types, primarily out of boredom. Being a poor student I can't afford to do many of the cool things such as bowling, going to the movies, eating out, etc. So what is the best form of entertainment. Yes watching movies on youtube. As I watched English, and Hindi movies I decided to look for recent Kannada movies and watch them.
Yesterday I watched this notoriously hilarious Kannada movie Venkata in Sankata. Out of the 2 hr 21 minutes, if I said I laughed for 2 hrs it would not be false. The movie is completely funny and every scene has a bit of humor. Ramesh is a great actor and he has proved that he is a great director too.
The movie traces the professional life and adventures of police sub inspector Venkata whose fate always seems to be against him. His colleague somehow always seems to take credit for his actions and a frustrated Venkata is yearning to do something about it.
There is a terrorist attack in the city and Venkata is assigned the case. The way he goes about doing it and win forms the gist of the story. In between there is the heroine and few songs which add the necessary "oomph" factor to the movie. Even without these added gimmicks the movie is a good entertainer.
If you have lost hope about Kannada Cinema, watch this and I am sure you will change your opinion.
Yesterday was Christmas with lots of snow and ice and most shops were closed after heavy festival sales. One would naturally expect the sales to continue through new year. But today's shoppers got a rude surprise when they hit the stores... the prices were back to their highs and only the clearance items were cheap and low priced. American retailers sure know how to get customers into their stores and make them spend more than they expected to.
At least it is good for the economy, someone is making money.
This is the first snowy Christmas in the past 3 years that I have been here. It started off as a mild rain yesterday morning and soon turned into a snowfall and by nightfall it was a full blown snow fall. The roads were covered with a carpet of snow and it was dangerous to drive.
The internet is a huge repository of information. How much of it can be considered knowledge is a big question. General searches will throw up millions of websites that contain related data. It is very difficult to find authentic, relevant and correct information/ data/ knowledge on the subjects we are searching for. Looking at this chaos entrepreneurs have come up with their solutions. One of the recent developments is the springing up for websites which contain articles on various subjects.
For example a search on Health Weight Loss would yield thousands of responses on a search engine. But by visiting this dedicated site which contains articles by experts on the related subject it would be lot easier to find the information we are looking for.
One might argue that there are so many websites that contain articles on all subjects, what is the big deal about another one that is joining the web. Well I agree that there are several websites that features articles on various subjects but how many of them feature articles that are written by experts? How many feature articles with references and further reading on the research?
These are some of the things one needs to look for while looking up for an article base on the internet.
Yesterday I blogged about our visit to Meteor Crater and how the private owners have created a swank shopping and educative space in the desert. This is a very successful business model which benefits the individual, visitors and the government. The individual owner of the property preserves, maintains, and promotes the place. Visitors get the opportunity to learn about meteors and other space phenomena and the government gets its taxes. It is a win-all situation from all aspects.
Here are some more pictures of the Meteor Crater. I wish they would allow visitors to go down into the depths of the crater, but since they have done some mining in the past looking for precious metals at the site of the meteor fall, they are little wary of letting people inside the crater. For now visitors have to content themselves looking over the rim of the crater and the museum does offer some guided hiking tours which take visitors half-way round the crater.
Meteor Crater in Arizona is one of the largest craters in the world formed as a result of impact of meteor showers. Surprisingly this crater is not a government owned national monument, but a privately held museum which offers tours, and allows visitors to look around for a fee. One good thing though is that the private owners of this crater have not modified it or exploited the land for commercial purposes. The location continues to be one huge crater located amidst the rugged desert/ arid state of Arizona in the US. This location has been used by the NASA to train astronauts in the past. There have been allegations that the original moon landing by Neil Armstrong, et al was a hoax and that it was filmed here. I don't know about those conspiracy theories, all I know is that I visited this huge crater and stood on its periphery. The attached exhibition is a great place to learn about space explorations, meteors and comets. It would be a great place to take kids to educate them in a fun filled way about space.
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Club House. All opinions are 100% mine.
I have posted three blogs about Walnut Canyon and I am pretty sure some of you may be quite irritated about it. Anyway here are the final set of pictures I would like to share with you all about Walnut Canyon, next we will talk about Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is famous among many "Moon Landing Fake Theorists" as the location where the entire moon landing was filmed. Anyway that will come later, for now let us look at few more pictures of Walnut Canyon.
The ancient peoples that lived in Walnut Canyon continue to haunt me and I would like to write a little more about them. Looking at their homes, and the surroundings I would conclude that they lived in perilous, hostile and rough areas. The Canyon was surrounded by wilderness and they pretty much built homes on the steep slopes of the canyon. Far below in the valley bed is the flowing river which is the only source of water for these people. To get their regular meal they had to struggle and work hard cultivating corn and hunting in the wilderness. Water had to hauled up from the stream below. I am sure the community lost some of its members because of accidents, they would have just fallen off the path into the ravine and gotten washed away in the river.
Anyway coming back to this post I would like to present some pictures of the steep slopes where the homes were built. A cursory look at the image would not reveal any dwelling/ construction. This I guess provided them a natural camouflage. Look at the pictures and see if you can identify any of the ancient homes.
I introduced Walnut Canyon in my previous post and how it was a thriving settlement of Native Americans during the 1200s. In this post I would like to present images of the buildings in which these early peoples lived. The way they innovated and used natural rock surfaces as walls and roofs and built just one wall to create a home amidst the most hostile and precarious surroundings. Here are a few examples of the homes and dwellings of Native Americans in the Walnut Canyon of Arizona.
When I was in India America/ US meant couple of things such as New York, Los Angeles, Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, etc. Till the time I landed here I hadn't known that there exist several natural, historical and heritage locations in this country. I got first hand knowledge about this conglomerate of states when I first traveled from Los Angeles to Dallas stopping at several interesting locations enroute.
One of the locations we stopped at was Walnut Canyon, a narrow and deep gorge like valley in the middle of Arizona. This was the site of large native American settlement as recently as 1200 CE. These native Americans were either killed or forced out of their location by invading immigrant Europeans, let us not get into that for now. Today Walnut Canyon is a national park and preserved location. The pre-historic dwellings, artifacts and other heritage items have been protected and signage installed to educate visitors about the location. Here are a few pictures of the Walnut Canyon and the ruins found there.
Travel guides traditionally have been books, then came the era of VHS, then CDs and the internet. PDF downloadable guide books were next and then there are Blogs, websites, promotional webpages etc hit the market in a big way. But now the latest product to hit the market is Visual travel guides from Magellan. The USP of these guides is that travelers can get the real feel of a place before they decide to go there. If after seeing the Visual Travel guides don't appeal to anybody they will not visit that destination. These guides come at a price though, for $20 you could visit a popular city like San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and many other places. This may well be the next wave of travel publications.
Arizona in the US is quite similar in terrain to the cold Himalayan desert region of Ladakh in India. One national park I particularly liked in Arizona is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest national park. This is one place where nature's beauty and power of transformation along with the human destruction can be seen vividly. The park features colorful hills formed by flooding, then we can see trees turned into stone of myriad colors and textures. Then lastly we can also see how humans have destroyed several of the natural heritage by cutting them and carting them off for private and commercial uses.
Colorful hills in the Painted desert
Cross section of a petrified wood block
Blocks of petrified wood strewn around in the desert
The best thing about blogs, they just keep going. Hence I continue to blog about what's happening in my life even if it is most boring even for me to write about. I have been raving and ranting about winter and how the cold windy weather is preventing me from getting outdoors and doing something. Something good about winter though is that there is a lot of part time/ temp jobs available... so I am at least able to make some money during the holiday season... I hope the job streak continues into spring and summer....
