Ramann Bharadwaj - The Legendary Warrior...!!!!

2010 in review

ramann — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:34:01 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 21 posts. There were 6 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 247kb.

The busiest day of the year was November 26th with 49 views. The most popular post that day was WHAT IS AREA 51 ???????.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were bigextracash.com, blogomania.cognizance.org.in, student-loan-consilidation.com, statistics.bestproceed.com, and healthfitnesstherapy.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for area 51 aliens, harry potter and the deathly hallows, how does a mosfet work, field effect transistor, and semiconductor.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

WHAT IS AREA 51 ??????? December 2009

HOW DOES A MOSFET WORK ??? May 2010

HOCKEY – NATIONAL GAME OR SHAME ????? March 2010

THE AURA OF SELFLESS LOVE……. March 2010

REALITY AS A MISNOMER !!!! March 2010

HOW DOES A MOSFET WORK ???

ramann — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:36:46 +0000

The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a device used for amplifying or switching electronic signals. The basic principle of the device was first proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. In MOSFETs, a voltage on the oxide-insulated gate electrode can induce a conducting channel between the two other contacts called source and drain. The channel can be of n-type or p-type , and is accordingly called an nMOSFET or a pMOSFET (also commonly nMOS, pMOS). It is by far the most common transistor in both digital and analog circuits, though the bipolar junction transistor was at one time much more common.

The ‘metal’ in the name is now often a misnomer because the previously metal gate material is now often a layer of polysilicon (polycrystalline silicon). Aluminium had been the gate material until the mid 1970s, when polysilicon became dominant, due to its capability to form self-aligned gates. Metallic gates are regaining popularity, since it is difficult to increase the speed of operation of transistors without metal gates.IGFET is a related term meaning insulated-gate field-effect transistor, and is almost synonymous with MOSFET, though it can refer to FETs with a gate insulator that is not oxide. Another synonym is MISFET for metal–insulator–semiconductor FET.

COMPOSITION :

Usually the semiconductor of choice is silicon, but some chip manufacturers, most notably IBM, recently started using a chemical compound (bond, NOT a mixture) of silicon and germanium (SiGe) in MOSFET channels. Unfortunately, many semiconductors with better electrical properties than silicon, such as gallium arsenide, do not form good semiconductor-to-insulator interfaces, thus are not suitable for MOSFETs. Research continues on creating insulators with acceptable electrical characteristics on other semiconductor material.

In order to overcome power consumption increase due to gate current leakage, high-κ dielectric replaces silicon dioxide for the gate insulator, while metal gates return by replacing polysilicon (see Intel announcement^[1]).The gate is separated from the channel by a thin insulating layer, traditionally of silicon dioxide and later of silicon oxynitride. Some companies have started to introduce a high-κ dielectric + metal gate combination in the 45 nanometer node.

When a voltage is applied between the gate and body terminals, the electric field generated penetrates through the oxide and creates an alleged “inversion layer” or “channel” at the semiconductor-insulator interface. The inversion channel is of the same type, P-type or N-type, as the source and drain, thus it provides a channel through which current can pass. Varying the voltage between the gate and body modulates the conductivity of this layer and allows to control the current flow between drain and source.

CIRCUIT SYMBOLS :

A variety of symbols are used for the MOSFET. The basic design is generally a line for the channel with the source and drain leaving it at right angles and then bending back at right angles into the same direction as the channel. Sometimes three line segments are used for enhancement mode and a solid line for depletion mode. Another line is drawn parallel to the channel for the gate.

The bulk connection, if shown, is shown connected to the back of the channel with an arrow indicating PMOS or NMOS. Arrows always point from P to N, so an NMOS (N-channel in P-well or P-substrate) has the arrow pointing in (from the bulk to the channel). If the bulk is connected to the source (as is generally the case with discrete devices) it is sometimes angled to meet up with the source leaving the transistor. If the bulk is not shown (as is often the case in IC design as they are generally common bulk) an inversion symbol is sometimes used to indicate PMOS, alternatively an arrow on the source may be used in the same way as for bipolar transistors (out for nMOS, in for pMOS).

Comparison of enhancement-mode and depletion-mode MOSFET symbols, along with JFET symbols (drawn with source and drain ordered such that higher voltages appear higher on the page than lower voltages):

				P-channel
				N-channel
JFET	MOSFET enh	MOSFET enh (no bulk)	MOSFET dep

For the symbols in which the bulk, or body, terminal is shown, it is here shown internally connected to the source. This is a typical configuration, but by no means the only important configuration. In general, the MOSFET is a four-terminal device, and in integrated circuits many of the MOSFETs share a body connection, not necessarily connected to the source terminals of all the transistors.

MOSFET Operation :

A traditional metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) structure is obtained by growing a layer of silicon dioxide (Si O₂) on top of a silicon substrate and depositing a layer of metal or polycrystalline silicon (the latter is commonly used). As the silicon dioxide is a dielectric material, its structure is equivalent to a planar capacitor, with one of the electrodes replaced by a semiconductor.

When a voltage is applied across a MOS structure, it modifies the distribution of charges in the semiconductor. If we consider a P-type semiconductor (with N_A the density of acceptors, p the density of holes; p = N_A in neutral bulk), a positive voltage, V_GB, from gate to body (see figure) creates a depletion layer by forcing the positively charged holes away from the gate-insulator/semiconductor interface, leaving exposed a carrier-free region of immobile, negatively charged acceptor ions (see doping (semiconductor)). If V_GB is high enough, a high concentration of negative charge carriers forms in an inversion layer located in a thin layer next to the interface between the semiconductor and the insulator. Unlike the MOSFET, where the inversion layer electrons are supplied rapidly from the source/drain electrodes, in the MOS capacitor they are produced much more slowly by thermal generation through carrier generation and recombination centers in the depletion region. Conventionally, the gate voltage at which the volume density of electrons in the inversion layer is the same as the volume density of holes in the body is called the threshold voltage.This structure with P-type body is the basis of the N-type MOSFET, which requires the addition of an N-type source and drain regions.

MOSFET structure and channel formation:

A metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is based on the modulation of charge concentration by a MOS capacitance between a body electrode and a gate electrode located above the body and insulated from all other device regions by a gate dielectric layer which in the case of a MOSFET is an oxide, such as silicon dioxide. If dielectrics other than an oxide such as silicon dioxide (often referred to as oxide) are employed the device may be referred to as a metal–insulator–semiconductor FET (MISFET). Compared to the MOS capacitor, the MOSFET includes two additional terminals (source and drain), each connected to individual highly doped regions that are separated by the body region. These regions can be either p or n type, but they must both be of the same type, and of opposite type to the body region. The source and drain (unlike the body) are highly doped as signified by a ‘+’ sign after the type of doping.

If the MOSFET is an n-channel or nMOS FET, then the source and drain are ‘n+’ regions and the body is a ‘p’ region. As described above, with sufficient gate voltage, above a threshold voltage value, electrons from the source (and possibly^{[citation needed]} also the drain) enter the inversion layer or n-channel at the interface between the p region and the oxide. This conducting channel extends between the source and the drain, and current is conducted through it when a voltage is applied between source and drain.

For gate voltages below the threshold value, the channel is lightly populated, and only a very small subthreshold leakage current can flow between the source and the drain.

If the MOSFET is a p-channel or pMOS FET, then the source and drain are ‘p+’ regions and the body is a ‘n’ region. When a negative gate-source voltage (positive source-gate) is applied, it creates a p-channel at the surface of the n region, analogous to the n-channel case, but with opposite polarities of charges and voltages. When a voltage less negative than the threshold value (a negative voltage for p-channel) is applied between gate and source, the channel disappears and only a very small subthreshold current can flow between the source and the drain.The source is so named because it is the source of the charge carriers (electrons for n-channel, holes for p-channel) that flow through the channel; similarly, the drain is where the charge carriers leave the channel.

The device may comprise a Silicon On Insulator (SOI) device in which a Buried OXide (BOX) is formed below a thin semiconductor layer. If the channel region between the gate dielectric and a Buried Oxide (BOX) region is very thin, the very thin channel region is referred to as an Ultra Thin Channel (UTC) region with the source and drain regions formed on either side thereof in and/or above the thin semiconductor layer. Alternatively, the device may comprise a SEMiconductor On Insulator (SEMOI) device in which semiconductors other than silicon are employed. Many alternative semicondutor materials may be employed.When the source and drain regions are formed above the channel in whole or in part, they are referred to as Raised Source/Drain (RSD) regions.

MODES OF OPERATION :

The operation of a MOSFET can be separated into three different modes, depending on the voltages at the terminals. In the following discussion, a simplified algebraic model is used that is accurate only for old technology. Modern MOSFET characteristics require computer models that have rather more complex behavior.

For an enhancement-mode, n-channel MOSFET, the three operational modes are:

Cutoff, subthreshold, or weak-inversion mode

When V_GS < V_th:

where V_th is the threshold voltage of the device.

According to the basic threshold model, the transistor is turned off, and there is no conduction between drain and source. In reality, the Boltzmann distribution of electron energies allows some of the more energetic electrons at the source to enter the channel and flow to the drain, resulting in a subthreshold current that is an exponential function of gate–source voltage. While the current between drain and source should ideally be zero when the transistor is being used as a turned-off switch, there is a weak-inversion current, sometimes called subthreshold leakage.

In weak inversion the current varies exponentially with gate-to-source bias V_GS as given approximately by:

where I_D0 = current at V_GS = V_th and the slope factor n is given by

n = 1 + C_D / C_OX,

with C_D = capacitance of the depletion layer and C_OX = capacitance of the oxide layer. In a long-channel device, there is no drain voltage dependence of the current once V_DS > > V_T, but as channel length is reduced drain-induced barrier lowering introduces drain voltage dependence that depends in a complex way upon the device geometry (for example, the channel doping, the junction doping and so on). Frequently, threshold voltage V_th for this mode is defined as the gate voltage at which a selected value of current I_D0 occurs, for example, I_D0 = 1 μA, which may not be the same V_th-value used in the equations for the following modes.

Some micropower analog circuits are designed to take advantage of subthreshold conduction. By working in the weak-inversion region, the MOSFETs in these circuits deliver the highest possible transconductance-to-current ratio, namely: g_m / I_D = 1 / (nV_T), almost that of a bipolar transistor.

The subthreshold I–V curve depends exponentially upon threshold voltage, introducing a strong dependence on any manufacturing variation that affects threshold voltage; for example: variations in oxide thickness, junction depth, or body doping that change the degree of drain-induced barrier lowering. The resulting sensitivity to fabricational variations complicates optimization for leakage and performance.

HOW TO BUILD A SIMPLE ROBOT ????

ramann — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:53:37 +0000

Hello friends………I’m sure all of you are really hungry to construct a small size technorati and show off your technological skills !!!! Right ???? Well Ramann is always there for such tech freaks…Here is a small tutorial on building a basic beetle robot as a part of your intention…..

TOOLS NEEDED :

Soldering iron ( here’s a helpful tutorial on soldering )
Electronic solder
Diagonal cutter
Mini glue gun

COMPONENTS FOR THE ROBOT :

2x – small 1.5 Volts motors
2x – small paperclips
2x – big paperclips
2x – batteries AAA or AA
1x – battery holder AAA or AA
1x – 2 cm of heat shrink
1x – wooden pearl (for the caster)
1x – meter of electric wire
2x – Sub-mini lever SPDT switches

Here are the serial numbers of the components and tools :

COMPONENT

NUMBER

Soldering iron	64-2184
Electronic solder	64-006
Diagonal cutter	64-2951
1.5 Volts motor	273-223
Battery holder	270-398
SPDT switch	275-016


Here are the steps to build a “Beetle Robot ” :


1. Cut the electric wire in pieces of 6 cm each, 13 times.
Strip 1 cm at each end. 2. Regroup all the components. 3. Solder each wire to each components except the two batteries. 4. Take the battery holder and make a connection to the connection. This will give a third connection.See picture below. The blue wire is the third connections 5. Turn the battery holder up side down so the batteries point to the ground. Glue the two switches on the battery holder in a V form. 6. Glue the motor beside each switch so that the shaft touches the ground 7. Take the big paperclip and make the caster like the picture below. You can make a nice looking caster or a normal one I prefer the nice one 8. How to make the connection 9. Take the small paper clip and bend them to make antenna. Glue them to the switches and don’t put to much glue. Add 1 cm of heat shrink to the shaft of each motor. 10. Add the batteries in the battery holder and put it on a flat surface to see your creation take life. Congratulations!

BANG OF THE “BIG BANG” !!!!!

ramann — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:32:26 +0000

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, a synchrotron intended to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at an energy of 7 trillion electronvolts (1.12 microjoules) per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus. The term hadron refers to particles composed of quarks. It is expected that it will address the most fundamental questions of physics, hopefully allowing progress in understanding the deepest laws of nature. The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as much as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the intention of testing various predictions of high-energy physics, including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time, but nine days later, operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets.Repairing the resulting damage and installing additional safety features took over a year. On 20 November 2009, the proton beams were successfully circulated again, with the first proton–proton collisions being recorded three days later at the injection energy of 450 GeV per beam. The LHC became the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator on 30 November 2009, achieving a world record 1.18 TeV per beam and beating the record previously held by the Tevatron at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. After the 2009 winter shutdown, the LHC was restarted and the beam was ramped up to 3.5 TeV per beam, half its designed energy, which is planned for after its 2012 shutdown.
On 30 March 2010, the first planned collisions took place between two 3.5 TeV beams, which set a new world record for the highest-energy man-made particle collisions.
Purpose :
Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer many of the most fundamental questions in physics, questions concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, especially regarding the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity, where current theories and knowledge are unclear or break down altogether. These issues include, at least:

* Is the Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses via electroweak symmetry breaking indeed realised in nature? It is anticipated that the collider will either demonstrate (or rule out) the existence of the elusive Higgs boson(s), completing (or refuting) the Standard Model.
* Is supersymmetry, an extension of the Standard Model and Poincaré symmetry, realised in nature, implying that all known particles have supersymmetric partners? These may clear up the mystery of dark matter.
* Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we detect them?

Other questions are:

* Are electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force just different manifestations of a single unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories?
* Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces? See also Hierarchy problem.
* Are there additional sources of quark flavours, beyond those already predicted within the Standard Model?
* Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter? See also CP violation.
* What was the nature of the quark-gluon plasma in the early universe? This will be investigated by ion collisions in ALICE.
DESIGN :
he LHC is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. The collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 27 kilometres (17 mi), at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres (160 to 574 ft) underground.The 3.8-metre (12 ft) wide concrete-lined tunnel, constructed between 1983 and 1988, was formerly used to house the Large Electron–Positron Collider. It crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points, with most of it in France. Surface buildings hold ancillary equipment such as compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration plants.
The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beam pipes that intersect at four points, each containing a proton beam, which travel in opposite directions around the ring. Some 1,232 dipole magnets keep the beams on their circular path, while an additional 392 quadrupole magnets are used to keep the beams focused, in order to maximize the chances of interaction between the particles in the four intersection points, where the two beams will cross. In total, over 1,600 superconducting magnets are installed, with most weighing over 27 tonnes. Approximately 96 tonnes of liquid helium is needed to keep the magnets at their operating temperature of 1.9 K (−271.25 °C), making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature.
Once or twice a day, as the protons are accelerated from 450 GeV to 7 TeV, the field of the superconducting dipole magnets will be increased from 0.54 to 8.3 teslas (T). The protons will each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 14 TeV. At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 99.9999991% of the speed of light. It will take less than 90 microseconds (μs) for a proton to travel once around the main ring – a speed of about 11,000 revolutions per second. Rather than continuous beams, the protons will be bunched together, into 2,808 bunches, so that interactions between the two beams will take place at discrete intervals never shorter than 25 nanoseconds (ns) apart. However it will be operated with fewer bunches when it is first commissioned, giving it a bunch crossing interval of 75 ns.Prior to being injected into the main accelerator, the particles are prepared by a series of systems that successively increase their energy. The first system is the linear particle accelerator LINAC 2 generating 50-MeV protons, which feeds the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). There the protons are accelerated to 1.4 GeV and injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), where they are accelerated to 26 GeV. Finally the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is used to further increase their energy to 450 GeV before they are at last injected (over a period of 20 minutes) into the main ring. Here the proton bunches are accumulated, accelerated (over a period of 20 minutes) to their peak 7-TeV energy, and finally circulated for 10 to 24 hours while collisions occur at the four intersection points.
The LHC physics program is mainly based on proton–proton collisions. However, shorter running periods, typically one month per year, with heavy-ion collisions are included in the program. While lighter ions are considered as well, the baseline scheme deals with lead ions (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). The lead ions will be first accelerated by the linear accelerator LINAC 3, and the Low-Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) will be used as an ion storage and cooler unit. The ions then will be further accelerated by the PS and SPS before being injected into LHC ring, where they will reach an energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon (or 575 TeV per ion), higher than the energies reached by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The aim of the heavy-ion program is to investigate quark–gluon plasma, which existed in the early universe.
CONSTRUCTION ACCIDENTS AND DELAYS :
# On 25 October 2005, José Pereira Lages, a technician, was killed in the LHC tunnel when a crane load was accidentally dropped.[65]
# On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC’s inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated “In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces”. This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years. Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing. Details are available in a statement from Fermilab, with which CERN is in agreement. Repairing the broken magnet and reinforcing the eight identical assemblies used by LHC delayed the startup date, then planned for November 2007.
# Problems occurred on 19 September 2008 during powering tests of the main dipole circuit, when an electrical fault in the bus between magnets caused a rupture and a leak of six tonnes of liquid helium. The operation was delayed for several months. It is currently believed that a faulty electrical connection between two magnets caused an arc, which compromised the liquid-helium containment. Once the cooling layer was broken, the helium flooded the surrounding vacuum layer with sufficient force to break 10-ton magnets from their mountings. The explosion also contaminated the proton tubes with soot. This accident was more recently thoroughly discussed in a 22 February 2010 Superconductor Science and Technology article by CERN physicist Lucio Rossi.
# Two vacuum leaks were identified in July 2009, and the start of operations was further postponed to mid-November 2009.
EXPECTED RESULTS :
CERN scientists estimate that if the Standard Model is correct, a single Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. At this rate, it may take about two to three years to collect enough data to discover the Higgs boson unambiguously. Similarly, it may take one year or more before sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles have been gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.
CURRENT STATUS :
The results of the first proton–proton collisions at energies higher than Fermilab’s Tevatron proton–antiproton collisions have been published, yielding greater-than-predicted charged hadron production. The CMS paper reports that the increase in the production rate of charged hadrons when the center-of-mass energy goes from 0.9 TeV to 2.36 TeV exceeds the predictions of the theoretical models used in the analysis, with the excess ranging from 10% to 14%, depending upon which model is used. The charged hadrons were primarily mesons (kaons and pions).

GET RICH OR DIE TRYING…!!!!!

ramann — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:15:55 +0000

Money laundering is the process of changing large amounts of money obtained from crimes, such as drug trafficking, into origination from a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions with varying definitions. It is a key operation of the underground economy.In US law it is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained money. In UK law the common law definition is wider. The act is defined as taking any action with property of any form which is either wholly or in part the proceeds of a crime that will disguise the fact that that property is the proceeds of a crime or obscure the beneficial ownership of said property.
In the past, the term “money laundering” was applied only to financial transactions related to organized crime. Today its definition is often expanded by government and international regulators such as the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to mean any financial transaction which generates an asset or a value as the result of an illegal act, which may involve actions such as tax evasion or false accounting. In the UK, it does not even need to involve money, but any economic good. Courts involve money laundering committed by private individuals, drug dealers, businesses, corrupt officials, members of criminal organizations such as the Mafia, and even states.As financial crime has become more complex, and “Financial Intelligence” (FININT) has become more recognized in combating international crime and terrorism, money laundering has become more prominent in political, economic, and legal debate. Money laundering is ipso facto illegal; the acts generating the money almost always are themselves criminal in some way (for if not, the money would not need to be laundered).
Money laundering is not a crime invented during the Prohibition era in the United States, but techniques were developed and refined then. Many methods were devised to disguise the origins of money generated by the sale of illegal alcohol. After Al Capone’s 1931 conviction for tax evasion, mobster Meyer Lansky transferred funds from Florida “Carpet Joints” to accounts overseas. After the 1934 Swiss Banking Act, which created the principle of bank secrecy, Lansky bought a Swiss bank into which he could transfer his illegal funds through a complex system of shell companies, holding companies, and offshore bank accounts.
In the post-World War II era, legislators found themselves in a quandary as they were confronted with a growing list of commercial, fiscal, and environmental offenses that did not actually cause direct harm to any one identifiable victim; there was no stinking corpse. They decided that confiscating the proceeds of crime would adequately deter potential criminals. Anxious to avoid confiscation, organized criminals now needed to give these huge sums of money – not easily consumed or invested in the legal economy without raising eyebrows – a patina of legitimacy: they needed to “launder” it. Money laundering has been dubbed the “Achilles’ heel of organized crime”, for it compels mobsters to seek out and co-opt established businessmen and women with highly technical know-how and access to legal institutions like banks to launder their plunder.
The term “money laundering” does not derive, as is often said, from Al Capone having used laundromats to hide ill-gotten gains. It is more likely to mean that dirty money is made clean. At some point in the process there must be a switch between the two; necessarily the art is to keep that switch hidden.
Meyer Lansky perfected a predecessor of money laundering, “capital flight,” transferring his funds to Switzerland and other offshore places. The first reference to the term “money laundering” itself actually appears during the Watergate scandal. US President Richard Nixon’s “Committee to Re-elect the President” moved dirty campaign contributions to Mexico, then brought the money back through a company in Miami. It was Britain’s The Guardian newspaper that coined the term, referring to the process as “laundering.” (See Jeffrey Robinson’s three books on money laundering, The Laundrymen, The Merger and The Sink.)Money may be laundered through a complex business network of shell companies and trusts based in tax havens. “Smurfing” is an example of a money laundering technique.
Many jurisdictions adopt a list of specific predicate crimes for money laundering prosecutions as a “self launderer”.
BANGLADESH:
In Bangladesh, this issue has been dealt with by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (Act No. VII of 2002). In terms of section 2 (tha), “Money Laundering means (a) Properties acquired or earned directly or indirectly through illegal means; (b) Illegal transfer, conversion, concealment of location or assistance in the above act of the properties acquired or earned directly of indirectly through legal or illegal means.” In this Act, “Properties means movable or immovable properties of any nature and description”.
CANADA:
The battle against money laundering is directly related to the war against drugs and drug criminals. The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs estimates the annual volume of drug trafficking is close to $500 billion. Of that amount, about 70% is laundered. In Canada, the RCMP estimates that the drug trade has the ability to reach more than US$3 billion at the wholesale level which translates to about US$13 billion at street level for the criminals. Canada’s war against drug abuse includes implementing laws, but they focus mainly on prevention, education, treatment, and rehabilitation. Canada has also increased guidelines for testing, law enforcement and research. In addition, Canada has focused it’s resources in reducing the supply and demand for the illegal drugs. The 11 federal agencies and departments dealing will this issue spent US$500 million in 2001 and an additional US$500 million in 2002.
Canada launched the first comprehensive drug enforcement strategy, Canada’s Drug Strategy(CDS). This national drug strategy was the result of the original National Drug Strategy, launched in 1987 being merged with the already functioning National Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving. This new, combined, strategy has the goal to: “reduce the harm associated with alcohol and other drugs to individuals, families, and communities. The strategy reflects a balance between reducing the supply of drugs and reducing the demand for drugs. It involves a variety of partners including 14 federal departments, provincial/territorial governments and addictions agencies, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, law enforcement agencies, the private sector, and community groups.”The National Initiative to Combat Money Laundering, with the involvement of the Solicitor General of Canada, the RCMP, Justice Canada, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, and, Citizenship and Immigration, began operation in 1998.
INDIA:
The Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2004 came into effect on 1 July 2005. Section 3 of the Act makes the offense of money-laundering cover those persons or entities who directly or indirectly attempt to indulge or knowingly assist or knowingly are party or are actually involved in any process or activity connected with the proceeds of crime and projecting it as untainted property, such person or entity shall be guilty of offense of money-laundering.
Section 4 of the Act prescribes punishment for money-laundering with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than three years but which may extend to seven years and shall also be liable to fine which may extend to five lakh rupees and for the offences mentioned [elsewhere] the punishment shall be up to ten years.Section 12 (1) prescribes the obligations on banks, financial institutions and intermediaries (a) to maintain records detailing the nature and value of transactions which may be prescribed, whether such transactions comprise of a single transaction or a series of transactions integrally connected to each other, and where such series of transactions take place within a month; (b) to furnish information of transactions referred to in clause (a) to the Director within such time as may be prescribed and to (c) verify and maintain the records of the identity of all its clients. Section 12 (2) prescribes that the records referred to in sub-section (1) as mentioned above, must be maintained for ten years after the transactions finished.The provisions of the Act are frequently reviewed and various amendments have been passed from time to time. The recent activity in money laundering in India is through political parties corporate companies and share market.
UNITED STATES:
In US law, “reasonably accepting cash” means the business must regularly perform services that on average are less than $500 each. It is assumed that above that amount most people pay with a check, a credit card, or another (traceable) payment method. The company should actually function on a legitimate level. In the hairstyler example, it is perfectly reasonable for a lot of the business to involve mostly labour (dyes and machine oil and so forth being relatively small concerns), and for most transactions to be settled in cash. But it is unreasonable for all of the business to work without parts and just on cash. So the legitimate business will generate a legitimate (if low) level of parts use, and enough traceable transactions to mask the illegitimate ones.
Anti-money laundering (AML/CFT) laws typically have other offences such as “tipping off (warning)”, “willful blindness”, “not reporting suspicious activity”, “conscious facilitation of a money launderer”, “assisting a terrorist financier with moving terrorist financing”.The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requires banks to report cash transactions of $10,000.01 or more. The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 further defined money laundering as a federal crime. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 expanded the scope of prior laws to more types of financial institutions, and added a focus on terrorist financing, specifying that financial institutions take specific actions to “know your customer” (KYC).In the United States, Federal law provides: “Whoever … knowing … conducts or attempts to conduct … a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity … with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity … shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater, or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.
While money laundering typically involves the flow of “dirty money” (criminal proceeds) into a clean bank account or negotiable instrument, terrorist financing frequently involves the reverse flow: apparently clean funds converted to “dirty” purposes. A hawala may launder drug proceeds and help fund a terrorist, netting the incoming and outgoing funds with only occasional small net settlement transactions.
ON TELEVISION:
1. Money laundering is the subject of several episodes of The Sopranos.
2. Episode 132 of The Simpsons featured a money laundering gag. The gang leader Fat Tony hosted a dinner for the criminal fraternity and informed his guests that if they needed any money laundered, they could leave it outside their door overnight and it would be ready for them in the morning.
3. In the series Big Love, Lois Henrickson opens a laundromat as a means to launder money that she has illegally obtained.
4. In the Showtime series Weeds Nancy launders money through various fake businesses.
5. Katrina Rafferty’s character Teddy Picker Girl is said to be a money launderer in TV show Funland
6. In Burn Notice Michael Weston continually uses money launderer Barry for favors.
7. In Breaking Bad Walter White is seen laundering money through a shady lawyer with underground connections.
8. In The Shield, Vic and his Strike Team steal millions of dollars from a money laundering operation run by the Armenian mob.
9. In “The Wire”, the Barksdale crew launders money obtained through drug trafficking by dispersing funds throughout a number of apparently legitimate business fronts owned by shell corporations.
IN FILMS:
$ Money laundering is one of the main subjects of the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys.
$ In Layer Cake, the main unnamed character discusses how the profits from selling cocaine are laundered through a local financial institution.
$ In Scarface, drug kingpin Tony Montana launders money through a series of shell businesses.
$ In Office Space, the main characters discuss the possibility of laundering money they’ve stolen from their company, but the plan fails when they realize they know nothing about the practice and try to look up money laundering in a dictionary.
$ One of the purest examples of layering comes at the end of Millions, in which an ordinary family exchanges stolen British pounds for euro in many small, apparently untraceable transactions at banks all over the city.
$ In Mad Money, the main characters steal money from a Federal Reserve Bank and then attempt to conceal their gains through concocting innocent-sounding reasons for them to have gained it. This is undone when one of them makes a transaction of more than $10,000, thus triggering the financial reporting mechanisms in the Bank Secrecy Act.
$ A literal interpretation of money laundering is shown in the film To Live and Die in L.A.. A counterfeiter sets up shop in a rented warehouse, equipped with engraving equipment, a printing press, and a new clothes washer and dryer. After he prints a batch of new bills, the counterfeiter bundles them into the washer and washes them with hot water and detergent; then he dries them on high heat. By doing so, he turns his crisp, new bills into rumpled, faded, used-looking bills.
$ In License to Kill a drug dealer creates a cult to launder drug money.
$ In Donnie Darko, there is a clip of George H. W. Bush on television denying the purported money laundering activities of Manuel Noriega.
$ In Mickey Blue Eyes, the family of Michael’s fiance is deeply involved in Mafia crime. Michael is unwittingly involved in a money laundering scam.
$ In Blow, titular character George Jung narrates that he has forgone the opportunity to launder his drug proceeds for a sixty per-cent fee, instead opting to deposit the money in a Panamanian bank. This decision proves poor, as Panama seizes the assets of their banks’ account holders when Manuel Noriega takes control of the small country, leaving Jung penniless. The real-life George Jung lost this money when his wife accidentally burned a box containing the only proof of his ownership of these numbered bank accounts.
$ In the 1990 film Ghost, the villains are involved in laundering drug money through an investment bank.
$ In Loaded Weapon 1 an unnamed criminal admits to money laundering and unveils two washing machines full of bank notes.
This is what money stands for in todays world. In spite of losing its importance in an optimistic manner it has grown to be a mere stake for the democratic world. Anyway bye for now…..and have a nice day !!!!

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.

PRUDENT…,YET PROLIFIC !!!!!

ramann — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:42:52 +0000

Winter nights seem to be very interesting to me since days are short and nights are long during this period…Infact everybody might be having the same stance except for a few….For them it has been a different story all throughout….!!!!! Bloodshed and tension prevailed everywhere around the place..People scowling and weeping for their dear ones…just can’t imagine such a pathetic situation to our fellowmen….Indeed it was the grimming situation at the multi starred Taj hotel in Mumbai.Read on……..
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India’s largest city, by Muslim terrorists from Pakistan. The attacks, which drew widespread condemnation across the world, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308.
Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital (a women and children’s hospital), the Orthodox Jewish-owned Nariman House, the Metro Cinema, and a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier’s College. There was also an explosion at Mazagaon, in Mumbai’s port area, and in a taxi at Vile Parle. By the early morning of 28 November, all sites except for the Taj hotel had been secured by Mumbai Police and security forces. An action by India’s National Security Guards (NSG) on 29 November (the action is officially named Operation Black Tornado) resulted in the death of the last remaining attackers at the Taj hotel, ending all fighting in the attacks.
Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker who was captured alive, disclosed that the attackers were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant organization, considered a terrorist organization by India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. The Indian Government said that the attackers came from Pakistan, and their controllers were in Pakistan.On 7 January 2009, after more than a month of denying the nationality of the attackers, Pakistan’s Information Minister Sherry Rehman officially accepted Ajmal Amir’s nationality as Pakistani. On 12 February 2009, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik, in a televised news briefing, confirmed that parts of the attack had been planned in Pakistan and said that six people, including the alleged mastermind, were being held in connection with the attacks.
GATEWAY:
There have been many terrorist bombings in Mumbai since 13 co-ordinated bomb explosions killed 257 people and injured 700 on 12 March 1993. The 1993 attacks are believed to be retaliation for the Babri Mosque demolition.
On 6 December 2002, a blast in a BEST bus near Ghatkopar station killed two people and injured 28. The bombing occurred on the tenth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. A bicycle bomb exploded near the Vile Parle station in Mumbai, killing one person and injuring 25 on 27 January 2003, a day before the visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India to the city. On 13 March 2003, a day after the tenth anniversary of the 1993 Bombay bombings, a bomb exploded in a train compartment near the Mulund station, killing 10 people and injuring 70. On 28 July 2003, a blast in a BEST bus in Ghatkopar killed 4 people and injured 32. On 25 August 2003 two bombs exploded in South Mumbai, one near the Gateway of India and the other at Zaveri Bazaar in Kalbadevi. At least 44 people were killed and 150 injured. On 11 July 2006, seven bombs exploded within 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai. 209 people were killed, and over 700 injured. According to Mumbai Police, the bombings were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
ATTACKS:
According to investigations the attackers traveled by sea from Karachi, Pakistan across the Arabian Sea, hijacked the Indian fishing trawler ‘Kuber’, killing the crew of four, and then forced the captain to sail to Mumbai. After killing the captain, the terrorists entered Mumbai on a rubber dinghy. The captain of ‘Kuber’, Amar Singh Solanki, had earlier been imprisoned for six months in a Pakistani jail for illegally fishing in Pakistani waters.
In his testimony before police, suspect Ajmal Kasab admitted to staying with his attack group in the Azizabad area of Karachi before boarding a small boat for the Mumbai coastline in November 2008.
The first events were detailed around 20:00 Indian Standard Time (IST) on 26 November, when 10 Urdu-speaking men in inflatable speedboats came ashore at two locations in Colaba. They reportedly told local Marathi-speaking fishermen who asked them who they were to “mind their own business” before they split up and headed two different ways. The fishermen’s subsequent report to police received little response.
CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS:
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) was attacked by two gunmen, one of whom, Ajmal Kasab, was later caught alive by the police and identified by eyewitnesses. The attacks began around 21:30 when the two men entered the passenger hall and opened fire, using AK-47 rifles. The attackers killed 58 people and injured 104 others, their assault ending at about 22:45. Security forces and emergency services arrived shortly afterwards. The two gunmen fled the scene and fired at pedestrians and police officers in the streets, killing eight police officers. The terrorists passed a police station. Many of the outgunned police officers were afraid to confront the terrorists, and instead switched off the lights and secured the gates. The terrorists headed towards Cama hospital intending to kill patients, but the hospital staff locked all of the patient wards. The two men reached the hospital and attempted to enter the patient wards. They demanded a glass of water from the hospital staff. They asked the man who gave it to them what his religion was, and shot him dead when he said he was a Hindu. When local police arrived, Kasab and Khan threw grenades and shot a police officer dead before fleeing. A team of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad led by Police chief Hemant Karkare searched the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and then headed out in pursuit of Kasab and Khan. Kasab and Khan opened fire on the pursuing vehicle, and the police returned fire. Karkare and four of his officers were killed, and the only survivor was wounded. However, the terrorists ran into a police roadblock, which had been set up after the wounded police officer radioed for help, leading to a gun battle in which Khan was killed, and Kasab was wounded. Kasab struggled with police as they arrested him.
TAJ MAHAL HOTEL AND OBEROI TRIDENT:
Two hotels, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident, were amongst the four locations targeted. Six explosions were reported at the Taj hotel and one at the Oberoi Trident. At the Taj Mahal, firefighters rescued 200 hostages from windows using ladders during the first night.
CNN initially reported on the morning of the 27 November 2008 that the hostage situation at the Taj had been resolved and quoted the police chief of Maharashtra stating that all hostages were freed; however, it was learned later that day that there were still two attackers holding hostages, including foreigners, in the Taj Mahal hotel.
During the attacks, both hotels were surrounded by Rapid Action Force personnel and Marine Commandos (MARCOS) and National Security Guards (NSG) commandos. When reports emerged that attackers were receiving television broadcasts, feeds to the hotels were blocked. All attackers were out of the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels by the early morning of 29 November. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan of the NSG lost his life as a result of a gun shot during the evacuation of Commando Sunil Yadav who was hit in the leg by a bullet during the rescue operations at Taj.
A number of European Parliament Committee on International Trade delegates were staying in the Taj Mahal hotel when it was attacked, but none of them were injured. British Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sajjad Karim (who was in the lobby when attackers initially opened fire there) and German Social Democrat MEP Erika Mann were hiding in different parts of the building. Also reported present was Spanish MEP Ignasi Guardans, who was barricaded in a hotel room. Another British Conservative MEP, Syed Kamall, reported that he along with several other MEPs left the hotel and went to a nearby restaurant shortly before the attack. Kamall also reported that Polish MEP Jan Masiel was thought to have been sleeping in his hotel room when the attacks started, but eventually left the hotel safely. Kamall and Guardans reported that a Hungarian MEP’s assistant was shot. Also caught up in the shooting were the President of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, while checking in at the Oberoi Trident, and Indian MP N. N. Krishnadas of Kerala and Sir Gulam Noon while having dinner at a restaurant in the Taj hotel.
NARIMAN HOUSE:
Nariman House, a Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center in Colaba known as the Mumbai Chabad House, was taken over by two attackers and several residents were held hostage. Police evacuated adjacent buildings and exchanged fire with terrorists, wounding one. Local residents were told to stay inside. Terrorists threw a grenade into a nearby lane, causing no casualties. NSG commandos arrived from Delhi, and a Naval helicopter took an aerial survey. During the first day, 9 hostages were rescued from the first floor. The following day, the house was stormed by NSG commandos fast-roping from helicopters onto the roof, covered by snipers positioned in nearby buildings. After a long battle, one NSG commando and both terrorists were killed. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah Holtzberg, who was six months pregnant, were murdered with other hostages inside the house by the attackers. The bodies of six hostages, including Rabbi Holzberg and his pregnant wife, were found by commandos. According to doctors, the victims had been tied up and tortured before being killed.
END OF THE ATTACK:
By the morning of 27 November, the army had secured the Jewish outreach center at Nariman House as well as the Oberoi Trident hotel. They also incorrectly believed that the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers had been cleared of attackers, and soldiers were leading hostages and holed-up guests to safety, and removing bodies of those killed in the attacks. However, later news reports indicated that there were still two or three attackers in the Taj, with explosions heard and gunfire exchanged. Fires were also reported at the ground floor of the Taj with plumes of smoke arising from the first floor. The final operation at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel was completed by the NSG commandos at 08:00 on 29 November, killing three attackers and resulting in the conclusion of the attacks. The security forces rescued 250 people from the Oberoi, 300 from the Taj and 60 people (members of 12 different families) from Nariman House. In addition, police seized a boat filled with arms and explosives anchored at Mazgaon dock off Mumbai harbour.
THE CULPRITS:
The Mumbai attacks were planned and directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants inside Pakistan, and carried out by ten young armed men trained and sent to Mumbai and directed from inside Pakistan via mobile phones and VoIP.In July 2009 Pakistani authorities confirmed that LeT plotted and financed the attacks from LeT camps in Karachi and Thatta. In November 2009, Pakistani authorities charged seven men they had arrested earlier, of planning and executing the assault.Mumbai police originally identified 37 suspects –-including two army officers-– for their alleged involvement in the plot. All but two of the suspects, many of whom are identified only through aliases, are Pakistani. Two more suspects arrested in the United States in November 2009 for other attacks are also suspected of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
As disastrous as it could be..!!!! Anyway I’ll not get into the aftermath or anything of such sort..I just wanted to show you how a calm and breezy evening can turn to be a violet destructor.While it has been a calm and cool evening for some, it has turned to be the last night for a few……

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.

JAW STRUCK……..!!!!!

ramann — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:11:24 +0000

It would be interesting to talk about somebody else’s crush than ours….Well I find it that way !!!!! Anyhow here is an interesting first crush story of a person called Gregory Foster Jr. that I found on the internet.Read it and have fun….
“Hmmmm. This is usually the hardest thing for me to think about. Why, you may ask? How could I find difficulty in expressing that greatest emotional moment that we have no control over and find hard to describe? Well, because…it is that great emotional moment that I have no control over and find hard to describe.
OK, ok, let me explain. I am one of the fortunate few who had a fantastic childhood in the ‘70s and ‘80s. STAR WARS and Star Trek were two of my closest friends, “physical” friends and I would play football on the main road and not care, and girls, well…girls were in the way. Us boys were bonding under the banner of testosterone and hormones we didn’t know existed. The last thing we needed was for those of the feminine persuasion to show up and mess up our time to rip and run with total abandon. For us, it was all about McDonald’s, trading cards and getting muddy from playing in the creek that ran through our entire neighborhood, our playground. Then here came 1980 and the many joyous things that came with it: Springtime, The Empire Strikes Back, Summer Time and the sleeping in late that came with it. Oh, yeah, I was geared up for the next 8 months of this start of the new decade and had no clue about the protest of the Summer Olympics, the hostages in Iran, Pat Robertson running for President or the fact that there was a Mt. St. Helen blowing smoke and ash into the atmosphere.
Well, those next 8 months were well spent and turning 12 was the greatest birthday I ever experienced. And then a discovery was made that, yes, I was a male who was beginning to notice the females that surrounded me. ALL the females, I might add. Now, it might be said that making “female discoveries” on church grounds should be a shameful and appalling act. Not when it came to me and my swelling manhood that always made itself known when girls of the same age or older were walking around. The funny thing was they didn’t even need
to be wearing short shorts or bathing suit tops. The fact that tits and ASS was around me was enough. The feminine gender was in my personal space. Well, actually, it wasn’t in my personal space and I really wanted my personal space invaded. Oh, yeah, I wanted it invaded BADLY! Like I said, January through August was great, exciting, hot(although not as hot as in Dallas, Texas. I was glad I didn’t live there) and I won that argument with my mother about going to see movies by myself, especially The Empire Strikes Back. Oh, yeah. Everything was going my way. Well, I can’t really say that because there were some unexpected changes: mowing the lawn that was flat at one point then went up at a 47 degree angle, my voice going from the highest soprano in the school to a sound that resembled a confused, choking goose underwater and developing underarm odor. Not fun, people. Not fun.
Well, September and Indian Summer began and there must have been something in the air or in the music that was coming out of the radio or some mysterious additive was put in fast food or something because it appeared that I was flocked by girls of the same age or a little older. Here’s where the first crush comes in. Like I stated before, I was 12, I discovered the joy of being a male and was being teased by a girl that we will refer to as Carol. Now, here was a giggly freckle-faced girl who wore glasses and had braces in her teeth and who sported one of those feathered-style hairdos that I suspect was fashioned by her mother putting a bowl on her head and prayed for the best. But that wasn’t going to get between us. She was budding quite nicely and things would bounce when she ran toward me to hit me and then run away. Needless to say, my focus was diverted and locked in to two very important attributes of hers. There were no other two to speak of, I promise you. But, again, who cares? She was diggin’ on me and gave me reason to dig on her. And then she was 14, too? Oh, yeah, baby. I was going to pursue this with all I had. Forget that fact that I had no uncles or cousins or lying friends to show me the art of wooing women or the art of seduction. This was going to be experienced with total intuition and going with the gut. Now, I must confess this part gets a little cloudy in the mind when I recollect this because, for one, I can’t see how it came to pass. I remember I was pushing her on the swing, deliberately putting my hands on what ass I could touch, and then she asked me to help her down from the swing. I did help her off the swing and helped myself to copping a feel of her breasts, and in front of everybody around us. I was on a testosterone high, my manhood was hard and dripping like a faucet that just would not close, and didn’t take into account of the consequences of my actions. I just grabbed me my first set of titties!
I tell people all the time that it was at this moment that I began to suffer from “love sickness” and would fall victim to this ailment until 25 years later where I found my cure. That is another story in itself. So, I digress. September is when Carol and I went on camping trips with the youth group of The United Church. This during that era when you could actually walk through the woods without fear of being jumped by some thug or drug addict or something that would “kill the mood”. No, bears and deer did not come to mind then.Anyway, she and I always tried to find that spot that was away from the group so we could feel up on each other. She grabbed my crotch, I grabbed her tits and we kissed. We were two inexperienced young people who didn’t EVEN have a clue to what we were supposed to do. All of those pictures I saw in those contraband Playboys and Penthouses weren’t helping me and I’m sure if she caught a peek of Playgirl it wasn’t a reliable source to recall and assist with these type of relations.
Well, somehow we became boyfriend and girlfriend although we went to two different middle schools, only saw each other in Sunday School and/or youth group meetings and only got to spend time on those infrequent out of town trips with the pastor. Yeah, we thought we were an item. Quite honestly, I am not sure WHAT we had. I think hormones blinded me to the whole of the thing. Those times spent in my room with the door locked somewhat occupied my time and my portion of common sense, too.
Well, the spring on 1982 came and somehow we made the decision that we were officially broken up. I laugh when I think about this because breaking up back then was SO melodramatic. We teenagers didn’t even have a clue to what
relationship we had. Oh, well. That was my first crush, or should I say my FIRST first crush. My SECOND first crush? Well, you’ll have to wait and see. “
Isn’t it interesting ???? Looks funny but well versed with what he has experienced !!!!! Ok bye for now and have a nice day…..!!!!

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.

REALITY AS A MISNOMER !!!!

ramann — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:11:37 +0000

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors. The genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television (primarily with game shows), but has expanded significantly since the Big Brother first aired in 1999. Documentaries and nonfictional programming such as news and sports shows are usually not classified as reality shows.The genre covers a wide range of programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (such as Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother.
Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, utilizing sensationalism to attract viewers to generate advertising profits. Participants are often placed in exotic locations or abnormal situations, and are sometimes coached to act in certain scripted ways by off-screen “story editors” or “segment producers,” with the portrayal of events and speech manipulated and contrived to create an illusion of reality through editing and other post-production techniques.
History:
1940s–1950s:
Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the 1940s. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt’s Candid Camera, (based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone), broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. It has been called the “granddaddy of the reality TV genre.” In the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes.In 1948, talent search shows Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts featured amateur competitors and audience voting. The Miss America Pageant, first broadcast in 1954, was a competition where the winner achieved status as a national celebrity.The radio series Nightwatch (1954–1955), which tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers, also helped pave the way for reality television. The series You Asked For It (1950–1959), in which viewer requests dictated content, was an antecedent of today’s audience-participation reality TV elements, in which viewers cast votes to help determine the course of events.
1960s–1970s:
First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television series Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary seven-year olds from a broad cross section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc. The series was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.
In the 1966 film Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given; the Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 stated that the film was “to blame for reality television.”The first reality show in the modern sense may have been the 12-part 1973 PBS series An American Family, which showed a nuclear family going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition. One Man and His Dog was a British Television series which began in 1976 featuring the participants of sheepdog trials.
1980s–1990s:
Reality television as it is currently understood can be directly linked to several television shows that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. COPS, which first aired in the spring of 1989 and came about partly due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television.
The series Nummer 28, which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. Nummer 28 also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact “confessionals” recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in their new series The Real World and Nummer 28 creator Erik Latour has long claimed that The Real World was directly inspired by his show. However, the producers of The Real World have stated that their direct inspiration was An American Family.According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as those produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before. (Film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis.)
The Swedish TV show Expedition Robinson, created by TV producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor), added to the Nummer 28/Real World template the idea of competition and elimination, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained. (These shows are now sometimes called elimination shows.)Changing Rooms, a British TV show that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each others’ houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme.
2000s:
Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity starting in the early 2000s. Two reality series – Survivor and American Idol – have been the top-rated series on American television for an entire season. Survivor led the ratings in 2001–02, and Idol has topped the ratings five consecutive years (2004–05 through 2008–09). The shows Survivor, the Idol series, The Amazing Race, the America’s Next Top Model series, the Dancing With The Stars series, The Apprentice, Fear Factor and Big Brother have all had a global effect, having each been successfully syndicated in dozens of countries.
Currently there are at least two television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, launched in 2005, and Zone Reality in the UK, launched in 2002. In addition, several other cable channels, such as Viacom’s MTV and NBC’s Bravo, feature original reality programming as a mainstay. Mike Darnell, head of reality TV for the US Fox network, says that the broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox) “might as well plan three or four [reality shows] each season because we’re going to have them, anyway.”During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication, but in fact DVDs for reality shows have sold briskly; Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, The Amazing Race, Project Runway, and America’s Next Top Model have all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon.com. DVDs of The Simple Life have outranked scripted shows like The O.C. and Desperate Housewives; additionally, many reality shows have been successfully syndicated, including Fear Factor, The Amazing Race, Kenny vs. Spenny, Survivor, Wife Swap and America’s Next Top Model. COPS has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A FOX staple since 1989, COPS is, as of 2008, in its 21st season, having outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that has seen wide success is “Cheaters”, which has been running for 10 seasons in the US and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide.
In 2007, according to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hopes to gain fame by appearing on reality television.In April 2008, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced it will give its very first Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program on September 21. “Reality television has become such an integral part of television and our culture, so it only made sense for us to create this new highly competitive category,” TV academy Chairmen and CEO John Shaffner said in the announcement.Inspired by the success of American Idol, Indian TV channel Sony Entertainment Television (India) launched the Indian version called Indian Idol. In 2009 Season 4 concluded.
Prior Elements In Popular Culture:
A number of fictional works since the 1940s have contained elements similar to elements of reality television. They tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will, and often involved violence.
# Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a book by George Orwell, depicted a world in which two-way television screens are fitted in every room, so that people’s actions are monitored at all times. (The all-seeing authority figure in the book, “Big Brother”, inspired the name of the pioneering reality series Big Brother.)
# Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a novel by Ray Bradbury, portrays a bookless future society, with omnipresent electronic media and wall-sized two-way home televisions. The protagonist’s wife is immersed in a live audience participation program.
# “The Seventh Victim” (1953) was a short story by science fiction author Robert Sheckley that depicted a futuristic game in which one player gets to hunt down another player and kill him. The first player who can score ten kills wins the grand prize. This story was the basis for the film The 10th Victim (1965), also known by its Italian title, La decima vittima.
# You’re Another, a 1955 short story by Damon Knight, is about a man who discovers that he is an actor in a “livie”, a live-action show that is viewed by billions of people in the future.
# “The Prize of Peril”[55] (1958), another Robert Sheckley story, was about a television show in which a contestant volunteers to be hunted for a week by trained killers, with a large cash prize if he survives. It was adapted in 1970 as the German TV movie Das Millionenspiel, and again in 1983 as the French movie Le Prix du Danger.
# “It Could Be You” (1964), a short story by Australian Frank Roberts, features a day-in-day-out televised blood sport.
# Survivor (1965), a science fiction story by Walter F. Moudy, depicted the 2050 “Olympic War Games” between Russia and the United States. The games are fought to show the world the futility of war and thus deter further conflict. Each side has one hundred soldiers who fight with rifles, mortars, and machine guns in a large natural arena. The goal is for one side to wipe out the other; the few who survive the battle become heroes. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing tactics, soldiers’ personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths.
# Bread and Circuses (1968) was an episode of the TV show Star Trek in which the crew visits a planet resembling the Roman Empire, but with 20th century technology. The planet’s “Empire TV” features regular gladiatorial games, with the announcer urging viewers at home to vote for their favorites, stating, “This is your program. You pick the winner.” The show included several jabs at real-world television, such as a praetorian threatening, “You bring this network’s ratings down, Flavius, and we’ll do a special on you!”
# The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) was a BBC television play in which a dissident in a dictatorship is forced onto a secluded island and taped for a reality show in order to keep the masses entertained.
# The Unsleeping Eye (1973), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe), was about a woman dying of cancer whose last days are recorded without her knowledge for a television show. It was later adapted as the 1980 French movie Death Watch.
# Network (1976) was a film predictive of a number of trends in broadcast television, including reality programming. One subplot featured network executives negotiating with an urban terrorist group for the production of a weekly series, each episode of which was to feature an act of terrorism.
# “Ladies And Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis” (1976) was a short story by science fiction author Kate Wilhelm about a television show in which contestants (including a B-list actress who is hoping to revitalize her career) attempt to make their way to a checkpoint after being dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness, while being filmed and broadcast around the clock through an entire weekend. The story focuses primarily on the show’s effect on a couple whose domestic tensions and eventual reconciliation parallel the dangers faced by the contestants.
# The Running Man (1982) was a book by Stephen King depicting a game show in which a contestant flees around the world from “hunters” trying to chase him down and kill him; it has been speculated that the book was inspired by Robert Sheckley’s The Prize of Peril. The book was loosely adapted as a 1987 movie of the same name. The movie removed most of the reality-TV element of the book: its competition now took place entirely within a large TV studio, and more closely resembled an athletic competition (though a deadly one).
# Vengeance on Varos (1985) was an episode of the TV show Doctor Who in which the population of a planet watches live TV broadcasts of the torture and executions of those who oppose the government. The planet’s political system is based on the leaders themselves facing disintegration if the population votes ‘no’ to their propositions. This episode is often credited as the origins of “voting someone off”.
# The film 20 Minutes into the Future (1985), and the spin-off TV show Max Headroom, revolved around television mainly based on live, often candid, broadcasts. In one episode of Max Headroom, “Academy”, the character Blank Reg fights for his life on a courtroom game show, with the audience deciding his fate.

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.

THE AURA OF SELFLESS LOVE…….

ramann — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:37:45 +0000

Well, I often wonder how people manage time thinking for others apart from thinking for themselves.Of course this has been a daily routine for some while it is a passion for few.Here are a few……!!!!
In this age of cynicism and fragmentation, one woman, born in an obscure south Indian village to poor fisher folk, has mesmerized the world with her potent message of active loving and giving. Amma, as she is affectionately called, hugs the world and the world hugs her back in tearful joy.
Millions of people from all over the world and all walks of life flock to meet Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, affectionately known as ‘Amma’ or ‘Ammachi’, meaning Mother. What is the secret of her magnetic attraction and power?
According to Amma, it is “pure selfless love”.
Swamini Krishnamrita Prana, Amma’s disciple, agrees. An Australian, she first heard about Amma while staying at an ashram near Mumbai, India. She was in for a great surprise when she met Ammachi. She had seen only gurus who sat on pedestals at a safe distance from devotees who had to be content with touching the guru’s sandals. But here was a guru who hugged her with unconditional love and warmth at first sight.Swamini Krishnamrita describes how Amma once healed a leper by sucking the pus and blood from his sores. Such is her infinite compassion. In the words of Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri, Amma’s first sanyasi(monk) disciple: “Here is a mystic accessible to anyone and everyone with whom you can converse and in whose presence you can feel God.”

UNFLAGGING ENERGY:

Amma has been known to spend as many as 20 to 30 hours at a stretch, hugging devotees and visitors at her congregations. Clad in a snow-white sari, the beaming Amma literally holds thousands to her bosom, whispering in their ears, “my child,” “darling son” or “darling daughter”, listening to their troubles and their deepest spiritual longings, without pause for food or even a sip of water.Amma treats everyone alike, from the billionaire to the beggar, from the newborn to the elderly, from the antagonist to the ardent admirer. According to Swamini Atma Prana: “Each person who goes to see Amma, even if he or she be the seven-thousandth person in the darshan (divine glimpse) queue, will receive the same attention from her.” This familiar closeness is so moving that many burst out in tears.Asked once whether she felt tired after giving darshan for so many hours on end to thousands of people, Amma replied: “Where there is love, there is no effort.” She adds: “When you give more, your coffers are always full. You acquire the double of what you give.”

HUGGING CREATION:

Intrigued by this unusual guru, The Los Angeles Times asked Amma: “Why do you hug people?” She replied: “This question is like asking the river, ‘why are you flowing?’ Does anyone ask his or her mother, ‘why do you hug me?’” she replied. During a memorable discussion, the BBC had a doubt: “You hug millions of people all over the world, who hugs you?” The answer was: “The entire creation hugs me.”
The ‘hugging saint’ has an explanation for her own famous hug: “From the outside it looks like an ordinary hug. But when Amma hugs people, she is transmitting a bit of her spiritual energy into them, which will help them feel Divine Love and open up more.” Bill Schekner of the CBS also wrote that Amma’s hug is an expression of the need to embrace the world and flood it with love.
Amma never forgets to emphasize the need for love. In a live interview aired on July 10, 2001, the NBC Today show host Ann Curry asked Amma about her impression of present-day USA and its need for the kind of compassion Amma teaches. Amma answered: “Whether in America or in any other part of the world, motherhood is not a quality that women alone should have. Men should also awaken to their innate feminine qualities, which is the need of the age. All over the world, people have an intense longing to experience pure love. They are in search of that love, but are not finding it. Rather, each person is becoming an object in the other person’s hand.”

MULTIFACETED MOTHER:

Apart from her famous accessibility, what adds to Amma’s infinite appeal to all kinds of people is her multidimensional nature. Different people experience Amma according to their own levels of evolution. For some she is the fountain of ultimate spiritual knowledge. For many she is the loving mother whom you can turn to in moments of crisis and to resolve everyday problems. For others she is a miraculous healer of illnesses. For a person who follows the path of devotion (bhakti yoga), Amma is a true devotee par excellence. One who pursues the path of knowledge (jnana yoga) perceives a perfect Knower of the Self in her. And for the one who follows the path of action (karma yoga), Amma is the ultimate karmayogi. But a person with a clear comprehension can see that Amma is a multidimensional integration of all these aspects. To her devotees, she is a Divine incarnation of the Mother Goddess.There are countless stories of wonderful transformations that happen in the lives of those who meet Amma.
The story of Amma’s senior disciple Swami Amritatmananda Puri is an excellent example. He was born in a wealthy family of Kerala, India and grew up as a modern youth indulging in worldly pleasures. He remembers: “I had problems with my business. I came, not seeing Amma as a spiritual master, but to know my future. After darshan, all of a sudden, a great transformation occurred in my life. It was as if I woke up from a dream forgetting everything about my family, home and worldly life. Then onwards, I surrendered my life to Amma.” While visiting Gangotri, Hardwar and Rishikesh in India, as a wandering monk, he experienced miraculous visitations from Amma. It was not a mere feeling of her presence. “She actually came to me several times. Amma showed me how a master protects a disciple. It is a miracle for ordinary human beings like us,” he says.
Now look at another divine saint of similar sort….

SRI SATHYA SAI BABA :

Sathya Sai Baba (pronounced /sæt jæ saɪ bæ bæ/; Telugu: సత్య సాయిబాబా), born Sathyanarayana Raju on 23 November 1926, is a popular South Indian guru, religious figure and educator. He is described by his devotees as an avatar, godman, spiritual teacher and miracle worker. Sathya Sai Baba’s “miracles”, in which he materializes vibuthi (holy ash) and small objects such as rings, necklaces and watches, have been a source of both fame and controversy – sceptics assert that they are conjuring tricks, while devotees consider them evidence of divinity. Sathya Sai Baba has claimed to be the reincarnation of the great Maharashtrian saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi, whose teachings were an eclectic blend of Hindu and Muslim beliefs.
Sathya Sai Baba and his organizations support a variety of free educational institutions, hospitals, and other charitable works in India and abroad. The number of active Sathya Sai Baba adherents was estimated in 1999 to be around 6 million, although followers’ estimations are far higher. Since there are no formal ties of membership, the actual figure may never be known. The Sathya Sai Organization reports that there are an estimated 1,200 Sathya Sai Baba Centers in 114 countries worldwide. In India itself, Sai Baba draws followers from predominantly upper-middle-class, urban sections of society who have the “most wealth, education and exposure to Western ideas.” A cultural icon in his home country, Sai Baba has attracted presidents and prime ministers from India and beyond who have become his devotees; in 2002, he claimed to have followers in 178 countries.
Sathyanarayana Raju was born to Eswaramma and Peddavenkama Raju Ratnakaram in the village of Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India. Almost everything known about his life is based on the hagiography that has grown around him, recounting episodes that hold special meaning to his devotees and are considered evidence of his divine nature. His birth, which his mother Eswaramma asserted was by miraculous conception, was said to be heralded by miracles. As a child, he was described as “unusually intelligent” and charitable. He was exceptionally talented in drama, music, dance and writing, and was an avid composer of poems and plays.
He was said to be capable of materialising objects such as food and sweets out of thin air. Sathya attended the local school in Puttaparthi until the third grade, then was transferred to the Bukkapatnam school. On 8 March 1940, while living with his brother in Uravakonda, Sathya was apparently stung by a scorpion. He lost consciousness for several hours. Within the next few days there was a noticeable change in Sathya’s behavior. There were “symptoms of laughing and weeping, eloquence and silence.” “He began to sing Sanskrit verses, a language of which he had no prior knowledge.” Doctors believed his behavior to be hysteria. His parents brought Sathya home to Puttaparthi. Concerned, they took him to many priests, “doctors” and exorcists.
“On 23rd of May 1940, the symptoms culminated with the disclosure of his divine identity. Sathya called household members and materialized sugar candy and other items”. His father who became furious seeing this took a stick thinking his son was bewitched and questioned him who he was? To this Sathya announced calmly and firmly “I am Sai Baba”. The reference he made was to Sai Baba of Shirdi. He proclaimed himself to be a reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi — a saint who became famous in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Maharashtra, and who had died eight years before Sathya was born.Later that year, Sathya Sai Baba declared that he had no worldly relationship with anyone, and around this time, devotees began to gather around him. On Thursdays bhajans were sung, which grew to every day. In 1940, Sathya Sai Baba began to travel to Madras and elsewhere in South India and soon had a large regional following.
In 1944, a mandir (temple) for Sathya Sai Baba’s devotees was built near the village. It is now referred to as the old mandir. The construction of Prashanthi Nilayam, the current ashram, began in 1948 and after 2 years, was completed in 1950. In 1957 Sathya Sai Baba went on a North Indian temple tour. In 1954, Sathya Sai Baba established a small free General Hospital in the village of Puttaparthi.In 1963, Sathya Sai Baba suffered a stroke and four severe heart attacks. He is believed to have healed himself from these, and on recovering announced that he would be reborn as Prema Sai Baba in the state of Karnataka.He said, “I am Siva-Sakthi, born in the gothra (lineage) of Bharadwaja, according to a boon won by that sage from Siva and Sakthi. Siva was born in the gothra of that sage as Sai Baba of Shirdi; Siva and Sakthi have incarnated as Myself in his gothra now; Sakthi alone will incarnate as the third Sai (Prema Sai Baba) in the same gothra in Mysore State.”
On 29 June 1968, Sathya Sai Baba made his first, and only, trip overseas, to Uganda. His party proceeded by car to Kampala, the capital city. Narayana Kasturi writes, “During His stay He addressed gatherings of lions and rotarians, doctors, businessmen, members and workers of service organizations,” as well as government ministers and officials. During a discourse in Nairobi (Kenya, East Africa) Sathya Sai Baba stated, “I have come to light the lamp of Love in your hearts, to see that it shines day by day with added luster. I have not come on behalf of any exclusive religion. I have not come on a mission of publicity for a sect or creed or cause, nor have I come to collect followers for a doctrine. I have no plan to attract disciples or devotees into my fold or any fold. I have come to tell you of this unitary faith, this spiritual principle, this path of Love, this virtue of Love, this duty of Love, this obligation of Love.” In 1968, he established Dharmakshetra or Sathyam Mandir in Mumbai.
In March 1995, he started the water project to provide drinking water to 1.2 million people in the drought-prone Rayalaseema region in Anantapur. In 1973, he established Shivam Mandir in Hyderabad. On 19 January 1981, in Chennai he inaugurated Sundaram Mandir. In 2001 Sathya Sai Baba established another free Super Speciality hospital in Bangalore to benefit the poor..In april 1999 He inagurated Ananda Nilayam mandir in Madurai,Tamil Nadu.Since 2005, Sathya Sai Baba has used a wheelchair, and his failing health has forced him to make fewer public appearances. In 2006, Sathya Sai Baba suffered a fractured hip bone when a student slipped from the stool on which he was standing, both the boy and the iron stool fell on him. He gives darshan now from a car or his Porte Chair.
He is also known as a singer, having released several CDs of bhajans (devotional songs).”Sathya Sai Baba’s assertion of divine status is expressed in the first person; he states it boldly and repeatedly.”Sathya Sai Baba himself says,”I am beyond the reach of the most intensive enquiry and the most meticulous measurement. Only those who have recognized my love and experienced that love can assert that they have glimpsed my reality. Do not attempt to know me through the external eyes.”
Huh……we are infact very lucky to have such people among us..Anyway this post is meant to remind us of such people and stands as a tribute to them.Good bye…..and have a nice day !!!!!

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.

THE TRYST WITH DESTINY…….

ramann — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:28:10 +0000

Well, the word tryst stands for an appointment to meet at a certain time and place promised sometime before.But our point of concern is what this tryst can do up with destiny…????? Ah….Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has proved what tryst with destiny can look like.Tryst with Destiny was a speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India. The speech was made to the Indian Constituent Assembly, on the eve of India’s independence, towards midnight on August 14, 1947. It focuses on the aspects that transcend India’s history. It is considered in modern India to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the hundred-year Indian freedom struggle against the British Empire in India.Her it goes………
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.
To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.
The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.
It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!
We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.
On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.
Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.
We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.
The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.
To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.
And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

Jai Hind! “
What a nerve ticking speech !!!!! Friends, I pledge all of you to perform your responsibilities to the maximum efficiency to attain tryst with destiny.Have a nice day !!!!!

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2010 sponsored by Odyssey360 | The 24 hour online book store with 5 milion books to choose from.