Moon now bigger and brighter

Right since i was in high school having watched srk movies ,all movies have atleast one dialogue that when one is love the moon looks bigger and violins play in the background , lol i had never got a chance to experience that even with many love at first sight ( my ipod touch or canon s5 is digi cam or some old geeky prof :D ) but....
It was on 29th January 2010 ,When i was walking from office to bus stop in btp by lake side around 6:20 with a romantic song are jaane kaise kab kahan playing in my ipod touch and me as usual staring either at lake or sky but then there it was staring at my face ,full Moon shining bright and appeared much bigger than as always.It was more like a proud face which anyone would admire.
It was only after coming back after some googling i read that it is 50k kms closer it being at the perigee and thus its going to be 30% brighter and 15% bigger .Thank god i still dont have to doubt my sanity or eyesight :).
so what else but to take out my cam(Not to forget i badly wanted to try some practical of the theory on photography i was reading on here it is
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm (need to thank bro for this one)) and take some snapshots here are few.

"I" , The individual

Bindra does not make into the shooters list for commonwealth games from india.

shashi taroor's twitter followers count reaches 6L

kareena kapoor redefines size 0 among indian women

captain gopinath merges air deccan with kingfisher , mars marries venus.

Fairness cream gives xxx beauty which elevates social status of him/her.

What is common among all that news , the fact that it is one against/influencing many.It is not about an individual i'm talking about but about the cause and the society which is the target audience.

Why was bindra kept out of commonwealth games just because he respected his self-respect more than NRAI ? I am not trying to justify anyone as all i know is the news from the media which again is a questionable source , but isnt it always that respecting oneself make people hate you?

Now coming to shashi taroor with all due respect to him , as it is not him i'm talking about but this news is just an instance to illustrate what i want to put forward.Before his "cattle class" comment he hardly had 40k twitter followers but then no matter whether people understood it or not he was made an icon .. But did anyone realise that it is us whom he called as cattle class ?

And then when it was his personal opinion to bash foreign policies that was made a huge public cry and that increased his popularity and his twitter follower count reached 6L.But at the bottom line have we questioned ourselves as to what is our view on that and what is it that we really think above all that publicity ? or what is delivered to us.

Now size 0 of kareena kapoor , I remember the very same news coming up as kareena is down with some deadly disease which makes her look like a ghost , but the very same media tweaked it to make a mass market out of it , How many ads do you see that markets size 0 ,right from a basic sugarfree to laptops! all endrosing the same news as though its a newest and best thing to do to oneself and its sad to see so many people falling for it,inspite of reading some one line last page news that lots of anorexic girls having acute bone problems or exhausted to death.

But have we ever questioned whether we want to achieve that at the cost of one's own health ?

doesnt what makes you happy more important than what people think of you ? same holds with the fairness cream marketing inspite of so many news that such creams can damage your skin and also can lead to skin cancer people try to use it , but why just to please some one else ? have we forgotten atleast in india that draupadi/sita much adored beauty were not fair? Why coming to present day priyanka chopra/bipasha basu stand as an example ? Inspite of all this people fall for ads endorsed by actress (who endrose all possible conflicting brands too).

Now captain gopinath started off with a a great motive but why did he choose to giveup his cause ? Man who can concieve the concept of cheap airlines to masses cant be so weak ? I hope his ties with kingfisher airlines turns out well and not dampen his spirit/motive.

With all the above news If you are wondering what the hell i'm talking about it's about "I" the individual.Media and other people's influence have encroached us so much today that it is easy to be led than to lead , thus as we tend to easier way to join the mass but in the process do we realize that we are killing our own self and indiviuality ? Its always an average which is taken when it comes to masses , the spikes are lowered ridiculed and cut down to match the average ..

But it can always be a group and it is not even close to The individual. As long as one does not realize one's individualtiy all that he/she does is it to morph what exists and never add and thus becomes a part of a pronoun "he/she". It may not be ground breaking but atleast an attempt to add your personality to create something new makes a difference , when i say difference it may not be to the world but oneself.

If you have read bhagavatgita/fountainhead its the same; everything upholds "I" the individual.

Nothing explains better than

"nainam chindati shastrani; naina dahati pavakaha |

nahchainam khledayantyapo; nacha badhyanti marutaha|| "

I know its a difficult path but i'm learing to tell "I",because "I wish", "I like" nothing holds unless you know how to tell I.(But the very fact that i have used we earlier makes me an amateur yet :0)).

Why am i writing this? If i expect someone to read and learn how to tell "I" then i become a parasite/second-hander again as i depend on others , so this is more of an introspective writing to help myself.

Solar Eclipse

I have never used my blog till date to share some gyan[:D] , So let me break that routine.Though not sure how many will agree that this news was useful :).

This is about solar eclipse , Friday 15th january 2010 being solar eclipse i'm pretty sure every one in bangalore / southern india will be super excited about it as one can see ~85% of eclipse very close to seeing a ring.

But I'm equally sure that right since we were 3~4 year old's when one was old enough to understand the funda of solar eclipse we were told not to look at the sun and not eat during the period of solar eclipse and also it is prevanlent in many households (I dont think i need to mention that it is strictly followed in my place)to put a dried grass by name darbe into all containers with cooked food stuff and into water.

I remember i had aways resented it and called it stupidity but all such harsh comments gleefully ignored until i turned 10~11 and there was a total solar eclipse visible in bangalore and all my school pals were busy buying some goggles to view solar eclipse and my mom knew that it was inevitable to convince me about it ..

By then i atleast had some sense that eyes have a lens which can concentrate the light and focus on retina to burn it out which can result in blindness, But was a super confident on those goggles and was ready to watch it for minutes, But then it was only when mom explained it to me did i realize , so here i quote though not exact words but on similar lines..

Firslty i have already mentioned as to why one should not look at the sun not only on eclipse but on any day for that matter .

Now coming to goggles what exactly does it do ? All it does is that it reduces the intentisity in the order of 10^6 (Also tries to block uv and IR rays) but still exposure to longer duration beyond say 10secs is still harmful { To prove this you can do simple experiment of using a lens and hold it against sun with a paper held below (once in bright sunlight and then in shade) ,Both the time its going to burn the paper though in shade it may take a little longer.}

Also there is no guarantee that the goggle is conformant with what is it is expected to do and it is not a risk worth considering the gift of vision is at stake.

Now coming to the topic of why to fast during solar eclipse and the usage of darbe.. It is told that during solar eclipse there are certain harmful rays which increases the bacterial growth and thus not advisable to eat , and darbe is known to have great capacity to diffract light and sound waves and thus used to preserve the cooked food."

So when i was about to leave almost convinced but greatly disappointed that i cannot watch eclipse ,

Mom stopped me and gave me a 15"X15"(approx)cardboard and asked me to cut out a 2"X2" hole and paste chocolate wrapper(Aluminum foil also will do). and make a small hole in it and to hold it against the sun and look at the reflection it cast , I didnt believe that it would work but surprisingly it did only later did i know that it was easier version of a pinhole camera.That was how i watched my first solar eclipse and waiting to watch one on 15th :).

Now before i forget I musnt forget how mom and her siblings used to watch solar eclipse in her village , they used to get cow dung and mix it with water in a bucket and used to watch the reflection cast by sun.. cool na I really love how one can go about even the seemingly toughest problem if one wants to do something really badly :).

Now i know i did enter the controversial territory when i quoted about harmful radiations from sun during solar eclipse , yes science says its bullshit but have they been able to prove it completely ? May be some of the facts proven by vedic period have turned out into plain non-sense superstition due to manipulation in stating those facts but we cant deny of all the glory , why dont we try to provide proofs to those facts (either proving them to absolute right or wrong) rather than bullshitting them and trying to hide them as a shame rather than displaying it as a star of our great heritage...