WHAT IS LIGHT POLLUTION?

What is Light Pollution? How could light ever pollute something? It disappears as soon as the lamp is turned off and no sticky toxic residue is left in its wake. This cannot be a form of pollution, can it? The answer is yes; light can actually pollute the outdoor environment and wash away the view of stars in the sky. As awareness rises around the world, this term is heard in more and more places. It is a curable problem and can be prevented through the application of well designed and applied outdoor lighting.
Light Pollution occurs in the three following forms:

1. It causes an atmospheric phenomenon known as sky glow. Have you ever noticed the clouds overhead glowing an eerie pink, white, or orange color before? This wasted light is known as sky glow. It happens because of poorly designed and improperly aimed light fixtures called luminaries. Luminaries that do not offer adequate shielding usually spill wasted light into the sky and across property lines where it does not benefit anyone. When light spills into the sky, it reflects off of tiny airborne dust and moisture particles. This happens even on very clear evenings, too. The sky glow phenomenon directly affects the scientific research of amateur and professional astronomers. It also affects everyone else who simply enjoys a dark night sky abundant with stars overhead. Sky glow is a curable condition, and we can still have adequate and safe illumination in the outdoor environment.


2. Another form of Light Pollution is when illumination crosses property lines. This is called Light Trespass. Most people today have experienced light trespass to some degree. When someone else's illumination shines through your windows at night it is light trespassing onto your property. This is not only a nuisance; it can also affect your safety. Light trespass can prevent you from using your property outdoors at night when wishing to gaze at the stars while lying on a blanket or viewing through a telescope or binoculars.


3. Light pollution also occurs when too much illumination is applied to an area and a condition called glare results. Glare is defined as a visible source of illumination that causes a reduction in visual performance or an irritation.

Nighttime lighting has become a necessary part of our society. If designed and applied properly, nighttime illumination can greatly enhance a given area without causing compromise to either safety, the view of the nighttime sky overhead, or flora and fauna in surrounding areas. More communities around the Nation are now adopting comprehensive outdoor lighting ordinances in order to control the appearance and improve night time safety and security in areas their under jurisdiction.

SU-DOKU 4 STARTERS

There’s no “right” place to start a Su Doku, but I’m going to start with the 3 regions (boxes) across the top of the grid.
In these boxes, you will see there is a 3 in the first and third region. The first 3 is in the third row; the 3 in the last box is in the second row. Because we know that each number must appear once in each row, and in each column, this tells us that the 3 in the middle box must be in row one. And given that there is only one empty cell, or square, in the top row of box 2, that is where you will write in the number 3.
You can then use the same process on the right-hand regions to determine where the 9 goes in the top box. From there, you can easily figure out where the 9 should go in the top left-hand region, after looking at the two regions below it.
Another step is to reduce or eliminate possible positions a number can be placed. If you look, for example, in the first box, you’ll see a 2 in the second row. In the second box, the 2 is in the bottom row. Since each number must appear once in each row, you now know that in the third box, the 2 will be in the top row.
Then, looking at the last three columns, you’ll see a 2 in the first column. So the 2 in the top right box will go either in the middle or right-hand cell.
You can continue this process for the 8’s in the left-hand regions, and so on. In this way, you can reduce or eliminate the positions where a number may appear, and thus fill in the blanks.
At this point, logical analysis kicks in until you can reduce the number of possibilities for each cell to just one number.
Good luck, and let us know how you enjoyed the game

DRUG N OLYMPICS

Drug testing did not get serious until the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in the late 1999. Until then, it was suspected that sports associations that didn’t really want to catch their own cheats could always avoid it. WADA orchestrated a worldwide out-of-competition testing programme and standardized every aspect of the business in 2003 with the World Anti-Doping Code (China was one of the first signatories). Still, new advances in hard-to-detect drugs could allow cheats to slip through WADA’s net. But today the drug testers are just as quick to develop foolproof tests.

Stimulants: Immediately increase alertness. Easily detected in urine.

Muscle-building Steroids: Easily detected in the urine, but can be stopped weeks before an event and still be effective, meaning out-of-competition testing remains crucial. Currently used only by those poorer athletes who don’t have access to (previously undetectable) EPO or hGH.

Beta-Blockers: Slow heart rate and reduce tremor. Easily detected in urine.

Erythropoietin (EPO): Raises the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. Undetectable until a combined urine/blood test was introduced at the Sydney Games, but the “window” for a legally binding bust was then only 72 hrs. No one was dumb enough to get caught. Now that window has widened enormously, and testers aren’t disclosing by how much.

Human Growth Hormone (hGH): Until Athens, the muscle building drug of choice in the western world. Blood tests were carried out for the first time in Athens, with no warning of the effective “window”. As with EPO, effectiveness of the test is improving.

Designer steroids: Muscle builders that have been chemically manipulated to avoid detection. Still a worry as a huge pre-Athens scandal in the U.S involving a new steroid called THG showed. More than a dozen top class athletes were busted on documentary rather than direct evidence. However, an Australian research team is using WADA grant to experiment with the molecular structure of steroids- the aim being to get one step in front of designer drug cheats, which researchers say is a relatively easy window to close.

Reformist International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge authorized freezing athletes’ samples in Athens for upto eight years while testing technologies are improved. Which by any guess none of the athletes want to wait for ill gotten Olympic booty to rest safely under their pillows? Pessimists say there is still some way to go.

Insulin and Insulin like growth factor, proven performance enhancers, are still undetectable. Still some of the athletes are willing to take risks doing drugs even now, but then the options are getting a wee-bit limited, thanks to the latest breakthroughs in the medical field. Guess this makes the next Olympics as clean and competitive as in the earlier Greek times!

NEW FACE OF JEHAD

Is terrorism or jehad supposed to be only related with Islam? Is it got to do with religious fanaticism that the Islamic clergies preach or is it for the setting of new world order which favors the Islamic State? And what is the role of the Hindus in this new Islamic Order?

As far as India is concerned, there is a changing face of the jehadis that operate from the Kashmiri Valley. There has been a lot of induction of Hindu men into the militant groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen which would come as a surprise to most of the Indians! Some of these Hindu jehadi foot soldiers have made up the Hizbul ranks too with Muslim members under them.

So what is cause of Hindus joining the militant groups in the regions of Doda-Rajouri-Pir panjal of the Kashmir Valley? Well it does not come as a surprise when these youngsters were born under the shadow of the guns and see it as a way to be local dons, whereas others find it easy to get money as on joining they get Rs 50,000 and then per month get Rs 2,500 and if they are slain on course of their job their families get a compensation of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh and if you are a top militant then his family get regular financial aids, whereas other jobs get a paltry pay of Rs 1,000, so becoming jehadi is another way of becoming employed in this poverty stricken areas.

The other reason that the Hizbul outfit wants Hindus in their ranks is that these locals know the topography of these regions and will help the mercenaries’ better places as hideouts in unsuspected Hindu homes as cover which is hardly checked by the security forces.

But the most bizarre matter is that Hindu militants often take Muslim code names, but rarely do conversions to Islam happen. In fact Muslim and Hindu terrorists respect each other’s religious sentiments by eating separately. Muslim militants shun liquor whereas the Hindu ones abhor beef! This comes as a surprise when in the rest of the nation, Hindu-Muslim rift is so powerful that they gun for each others neck the moment they cross each other on a street.

The presence of a Hindu in the outfit does not insulate his community in and around his native place from attacks. As a matter of fact several massacres of Hindus have occurred in the Kandi-Budhal belt from where four Hindus have joined militant ranks. Sometimes Hindu terrorists attack people from their own faith to settle personal scores.

The freak phenomenon of Hindu youths raising the outcry of jehad has little to do with faith or ideology. Propelled more by poverty and unemployment it could well be the last hurrah of the fake crusaders of a lost cause.

FALL IN LOVE YOU WILL LIVE LONGER

An Australian researcher named Marc Cohen who is the founding professor of Complementary Medicine at the Melbourne University says that “If you are doing an activity that you love to do, whether it’s making paper aero planes or gardening or looking into the eyes of your lover, you get moments when time seems to stop, or it seems like five minutes is really an hour?”

And there’s research to prove his claims. A study of 1000 Israeli men with a heart condition found that those men who felt they were loved by their wives had a 50% reduction in their Angina and Cardiac diseases.

And our friends live longer with love too. A U.S study conducted on rabbits on high cholesterol diets were perplexed to find that one group lived about 60% longer than the other on the same food. The difference??? The longer living rabbits were fed by an assistant who cuddled and talked to them!!!

20 QUESTIONS FOR PERFECT MOBILE SELECTION

    
YOUR SPECIFICATION                     GO FOR…

Size  Matters?                    ... Smallest phone

Do you hate carrying a heavy
cell phone in your pocket?               … lightest phone

Do you want a colour screen?          … colour phone

Do you yearn to play games,
especially when traveling?               … gaming phone

Are you an amateur
photographer?                     … camera phone

Are you a music freak?               … inbuilt fm/ mp3 player

Do you like to share your
conversations with the family?          … speaker phone/loudspeaker facility

Do you travel often to
low network areas?                    … phones with signal boosters

Are you in a cash crunch?               … cheapest phone/basic model

Do you want special services,
and prefer a specific
service provider?                    … gsm/cdma model

Are you buying a new phone
only because your friend has
got a better one?                    … a phone with latest/better features

Is your phone a fashion
statement?                         … stylish phone

Do you want a phone that will
help you make some order out of
the chaos that is in your life?          … smart phone

Do you need some simple computing
capabilities on your phone?          … pda phone

Do you want a phone that will help
you stay connected to the internet
when on the move?                    … gprs/wap enabled phone

Would you like to transfer
data between your phone
and your pc?                         … IrDA/blue tooth enabled phone

Do you want to record
conversations With your
sweetheart/boss/client?               … Voice recorder enabled phone

Are you a sms junkie?               … QWERTY type keyboard phone

Do you have hundreds
of contacts with multiple
phone numbers?                    … Large storage capacity

Are you constantly on the
move, and almost never
near a power socket?               … Long lasting battery

MOTOROLA L6

The latest offing from the MOTOROLA Corp. is the bit changed and ultra cool new mobile “THE L6” which is the bar shaped model of the Slimmest Clam Shelled SUPER MODEL “THE MOTORAZR V3” and it still lives up to the mark of being related to this slimmest phone by its own thickness of 10.9 mm!!!

It is feature loaded with drop-dead looks, which makes it the hottest mobile to faunt around!!! It has a vivid 65K colour display which is vibrant enough for viewing photos and videos, has MMS facility and is pre-loaded with MP3 ring tones. The keypad looks stunning like in the Motorazr V3 with superb blue keypad lighting.

It is a Tri-band speakerphone with inbuilt VGA Camera, and the most needed scratch resistant glass display which is required in the Indian conditions and which is lacking in all other manufacturer’s much needed list (except Nokia 8800 which comes with a hefty price tag of 38K)…

It also has a 500 entry phone book and has memory of 10 MB which is a bit on the lower side (a big drawback if you are a MP3 junkie). It has Blue tooth which helps in faster transfer/synchronization of data between other phones and PCs.

The L6 has the dimensions 113 x 49 x 10.9 mm or 56 cc and weights approx 86 gms. It has the screen resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. It runs on the standard battery Li-Ion 820 mAh with talk time of 6 hrs and standby time of 345 hrs.

But the real winner of all is the price tag of this phone which stuns most of the buyers, priced @ 8-9K is making this mobile a worthy competitor in the 5-10K segment.

SONY ERICSSON W800

                SONY ERICSSON W-800


A great mobile phone from one of the best cell phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson, and I’m out of words to describe this gorgeous electronic sculpture. The design of this cell phone is so fabulous with an eye catching colour combination of silver and orange!!! Has the dimension of 100 x 46 x 20.6 mm and weights 99 gms. It has the  screen resolution of 176 x 220 pixels whereas the camera resolution is 1632 x 1224 pixels.

The best feature from all other mention worthy specification is the audio clarity from this phone, sounds so good that you will forget the world itself. Is loaded with the rest of the goodies like Bluetooth, Infrared, FM Radio with RDS, Gprs, 2.0 MP camera with flash, Inbuilt memory of 34 MB coupled with 512 MB card and Memory card slot with capacity of upto 2 GB!!! It runs on Li-Po 900 mAh standard battery (BST-36) with a talk time of 9 hrs and standby time of 400 hrs.

Has dedicated keys for faster access of camera, walkman facility that allows faster song play!!! The rest of all the functions are as refined as found in other Sony Ericsson phone models. It has a 262K resolution colour screen, but the lacking factor is that the screen size is a bit small compared to models from other manufacturers, though that is not such a big issue when the rest of the package is so fantabulous!!!

Available in India for a price of 21K, and a worthy replacement for all your gadgets like the Digital camera, Portable MP3 player, PDAs and other assortments that crams your pockets while you travel around! A complete entertainment cum communication equipment in the offing.
  

NOKIA 6600

                         NOKIA 6600

One of the most astonishing cell phone ever created by the Nokia Corporation and available in the less than 10k bracket when compared to the launch time expensive price of nearly 26k!!! Well let me give you all a brief insight into this great cell phone model, which I hope will be informative for all those of you who are planning to get a good phone or those with basic model looking for an upgrade that’s not going to drill a hole in your wallet!!

Shape & Looks:
To start with the basic of this phone, it’s a somewhat oval type of phone model thought it can be termed as BAR shaped, with TRIBAND network selection capabilities. It weights 122 gms (quite hefty for the front pocket) and has the dimensions (LxWxT)  109 x 58 x 24 mm.

Operating System:
The phone operates on the SYMBIAN OS 7.0 which is a very stable operating system platform, but the processor is slow compared to other phones running on the same software platform.

Memory & Display:
It has an in-built internal antenna and has 65,536 screen colours with the active screen resolution of 176 x 208. It has a 5- way navigational joystick to scroll through the menu options. It has 6 MB internal shared memory and an expansion slot which can be upgraded to 512 MB max. (though the slot is placed in an rather shoddy position under the battery which causes the changing of memory card a rather clumsy job!)

Data Transfer:
A big downer is that it doesn’t have a slot for Data Cable which is a must for every phone with a camera but it has Bluetooth to overcome this flaw. It has an Infrared IrDA port but data transfer through it is relatively too slow.

Other Specs:
It does not have a FM radio which is a big minus!!!  It also does not have a Push-To-Talk Radio which is the latest techno in-thing though Indian service providers have not started this service as yet.

It uses a Li-ion (850 mAh) battery with a 4 hrs Continuous talk time and Standby time of 240 hrs. Does not have a Flash to take pictures in the dark or dim lighted areas.


Overall View:
Pros: Brilliant display screen, Blue tooth.

Cons: No FM radio, Slow processor

I am here

Hello everyone!!

I am here to save you all from the terrors of bad cellphones!!!

I've been a Cell expert for some years and know most of the models inside out!! Though it got a bit late for me to start my blog, its better late than never especially when it comes to saving people from any sort of terror!

Right now I am a bit busy with lots of activities (some mentionable others not so I prefer to leave that now). But do check this blog frequently as I will keep it updated whenever I can. Also If you have any queries regarding any cellphone or accessories - any make & model, feel free to ask me here. I will be glad to help you out.

the formal part ends here. Will get to work from the next post.

Cheers
Cyclops