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What the heck are calories anyway

So the latest "fad" is calories. Every other person is talking about that as if it were the dreariest evil to have possessed humans. Even kids in Gymnasiums, Playgrounds and eventually Social Media, are tracking like pros. How cool is that? Really, that's bat-shit crazy. Rule of thumb being, understand and act and not to act what you do not understand. So here's a crash course. Calorie itself is a defunct unit of measurement of energy (heat really) and defined as the amount of heat required to increase the temperature of 1 gm of water by one degree (at one atm. pressure, but that's a separate topic). It's since been replaced by Joule but is still used widely in food industry.  Actually, what food industry calls a Calorie is really a KiloCalorie. A single small calorie is just too little energy to be of any significance. Considering that it was a unit of heat, it was actually calculated thus, by burning food to raise temperature of a Kg. of wat

"Life" goes on - Chapter 1: Far off future

He sat in his darkened cubicle mulling over a million thoughts, sitting at the verge of an immense breakthrough that would put his name in the vestiges of history of his kind. He had lived long enough, learned and applied all his knowledge to arrive at this precise moment when he could just sit and contemplate about "life", while the most relevant chapter of all times is about to unfold. He'd make the official announcement tomorrow, a breakthrough on which he spent good long months of his life and is now deemed a success. The child of Honda. Today as he sat, he felt he sits with his Gods. No smaller is his achievement, after all he has finally succeeded in bringing intelligent "life" to fruition. True, organic life, that can regenerate, reproduce, think for itself and learn. Life, modeled in his own image. Life, that'd be his progeny, not a son but a race. A different thought came over him, now. What great would he accomplish with his new creation by hi

State of the world wide web: Content on the web

Internet, ah! This hyper speed portal to such a vast amount of knowledge all around us. Knowledge that may or may not be true, but that is a different thought altogether, and we may dwell on that later. The current reverie centers around the presence of such a huge amount of information and the ease of access to it, but where is it taking us.  I, for one, am extremely touched by the tools at hand today and find myself scouring the net for satiating my veritable appetite for more information. Not always do I know what to do with that information but there I am on the web, watching, reading, listening and what not. It helped me with fixing that dual-shock remote of my PS3 console and even replace the touch panel of a phone. Things, that I would have done, nonetheless, but would have taken a lot more time to figure out the right way to accomplish. (After all, I always opened up electronics way before Internet told me how to do that). I just recently managed to cultivate button mush

Internet of the credulous

So what really happened? It started with a lot of people changing their Facebook profile pictures, using a Facebook provided tool, which overlay the image with tricolor. Why did they do that? No one's really sure or has the true facts. Not that I do. All I have is the reason to "why did I change my display picture?" A simple answer, to commemorate our Prime Minister's visit to the Silicon Valley. Whether I like our PM or not is immaterial, he is my PM. He represents my country and that is it. Once he is elected, he is the one and I stand with him until he steps down. And to show that, I changed my profile picture. Why do I need to show? My prerogative, my wish, my freedom. Now you may ask why only that particular profile picture, why not something else. Let's think of old times, when kings traveled. They had flag bearers. The flag bearers carried one flag, not different ones to their liking. Same reason, I changed my DP to what it is today. This is where

Implications of theoretical Physics on mundane life -- Looking into the past to see the future

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So they modeled a parallel universe. So our future is their past. Good one. But what does it mean to a layman.  Parallel Universe moving backwards in time First a few facts to consider. Read the link. Not everything would make a lot of sense to all and thus confuse a lot of people. And then read this. It's a humble attempt at trying to "understand" and make sense of what it implies to our mundane life. When they say another universe moving backwards in time, they forget to mention, "from the frame of reference of someone in our universe". To a physicist, the frame of reference is the most important factor while describing an observation. The frame of reference is where we observe from. For a person standing on the road, the cars are running, while the ones driving the cars that man is moving backwards. Same applies here. But, then what does that mean. Does it mean that those living in the other universe, know our future? Can we ask them? Or does

Mata bhiksham dehi... Community vs Socialism

So, like many of my other friends back home, I also went through the process of "Upnayan Sanskar" when I was in college (yes that late, for I could never agree to it, felt weird... but anyways). The ceremony has started being considered as a step into adulthood, but alas it wasn't really. The ancients divided life into phases, one of which was the "Brahmacharya Ashram", when the purpose of a man was to learn whilst not being bothered by the temptations of life. An important part of that ritual involved shaved-head-dhoti-clad boy requesting alms from the elder women around, requesting "Mata! Bhiksham dehi." (Mother, please provide alms). It is a ritualistic tradition, to be followed since things are done like this here, now. But I wondered what it meant in the day of old. Then, young boys, prince or paupers alike, would go about their days of learning, requesting alms from the community. Did that make the time socialist ? At first I thought

Art

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I sat idly in front of the television set watching Indian channels. It's been long since I had really sat like this watching Indian serials, those were a luxury in this foreign land. And even more so, been never a fan of MTV India, lest it played things like Coke Studio or Dewarist. And coke studio is what I waited for, since I had scrolled and saw it in the listing. But right now some top 20 were playing. I sat, absentmindedly watching, for that is my nature while I go into that pondering mode. So is my nature that I lose sense of what is happening around while doing things that interested me more, like flying my newly acquired heli. A nature acquired from long hours of study sitting in front of television during my kid years. Yet it was not so that I did not know what was playing, nevertheless I paid no attention. Entertainment is art. Some say art defines the state of affairs, I thought differently. Maybe the state of the affairs define art. Art lives and historically docume