Category: Entertainment

Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task,

Ukulele

It is a musical instrument, which can also be called as a miniature version of guitar but it is a bit different from it. It is a Hawaiian instrument  played from the nineteenth century. There are four types of Ukulele they are soprano , concert, tenor, and baritone out of which Soprano is the  standard Ukulele. This instrument has a carefree Jaunty music which pleases everyone. Though it is a small guitar but a guitar has 6 strings but Ukulele  has 4 strings and Ukulele is very much easier to learn than guitar as it has soft nylon strings which does not hurt the fingers and its frets are quite small which would actually make it easier to compose. A person can learn Ukulele, so as to learn guitar which would make guitar learning guitar faster.

let us learn firstly, how to play  ukulele so as to experience the pleasure of playing it..

  1. Handling Ukulele

    It is very necessary for beginners to learn how to handle Ukulele in proper position. A Ukulele has two parts one is the long thinner portion which is called the neck and other is the body. It is very important to orient it properly that means to hold it properly. The standard way is to hold the neck in the the left hand and you hod the body in the right hand. Hold the instrument a little below your chest and hold the neck of it in fifteen degrees angle. You can play the instrument by sitting , standing and also lying, But it is much easier if you play it while sitting. About your finger arrangement, you should always rest the thumb of your left hand on the first fret and then curl your remaining from the underneath of the instrument so as to hold other strings. Your hand should make a shape of C around the instrument.

  2. Strumming
    Curl your fingers over the strings in the side hole, then make a shape of a doughnut with your index finger and the thumb, you have to play from the side of your index finger. You always have to strum all the four strings together so as to play the music. You can Ukulele by a prick or by your fingers, But the tones become a bit harsh when you use a prick on the soft strings of the instrument so its better to use the fingers.
  3. Chords
    It is very important to learn the natural notes of every string in the instrument. You should always memorize the arrangement of the strings.In order,  A (1), E (2), C (3), and G (4) are the order of the strings in the bottom to top arrangement. Practice different chords make yourself familiar with all the chords and all major and minor chords. Use the chord diagram so as to master the instrument.
  4.  Songs
    Though the ultimate goal of learning an instrument is to compose your own music, to achieve that you have to  learn playing your favorite songs with the instrument. This helps in learning new chords and shifting between them. As you learn about different tunes and get familiarize with the instrument, you are now ready to compose your own song.

    Happy learning….

 

Lata Mangeshkar

The queen of melody, has sung over five thousand songs in all different languages. She is the most respected singers in India, also has won three national awards and also has won many film fare awards. It is as if she was born to sing, she was also called the nightingale of India. She belonged to a family of singers, and her four siblings are also singers she is the eldest of all. Her songs became extremely popular, her voice suited every heroine and she was the favorite to all the music directors. She had a beautiful voice which can sing any song beautifully let it be a sad songs like  ” Ajeeb dastan hain yeh” or  romantic song like ” Yeh sama sama hain yeh pyar ka” or be any sensous song like” Lag ja gale” these songs always send chills down the spine every time one hears it.

Lata Mangeshkar was the daughter of Pandit Deenanath Mageshkar and Shevanthi. Her father was a marathi and Konkani singer, they used to live in Indore which is in Madhya Pradesh. Her family were a native Goan family that is the Mangheshi family. Lata received her music lessons from her father, he was his first teacher. At the age of five she used to act in her father’s musical acts in the theatre. In 1942 Lata’ s father died because of some heart disease and then her family was taken care of by Master Vinayak who happen to be her family friend then he helped Lata to start her career as an actor but then she turned into singing. Her first song was on 1942 and she sang her first song “Naachu ya gade” in a marathi movie but the song was dropped at the final cut. After that Lata moved to Mumbai in 1945, where she started taking lessons for hindi classical music she sang her first hindi song in a movie where she and her sister Asha also played a small role in the movie. She got a major break from Ghulam haider in the movie Majboor the song was ” dil mera thoda”. Lata Mangheshkar also declared that Ghulam haider was her godfather as he was the first producer to show faith in her voice. Though in the start she had a maharashtrian accent in the start and as most of the songs at that time had Urdu words,  but as the time passed she improved it and no one could point any mistake or question her singing talent. Her very major hit song was from the movie Mahaal the song was ” Aayega aanewala” which was lip synched by Madhubala. She had her own style of singing which was different and Magnificant. She had sung duets with a range of singers from Hemant kumar , Mohammad Rafi, Kishore kumar, Mukesh, Baapi Lahri, Kumar Sanu, Udit narayan, Sonu Nigam. No singer could ever match her Legacy, her voice has soothed people for many decades even now people look up to her as an inspiration. She is now 91 years, then also she does Riyaz every day, she says without that her day cannot start. We all should learn this discipline from her.

Why Australia is least affected by recession!!!

America’s economy is approaching a big milestone. If it keeps humming until July 2019, it’ll be the longest expansion in U.S. history. It would be exactly one decade and one month old by then. But there’s another country with an even more impressive run It’s even called the ‘lucky country’ Three big lessons from Australia.

  1. Be smart.
  2. Be organized.
  3. Be lucky.

So, if I’ve got any advice for other countries, it’s try and be as lucky as Australia That luck has to do with Australia’s treasure trove of natural resources. You know Australia is on the other side of the world and sitting on tremendously valuable minerals right at the point where the Chinese economy is just around the corner and exploding. Australia and every one its natural resources were within the right geographic neighborhood even as the Chinese economy began to begin . And it just so happens that China did a big fiscal stimulus in 2008 and spent a great deal of money building new cities. So all of these resources were drawn from places like Australia. So that also served as a huge tailwind at a time when developed markets were in a whole lot of trouble.

What Currency Is Used In Australia | Australian Dollar : Compare ...

The year 2008 was a time of economic turmoil The Global Financial Crisis hit and markets crumbled around the world. But as it turns out this was also a year for Australia’s economic management to really show off At the time the government had a very helpful and very low level of debt. One reason? Pension reform in the 1990s. Australia set up a compulsory retirement system called the superannuation system. It requires employers put money into its employees’ retirement savings.

Since companies and citizens have to build up retirement savings, some of the financial burden to pay off pensions was taken off of Australia’s government As other economies reeled in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the Australian Government was then able to put money directly into people’s bank accounts This boosted consumer spending in order to stimulate growth In 2008, the Australian Government unlike some other developed market governments actually jumped in very quickly with fiscal stimulus, so that helped to kind of minimize the effect of the crisis The country’s numbers continued to look sluggish after the financial crisis. But they never quite dipped low enough or for long enough to satisfy the definition of a recession. It takes two quarters of negative growth to fall into a recession. Australia’s economy did post a couple of negative quarters since 2008, but no country’s perfect. Overall Australia’s economy has been managed pretty much in recent years partly due to a robust and stable financial institution.

Reserve Bank of Australia – Australia's LGBTQ Inclusive Employers

Australia has an independent financial institution and it is a very well-run financial institution . It also has a floating exchange rate and the exchange rate helped it adjust to international shocks. Australia’s economic reforms gave it flexibility in times of hardship. For example, floating the Australian dollar In 1983, Australia’s government moved the dollar onto a floating exchange rate This meant that the dollar would be valued by supply and demand instead of being subject to influence from its government or its central bank It allows the economy to react to shocks as well Typically when an economy is hit by some sort of negative shock. The currency will adjust. It will depreciate and that helps promote exports. Another reason behind Australia’s economic diary lies in its immigration policy. Since the late 1990s, Australia has seen growth in temporary migration, many arriving to the country on student or temporary work visas. The number of temporary migrants peaked in the year 2000. However a recent change to immigration law in 2018 gave visa applicants more hurdles to get through if they wanted to come to the country Even when our GDP per capital average incomes aren’t rising by much because the number of people continues to rise that means the total GDP continues to rise at even more rapid pace Part of that’s underpinned by much faster population growth Most experts think Australia’s economy remains strong in 2019, but it’s not without risks.

Australia’s suffering at the instant from pretty weak wage growth. That’s worrying a lot of people. There’s a lot of fear right now that China is hitting a wall. That will hit demand for Australian products. The good news is to the extent that the Chinese are buying commodities hopefully will find buyers from overseas for many of those commodities if the Chinese are not there The bad news is the rest of the world economy is not doing that well.

Australian economic growth slows, enters per capita recession ...

How India’s massive Election System works?

The world’s biggest democracy just had an election. The world’s biggest democratic election It’s a marathon election A mammoth undertaking It’s the world’s biggest exercise in democracy In India, voters picked its central government for the next five years. An eighth of the world’s population was eligible to vote in this election. In the year, 2019, there are 900 million eligible voters in India making this the largest Democratic exercise in the history of humanity.

A vote for reform: Election Commission collaborating with IIT-M on ...

In one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, that isn’t an easy task. India has to reach voters in coastal cities in the south, in the rural regions of the west, and jungles to the east and everywhere in between. And what’s more, they want every Indian citizen to be within 2 km of a voting station. That’s only about 25 city blocks no matter where you are in the country. It’s an incredibly ambitious goal and yet, somehow they’re able to do it. This is the biggest election in the world and I wanted to know how does it work. Every election a team of state officials and security forces, get on a ship within the east of India to require off towards this island. They travel about 100 km to get here, all to securely deliver these Electronic Voting Machines or EVMS, the instrument that logs India’s votes, the heart of this elaborate election process.

Election Commission's crackdown on poll-related monetary ...

India has 2.3 million voting machines for its 900 million voters. So, getting these machines on the brink of every voter may be a big logistical undertaking. That’s why India doesn’t have one polling day , instead, it’s closer to an election month with multiple phases that last weeks. This process takes more than 11 million election officials and security forces, who move from polling station to polling station to polling station from densely populated cities to the rural areas where the majority of Indians live. Once on the island with the EVMs, officials pile on to bike carts and head towards the polling station. Once they arrive, they start setting everything up for the vote.

On Election Day, voters line up, cast their vote, and get their fingers inked to prevent double voting. This is where the process ends for the voters, but for the election officials this is just the beginning. Driving a boat out to a remote island is just one of many ways that officials reach every voter. India’s vast and diverse terrain requires transportation methods of all kinds, like in the jungles of this northern state where elephants transport voting machines to reach a remote town or in the Himalayas where officials hike for hours to bring EVMS for election day. Helicopters, trains, they even use camels. But what makes India’s elections so impressive is not just how they reach everyone in such an enormous country, that’s just half the battle. It’s also the ways they try to include voters of all backgrounds into the process, a challenge that has been a part of India’s elections since the very beginning. India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects and when India became an independent nation, less than a quarter of the population could read and write.

Why EC Owes an Answer to the Country Over 'Phantom Votes' | NewsClick

The newly formed Election Commission of India created a range of symbols to correspond to each political party, like an elephant, a lotus, a hand or even an alarm clock so that from the beginning all people regardless of literacy level and language could vote with confidence. Since 1947, the literacy rate has increased significantly, but it’s still only 75 percent, so these symbols are still useful to many when casting a vote. But this is a massive sprawling operation and over the years it’s run into some pretty serious problems like allegations of election rigging and problems with a practice called booth capture, where gangs actually take over polling stations and tamper with the elections. It’s partly because of these problems that the Commission introduced these voting machines in the 1990s.

It also increased security around the elections. These efforts to include all voters and protect elections seem to be working. In 2019, India saw the highest voter turnout yet and for the firsttime women voted just as much as men. India’s elections are only getting bigger and more complicated. India has one among the fastest growing populations within the world. and in 2020, young people will make up more than a third of the country. This is the most important election within the world that takes many officials fanning out across a huge country to assist many millions vote.

Election Commission rejects Opposition demand to tweak VVPAT ...

Bawarchi

This is a movie directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and was released in the 1972. A movie staring Rajesh khanna, Jaya Bahaduri, Usha Kiran, Asrani and many more. This movie was narrated by Amitabh Bachan in his very strong voice. Hrishikesh Mukherjee movies are always simple and conveys very beautiful messages which helps us to make our lives simpler. Bawarchi means a cook, this is a story of how Raghu the character played by Rajesh Khanna actually teaches a life lesson to a family who lives in a house named shanti nivas.

In this story the main focus is about a large joint family which lives in a house named shanti nivas named after the wife of the owner. The name is an irony as the word shanti means peace but no one can ever see this happening in the house, there is always some big fight that the family indulges in.  Shivnath sharma who is a retired post man is the eldest in the family. He has 4 sons firstly Ramnath sharma being the eldest son who works as a head clerk in a company his wife Seeta sharma and daughter is Meeta sharma is a trained Kathak dancer and who is preparing for an upcoming dance competion all live in the house. Second brother Kashi Sharma is a school teacher he has his own rules and principles about life which he strictly follows his wife shobha sharma and son Pintoo live in the same house. The third son and his wife died in a car accident their daughter Krishna played by Jaya Bachan also stays with them. She studies in college and has a tution teacher Arun who is her college senior who comes home to teach her for free. The forth son Vishwanath Sharma played be Asrani is a music director in film industry, he is not married and he thinks it is better not because it will just add up to the fight already existing in the house. So many people live in one house, constantly fighting  though they want to be apart but fear that if they go Shivnath sharma also called as Daduji will not give any part of the property to them.

Raghu who comes to their home, pretending that he is in desperate need of work but actually is someone who wants to peace out things in the house. Not directly but by showing how much they love each other and making other members  realize how amazing is it live together with happiness. There are many major lessons to be learnt from this movie which actually tends us to re-evaluate our own life. Such simple movies makes us realize how important is it to be happy in the present moment. In this pandemic times when we are confined at home rather than constantly thinking and stressing out ourselves by the thought  when will everything comeback to normal we can spend a quality time with our family, be happy of the fact that everyone is together. Hug your mom and dad and tell them how much you love and care about them. In a wait for big happiness we often tend to ignore these small small happiness, the number big moments of happiness are  only just fifteen to twenty in in the whole lifetime what makes our lives beautiful is the millions and billions of small happiness that we should never overlook.

celebrate not just a day but life full of yoga

Yoga: understanding fundamentals

Yoga is a group of spiritual,mental and physical practices originated in ancient India. the modern yoga is seen as exercise to the body which mainly consists of postures or asanas. The practice of yoga has been thought to date back to pre-vedic Indian traditions; possibly in the Indus valley civilization around 3000 BCE. Yoga is mentioned in the Rigveda and also referenced in the Upanishads. Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West,[17] following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century with his adaptation of yoga tradition, excluding asanas. Outside India, it has developed into a posture-based physical fitness, stress-relief and relaxation technique. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core.

why yoga ?

There are many reasons why one should keep habit of practicing yoga for at least half an hour a day even if they are busy all the day. yoga is an art whivh cures you from a disease before you get infected by it.

some of the benefits of yoga are:

  • increased flexibility.
  • increased muscle strength and tone.
  • improved respiration, energy and vitality.
  • maintaining a balanced metabolism.
  • weight reduction.
  • cardio and circulatory health.
  • improved athletic performance.
  • protection from injury.

Prominent personalities practicing yoga:

  1. Narendra modi:
If prime minister can do then we can too at least we are not as busy as him.

2. Robert downey ,jr.(Iron Man):

Shocked!! yes he also do yoga which has helped him in leaving the bad habit of drugs addiction.

3.Jennifer Aniston (Racheal green in Friends):

she is been practicing yoga since 2005 for at least 20-30 minutes a day regularly

admist her busy schedule.

The list goes on thus it is well known that yoga is key to healthy life. Practice it daily if you don’t know asanas search in google or refer you tube videos. Hope you start practicing Yoga.

Why one should definitely watch ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’

Imagine a Friday evening. You came back from your office after a long week. Of course you do not feel the urge to cook and so you order Pizza from your authentic pizza store. You snug into your bed, with the large hot pizza and open a bottle of red wine. You take out your laptop and start searching for a good show for binge watching. But somehow, you find yourself listening to the tune:

“So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job’s a joke, you’re broke
Your love life’s D.O.A …….”

Friday night is sorted. Good food with a good show.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S – The iconic show celebrates 25 years today ...
F.R.I.E.N.D.S Poster

But it is not just about a show. We all have our favorite shows, but F.R.I.E.N.D.S is a tad bit different. Apart from just enjoying an evening with the show, this show teaches us some aspects of management and career which can make our ‘binge-watching’ time worthwhile. So just to further accelerate your career, I would like to list a few management tips which we can learn from F.R.I.E.N.D.S:

  1. Have patience. Remember when Phoebe was trying to teach Joey a new language and how he was getting on her nerves by learning it the wrong way? Yes, and how did Phoebe respond? She just maintained her calmness and her patience level high, without giving up on him. She knows that she might be an expert in that language while the other person is not. Key takeaway is that in your work life, you will definitely come across various situations and meetings where you need to explain that thing at which you are an expert, and even though the other person is not aware of that thing, you should have enough patience to explain.
  2. Be really focused. One of the most heartbreaking scene was that when Monica broke up with Richard (apparently of age and difference of opinion issues) but even that scene taught us something very valuable. Monica took that negative event and turned it into a positive trait by going down to the dock, buying loads of fruits and making batches of jam. And she did not just deliver it, she gave her full efforts to make the best batches of jam. So the key takeaway is that whatever be the situation, use it to your advantage and give your best, especially while you are working on a project and there can be innumerable roadblocks.
  3. Sleep for at least 8 hours before a big meeting.We can never forget that meeting when Chandler fell asleep, only to be woken up to the decision of heading the branch office from Tulsa. Now well, a promotion in all forms is always good, but not at the expense of leaving your family and, especially, to the most remote place possible. So the key takeaway is to get hold of your mind before any big event in office.
  4. Be great at networking and always have the support of your friends. Remember when Phoebe came up with a job of a head chef at first for almost everyone, except for Monica, especially at the time when Monica had no work. Another instance when Rachel lost her job at Ralph Lauren because her boss overheard her conversation for a job interview at Gucci. Even then she was rescued by Mark, who happens to be her ex-colleague, to on-board her for a better position at Louis Vuitton in Paris. So the key takeaway is that always maintain a great relationship with everyone and one thing is to be kept in mind – ‘Give what you would want to receive.‘
  5. Give your 100%. Remember the time when Phoebe was given the charge of ice even though she wanted to play a major role in a party. But she took her job very seriously, arranged for all the forms of ice and cups and delivered the biggest hit of the party. So the key takeaway is that even though you get a mini part of a big event, give your best and make it a hit, so that others will definitely notice.
  6. And finally, never be afraid to follow your passion. Rachael started her career as a waiter and finally followed her passion to land up in Ralph Lauren. Joey failed multiple times as an actor but he was passionate about it. Monica was passionate about cooking. But the most notable one was about Chandler. How he left his job in “statistical analysis and data reconfiguration” only to follow his passion of writing to land up as an intern in advertising. So the key takeaway is that even though you might be best at what you do, but you should still be brave enough to follow your passion.
Friends - Phoebe's Cups And Ice - YouTube
Phoebe managing the ‘ice counter’ of the big party

So these are some of the management tips which you can take away from the show. The show depicts that love, friendships and relationships are meant to be nurtured. And that’s not limited to just your personal life, but also to your professional life too.

But for now, take hold of your career and just binge away …

Source:

https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/gifs-20-work-lessons-weve-learned-from-friends

https://insideiim.com/6-lessons-from-f-ri-e-n-d-s-characters-for-all-mba-aspirants

8 Genuine ways to earn money from your home!!!

Here are some of the genuine ways to earn in your spare time without any investment.

  1. Transcriber: average earnings per month is hundred and fifty. All you need is actually to have a good pair of headphones and of course you need to get stored to type there now there is a few other sites so you can’t only rely of course on hundred and fifty dollars average earning per month but if you are good at this you can actually earn of course much more but what you can do is you can become a transcriber. rev.com is another site here as a transcriptionist you can anywhere from 24 to 90 cents per audio/video minute basically you can be a video captioner also which is pretty much the same here and you can earn anywhere from 45 cents up to 75 cents.
  2. Micro tasks you can do this on my.com in your spare time you get paid for completing simple tasks here so it can be anything from like tagging objects here helping companies select the best picture the audit user classifying you can see that there is tons of opportunities. Rapidworkers.com is another site where you can earn a decent amount just by doing some micro taskes.
  3. Data entry jobs on Amazon on rapid workers there is micro workers also but there is also assigned like a clickworkercalm.com. You just sign up for a free account and you work independently your schedule is flexible and all you need is a computer and of course and/or a mobile device with an internet connection and it’s totally up to you how much you want to work. You can do text creation, copy editing, research surveys, mystery visit, app testing and photo capturing a lot of opportunities that you can earn money from the comfort on clickworker.com.
  4. Virtual assistant one of my favorite sites is virtual assistant jobs calm and basically you can apply for data entry, call center whatever comes into your mind you can get started here and apply and search for it you might be available only to do this on part time so you can search for part-time flexible with contracts. Jobs.com helps us out there by providing all types of virtual assistance jobs.
  5. Online tutoring if you’re good at something math or English or something like that one side is a shag.com , VIP kid teachers.com which is basically they teach English here and you can earn up to twenty two dollars per hour teaching. There are many students who want to learn extra and out of their books so here comes opportunity by teaching them.
  6. Freelancer totally depends on your skills. There is other popular freelance sites like upwork.com there is freelancer.com there is people per hour so a lot of options actually that you can apply for here as a freelancer. Freelancing is one of the best option as you can work also on your niche and can enhance it for future use.
  7. Affiliate marketer and the good thing with affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to deal with shipping you don’t have to deal with anything at all. You need is just grab a link and promote that offer whatever it is and of course you earn a commission okay so one of the most popular platforms is Clickbank.com. They have thousands of products here probably one of the most popular niches will be health and fitness. You just grab a link here and what you do is you use this link to promote it you can use something like bitly to shorten this ugly link of course and then all you need to do is drive traffic to this offer. Amazon is another option that you can make money as an affiliate marketer they have millions of products here that you can promote ok you can earn a commission from anything you promote inside Amazon here so it works the same way it totally depends on your niche here how you can drive traffic to it.
  8. Sell stuff on eBay you have available that you don’t use at your home you can get stored there to sell this or you can actually use this platform to buy something and sell it much higher. So, you can be a sort of a middleman here so this is another option tons of ways and opportunities to make money eBay and you can of course do this from your home without any investment.

 

Pen pals

Have you ever thought of sharing your opinions and views to an unknown person. In this present world sharing any information with an unknown person is nothing less than inviting a trouble, but there was a time when people used to share their opinions, emotions or feelings to an unknown person. This was accomplished by writing letters. One used to write letters to those whose name, gender , age, caste etc were not known. The only thing they knew was address. This was the most exciting thing youths of those days used to do. By this they also made friends of their own choice. The friends made are called Pen friends or pen pals.

This practice started from the early 70s and prevailed as a trend for almost 2 decades. Those days there used to be a column in the newspaper, which had the addresses of those people who were interested in having a pen pal. From late 80s people started having pen friends from foreign countries too. Many people were really interested in reading different views and opinions so they had many pen friends. This practice also helped in gaining the knowledge of things happening in other places. Just imagine how different it is to know people like that, you know make friends with people you don’t know and it is your choice to carry it on or to end it.

In late 90s computers were made accessible and Electronic mail came in and started spreading its magic throughout the world. The ritual of handwritten letters were vanishing. Then mobiles made communication more efficient because of which writing letters to even the loved ones were stopped completely.

Pen pal are the purest form of friendship, why not start the trend once again. Lets once again start writing letters to our relatives and friends who are far. You know writing letters is something so personnel, one invests time in it thinks a hundred times what to write and how to write. After scrambling tons of thoughts and papers (does not mean you waste paper, please do not waste paper) the last draft is ready , the anxiety of posting it and then waiting for the reply is another feeling. In this world where everything is fake let us make friendships real. When you friend receives the letter, they would feel you in the letter. When the read it in their mind it would be as if your voice is reading it, which would definitely give a feeling though for just sometime that you are around them narrating your story.

Really how did this wonderful tradition come to an end!!

let us not end it, let us find new friends once again, make Pen friends and lets keep up the friendship for life. Lets share each others happiness and sorrows so that we don’t feel alone and always be feel happy of having a friend somewhere who is always there to listen to our thoughts , opinions and problems and to show that we care about them. May be by doing this we can make a much happier world to live in.

A brief history of Cannibalism

Cannibalism, a frowned upon act which society vehemently opposes or so we think. Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Organisms from the animal kingdom practice cannibalism on a regular basis in fact more than 1,500 species alone practice it. Even as society frowns upon it, human cannibalism is well documented, both in ancient and in recent times. So how did this start? The word cannibal is dated back to the time of Christopher Columbus, which he may even have coined himself. It was first recorded in Columbus’s reports to the queen of Spain. He described the indigenous people as friendly and peace loving but sparked rumors about a group called Caribs, who apparently raided, plundered and ate their prisoners. The queen granted permission of capture and enslaving of anyone who ate flesh. However once Columbus found that he would not get gold from any of the locals, he began labeling any who resisted him as a Caribe. As the term reached Europe, somewhere along the way it had transformed from Carib to Canibe to Cannibal.

Photo by Renato Danyi on Pexels.com

It was first used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people; it has since been applied to anyone who eats flesh. The term comes from an account with no hard evidence but it does have a real and complex history. Throughout the course of history, it has taken diverse forms such as 15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising, nausea and virtually any other medical ailment. It was a brown powder known as “mumia,” and was made by grinding up mummified human flesh. It had a large demand in 15th century Europe so much so that the stolen mummies from Egypt used to keep up with the mumia craze started dwindling. This opened up avenues for opportunists to use stolen bodies from European cemeteries to keep up with the craze. The use of mumia was so widespread that it continued for hundreds of years. It was even listed in Merck index a popular medical encyclopedia into the 20th century. During various famines, sieges and wars there have been accounts of survival cannibalism as the only options were starving or eating the dead. But various cultures saw a normalization of consumption of human flesh even in ordinary circumstances. Blood in liquid or powdered form used to treat epilepsy, human liver, gall stones, oil from human brains and pulverized hearts were popular medical concoctions back in the day. In china the written record of socially accepted cannibalism goes back to 2000 years. One form of cannibalism was filial cannibalism where adult sons and daughters provided a piece of their flesh to their sick parents and often seen as a last-ditch effort to save them. Cannibalistic funerary rites were yet another form of culturally sanctioned cannibalism. The best-known example came from the Fore people of New guinea. Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, make their funerary preferences known in advance, often requesting family members to consume their flesh after death, however even though this honored the dead it bore the spreading of a deadly disease known as Kuru throughout the community.

Between fictionalized stories, verified facts and big gaps that still exist in our knowledge, there is no one history of cannibalism, however one thing we can be sure of that humans throughout the course of history have eaten and volunteered to be eaten by their fellow man. As Michel de Montaigne wrote “Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in one’s own country”.

Electronic mail

We use electronic mails in our everyday lives, it has become a mode of an etiquette way of conveying messages if formality is required. Nevertheless we can use electronic mails to send our friends a message, it also serves the purpose for an informal yet important messages to be delivered. It is seen most of the people use it to transfer files from mobile to computer though there are other ways like Google drive and bluetooth but E-mail is a more convenient and efficient way to do this. It is said that over 3.9 million people all over the world use e-mail every day. Even after so many years of its Invention this method of exchanging messages is still prevalent.

Ray Tomlinson was the person who  invented it in 1971, he was an American computer programmer . He implemented the email such that it could be sent from one user to many different users in ARPANET. ARPANET was the basis of internet which was developed by the U.S advanced research process agency (ARPA). Its initial purpose was to serve as a medium to share and exchange messages but it required that users could only send to the receiver when he or she is online like the instant messaging. The first e mail was sent in 1973 which was very similar to that of the basic email sent today. What is obvious is many things are upgraded and yes there are many search engines being developed like Yahoo, google, hotmail to facilitate ourselves.

What is SMPT?

As you know that whenever we are using computer which understands binary language and internet which is a very complex thing, there are some specific rules to use them because these electronic items do not understand our language so we have to actually follow some rules so as to make our work done. So there are some set of protocols to be followed which are called the SMPT which is simple mail transfer protocol. SMPT sets up rule for the servers, it moves and forwards your mails to the servers. It can also send networks outside the internet. When we write our email with “@ ” symbol we are actually creating a definite address what is more interesting is that if you write a receivers address with the same symbol, it automatically connects you to the address if it exists, if it does not exist then is may not send your email at all.  SMPT takes care of all the process from sending the composed mail to the receiver and to the right address.

Now a days it is even simpler to send mails to different domains, you may ask what are domains? domains are used to identify one or more IP address that is internet protocol address. Not clear yet, in simpler terms @ gmail.com, @ yahoo.com and many more. they are used to identify different web pages or we call it search engines.

So E- mails have a long history which should be admired, it has made our lives so easier and simpler . So the next time you use the electronic mail , it should come to your mind that what minds were behind the invention of this great thing and we should be grateful for it

 

IQ tests and their history

Intelligence, it is what set us apart from our primate ancestors. Human evolution led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, beginning with the evolutionary history of primates—in particular genus Homo—and leading to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, the great apes. Now since intelligence is a major factor in the distinction of humans from all other animals, we must understand what intelligence is. Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. And in order to measure a person’s intelligence we need a method to scientifically determine the amount of intelligence factor a person has which is usually measured in terms of IQ.

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In 1905, psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon designed a test for children who were struggling in school in France. Designed to determine which children required individualized attention, their method formed the basis of the modern IQ test. Beginning in the late 19th century, researchers hypothesized that cognitive abilities like verbal reasoning, working memory and visual-spatial skills reflected an underlying general intelligence or g factor. So, Simone and Binet designed a battery of tests to measure each of these abilities, and combine the results for a single score. Questions were made for each age group and a child’s score reflected how they performed relative to others in the same age group. Today a score of 100 is the average of a sample population, with 68% scoring within a 15-point radius. However, both then and now there is no single agreed upon definition of general intelligence. Which left the door open for people to use the test in service of their own preconceived assumptions about intelligence. What started as a way to identify those who needed academic help, soon became a tool to sort people in other ways, often in service of deeply flawed ideologies. One of the first large scale implementations occurred in the US during WWI when the military used IQ tests to sort recruits and screen them for officer training. However, that time people believed in Eugenics, the idea that desirable and undesirable genetic traits could and should be controlled in humans through selective breeding. This was a deeply flawed idea as it linked intelligence as not only fixed and inherited but linked to a certain race. This belief and results from IQ tests gave forth a wrong theory that certain races were superior than others, thus creating an erroneous intelligence hierarchy of ethnic groups. This not only influenced science but also policies in many countries. In 1924 Virginia ordered forced sterilization of anyone with low IQ scores, a decision that the supreme court of US upheld. We all know what happened in Nazi Germany due to such prevalent ideals, authorization of murder of children based on low IQ scores. Following the Holocaust and the Civil rights movement, the discriminatory usage of IQ tests was questioned on moral and scientific grounds. Scientists began gathering evidence as to how our environment impacts our IQ.

Today, IQ tests employ many similar design elements and types of questions as the early tests, though there are better techniques to identify potential bias in the tests. And due to many failed applications in the past they are no longer used to diagnose psychiatric conditions. And psychologists still use IQ tests to identify intellectual disability which can be used to determine educational support, job training and assisted living. As Alan Alda said “Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart”.

THE POWER OF PEN

The POWER of PEN

Ideas have an impact far more powerful than we imagine. We all wish to express our ideas, and it is the ‘power of the pen’ which helps us express. Who could think that such a small instrument would take such a big space of human life?

When a child, a teacher, a book and a pen come together, they change the world. The teacher using the book directs the child towards self-discovery. A pen gives his innocent dreams the wings and these dreams, hence, see the light of the day. A writer gets to write a new chapter. For him, this pen is everything. He pours all his emotions via a pen on a blank page. This pen becomes the tongue of his mind. A painter gives colours to his imagination. His perspective is serenely painted on a canvas. Anyone who sees it is mesmerized.

In the giant game of construction, some bravely choose a pen. What they create reflects the victory of man’s genius. An architect impeccable shapes homes, giving shelter to many. Cities are constructed based on plans penned by developers.

A hero’s dying wish is that people acknowledge his bravery; not concoct stories which never existed. His pen conveys his heroics. This pen reflected his power. People now know how he served his nation.

In this era, one must learn to protect oneself with the pen, not with the gun. We have journalists who do this for us. They protect our interest when they lift their pen. They give us news with their pen. They keep us updated with the happenings in the world.

In the hands of a doctor, a pen prescribes medicine and saves someone’s life.

Life is given to words with the power of the pen where the spoken words have no place, the written one’s triumph.

The declaration of our independence and its sovereignty was written using a pen without which there would be none of its existence. An actor lifts his pen for an autograph. Design created by this object gives his name value.

Swords are short and sharp, but a pen, the pen is sharper.

The pen is so powerful that if it goes in the hands of a liar, he will not only tongue the false but also deceive by writing.

For some, a pen is as important as a beak is to hen.

A teacher finds it magical for it is she who sees the textures and tone that a mere pen point produces in an exam paper. Lives are created and destroyed in that examination hall. If the pen works you pass and if it doesn’t you fail the test.

This is the ‘Power of Pen’. Let us embrace it and shape a better world together.

COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING IN SCHOOLS?

Military training in schools.

Any training on a person adds various skills. Some people want the central government must consider this proposal seriously and implement it in educational institutions. Many children are unable to decide what to pursue in life, and when they experience the hardships on military turf, this idea will be clear. Minimum military training is essential and broadens the mindset and toughens it. In a way, it is vocational training. India may get potential officers while will strengthen the armed forces in future. The defence of the country is left alone in the able arms of troops, and with this compulsion, we can also participate in it. The education improves national morale, health, builds up character and even the ability to face hardships.

People who serve in the army stay away from family for a very long time. When the children of their country join them in the training arena, they will get a morale boost. It will be an incredible feeling when so many children come and are with you. At a place, so many children from different backgrounds will share common space and air. This will bring Indian closer, and the walls of difference will get lower. The children need patriotic reinforcement, and this idea will also foster discipline in them. They will be more team spirit, orderliness and respect for one another when exposed to the adventures of training. Once a student receives basic training and wishes to volunteer, the military will get a trained volunteer. Indian girls will develop defensive skills and become stronger physically.

However, the Indian military is not equipped with the necessary infrastructure and number of officers to take on a significant population of a school child. Even if training institutions and academics are established, it will take much time for them actually to take place. They will require much money for maintenance and upkeep. Even if a decision in favour of this is made, it should be done for students above the age of 18 years and not for school-going children. The rigours of training may be too much for a school going child to handle, and also the mind is better prepared for this at a decent age of 18 years. The government has checked the feasibility, affordability and practicality of it. This is practically impossible for now. We do not have resources which are adequate to fulfil wants of everyone, and now we are asking for a further hole in the pocket of the government. India is a democratic set-up; people are free to choose their professions. Compulsion is respect for military training; it is felt, will go against the democratic ethos.[1] The anticipated benefits of imparting military training to all the youth will not be commensurate with the expenditure involved in such an effort. This would translate into unmanageable figure and will also be a significant drain on the limited resources of a developing country.

We are not prepared for it at the moment, but we can always inculcate the knowledge on a curriculum or introduce it as a separate course.

[1] Pradip R Sagar, Centre may not be in favour of Military Training, availabe at: https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2018/03/17/centre-may-not-be-in-favour-of-compulsory-military-training.html.