Merry Christmas !

Here's to a wonderful Christmas for everyone ! (holds up empty glass)Anyway, I have just enough time for a quick jab - I've been out all day, being tortu... I mean entertaining demon spaw.. my cousins. We did have a lot of fun including me - this is chiefly due to the fact that I was not the one paying. Flury's is definitely the place to be if you want the best cake in the city. I honestly had more fun ferrying my cousins all over the city, than the in actual get together - Christmas lighting, 140kmph on a straight road (Hail Bhishondev), Jim Reeves on the player; I cannot put it better than one of my cousins, Nili, did : Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !
I have to get going now - Have another party at the Sonar Bangla. Best Wishes to everyone, and May Your Dreams Come True...

- Debayan

Wooo Hoo !

Phew. Practical examinations are finally over, and I am freeee (at least, I insist I am. I positively refuse to do anything remotely academic for the next few days. ), and very, very bored - I mean, you can only play MaxPayne so many times.
Xavotsav 2006, will, it appears, from the current state of affairs, be taking place in 2007. From what I hear, Milieu has also suffered the same fate, as we were unintentionally standing in the way of the Almighty Bandh God. I am normally in favour of any and all bandhs - I worship Garfield; however, this is getting to be a bit.. over the limit of tolerance : Bandh to right of them, Bandh to left of them, Bandh in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd. In this month alone, there have been bandhs on the 1st , 5th, 13th, 14th, and another two days of liesure break have been scheduled for the 21st and 22nd - I mean, there have been more bandhs than Sundays this month, for Irodov's sake !
Oh Well. I have this blasted cold which refuses to tace atque abi, and ditto, with reference to more examinations on the coming fourth, fifth and ninth - if, that is, I survive; my mother, after witnessing the inefficacy of medicine recommended by Doctors of Medicine, has decided that 'natural' treatments are in order, and I am being force fed all manner of plants, leaves, honey-extracts, and some other things which my mother assures me I would rather not be aware of. My tongue is green, and my breath smells of neem. Another week of this, and my stomach will start sprouting leaves.
My parents have to attend yet another wedding (reception) today - with the number of weddings that took place this month, India's population should witness a sharp increase in less than a year.
More news as soon as I get bored enough; for now, though,

Toodles.

- Debayan.

Next !

Went to watch Casino Royale today. Tickets were ridiculously overpriced, and they had more thorough checks than the airport (which, unfortunately, is not saying much).
Oh well - any concerns about Daniel Craig not fitting into the role of Bond seems to have disappeared; it is true, that he does not quite fit into the role of the Bond who can fight through a Mongol battalion and complain about the crease on his suit - he does not even attempt it.
In this movie, Bond's unevolved character is highlighted; and a deliberate attempt to deviate from the 'usual' Bond is clearly visible - there are no invisible cars, destructive satellites or lesbian sword fighters. The yeah-I'm-over the-top-but-I-still-rule feeling is not there.
Here, he is still trusting. He bleeds, he is vulnerable - Bond is suave, stylish, but not yet there - we catch a glimpse of the Bond-that-will-be in some scenes; he tells a female agent
"You're not my type. "
"Smart."(?)
"Single."
Bond's incomplete development is quite apparent in many scenes; 'Do I look like I give a damn ?' is his answer when asked if he wants his Martini shaken or stirred. His choice of dinner jacket is corrected by a female agent (!). By all the Gods - my jaw almost fell off !
Bond's old (well.. new) acquaintance Felix Leiter is present, as is Rene Mathis. And also back is this..

The Aston Martin DB5
(this must be said in a tone of suitable reverence)

Superb acting, first class production, excellent script.. Casino Royale is definitely one of the best action movies I have seen recently.

Dhishum.

Note to the K : Casino Royale was mostly filmed in Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
NB. : No scantily clad dancing females present, but the credit sequence is still very impressive.

Baaanglaaaaa Bandh . <- fullstop

Oh Glorious Joy ! Trinamul has declared a Bangla Bandh tomorrow, and consequently, college is off! Whatever their cause is, I support the Bandh wholeheartedly ! From what I make of it, it seems that Mamata Banerjee was on her way to Singur, for a meeting of some sort - and was stopped by the Police in the Maitipara area (who, according to Biman Bose, were merely following Section 141 (which he misread 114)), and escorted back in A Police car to Kolkata. Mamata Bannerjee, it seems, did not take kindly to being thwarted (also, the Police car which took her back reportedly had an engine which had been stolen from the Indian Museum three and a half years ago - or, at least that's what it sounded like ) and rushed to the Bidhan Sabha, where Trinamul ..well.. wreaked havoc, and (^_^) declared a 12 hour Bangla Bandh tomorrow. I love it.

To Insure Promtness

College ? Well, we had two people taking about doing laundry in Germany, and the aforementioned actions importance to getting a (Most Esteemed) degree, which the (Most Esteemed) non profit organization they was part of would help us with. In honours, well... after covering file manipulation and compression algorithms in C, our (Most Esteemed) teacher decided to enter the (Most Esteemed) world of the (Most Esteemed) Micro Hard Word. After exploring the incredibly engaging area of changing font colours, and italicizing, we swept through to document merging, and finally into Clip Art. And then the bell rang.
Phew.
I spent some time reading old forwards.. well, it turns out that the Great Wall cannot be seen from the Moon, and neither did Mars come unreasonably close to the Earth this August.
"How stupid can people get ?", I asked,
well.. I thought .. "not much, I suppose".. and then I saw this -

BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!

Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
Dihydrogen monoxide:

• is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain. contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
• may cause severe burns.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
• has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
• Contamination is reaching epidemic proportions!

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California.
Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

• as an industrial solvent and coolant.
• in nuclear power plants.
• in the production of styrofoam.
• as a fire retardant.
• in many forms of cruel animal research.
• in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
• as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.

Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer! The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

What else was there for me to do but cry ?

Vot ?

Saw this kid dance, as well as a cut from Cabaret; this clip - As one of the comments read, " Their tomorrow ended in 1945, and thank God." - even saw these donkeys singing (a click to start , another to stop the donkeys - I tried to make a nice tune... the results were ... unsatisfactory. Oh well.).
As for College; had two of the longest periods since Maggie - The teacher was in his element, the room, as Bijon would say, resonated with the force of his stupidity. We learnt that 'Other than operating systems, another common example of Systems Software would be Linux" , and the differences betweenand that linked list programs had been written as long as five thousand years in the past.
I have a chem (Do NOT ask) presentation to do, as well as a load of odds and ends to pick up.
Oh well.

I'll blog of it tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day,

Wednesday Thursday Friday

Winter winter, when will you be here ? Its the end of November, and I am still comfortable in half sleeves... its not even cold enough to deter my neighbours from playing badminton in the evening.. and when I say bad, I mean bad.
Foolish winter.. touching and teasing, but refusing completion. The weather is most uncomfortable - I feel far too warm with the fan off, and frozen, with it on.

Honours internal practical examinations are over, and I am free ! At least, I insist that it should be so. I will update contact lists, make quiz questions.. anything non academic will do. I'm boooorred. Watched Numb3rs but it turned out to be a rerun.. There's nothing on TV other than those-evil-soaps-that-start-with-k (I used to think of her as an old lady.. y'know, grey hair, on a rocking chair, weaving stories out of reflections from old mirrors). Books to read, but nothing new... hmm.. perhaps
We were force fed UNIX shell script today.. urrgh. Not only does it taste bad, it doesn't even look nice. Mathematics class saw the advent of envelopes, while the Bengali (when, oh when will I be free of the dreaded subject `_`) teacher spoke about what Rabindranath Tagore could have written.. but didn't.

Went to CCD and had Chocolate Fantasy again.. ooohhhhhh... ridiculously overpriced, but when you start salivating within sight of it, it's worth whatever you paid for it. Had a discussion about Bollywood, and its inability to turn out anything worth watching that cannot be measured in flesh inches. Where is the next Sholay ? Films like Dhoom : 2, are of the come and go variety.. you watch them once, and its over. All 'timeless classics', it seems, were completed at least two decades ago.

Mbleh. Have far too many weddings to attend in the next few days.. 't seems everybody's getting married.. presents to buy, relatives to tolerate, oh, the things I do for society !

Also,... Watched the Indian team play cricket. Regretted it. Four hours, three bottles of coke, two packs of chips, and my national pride, all went down the drain.. and a very unwholesome gutter at that. Pitiful play, absolutely miserable tactics, and alas (!) , no rain. The most irritaing thing was that Kemp was not even playing well !! As they say, "Its not getting beaten that hurts.. but when you lose to a loser..." - not to say that the South African team is anything to scoff at, but when you have a team at 76 for six, well.. Excuse my anger, but this performance, if one can call it that, made me miss something rather important - At the end of the day, it seems the Indian team is.. unable to climax, as they say.

When you gaotta gah, you gotta gah.

Banking Woes

Ouch.
Went to UBI today to get an account renewed, and to transfer some stuff from a matured FD.... It took THREE HOURS of their, and what is infinitely worse, MY time, just to change a minor account to a major. The software they were using crashed in the process of scanning my signature (What ? It wasn't my fault ! So I have a ... complicated signature. Big deal.), and then, the teller forgot his password, and the manager was in the bathroom... you get the general gist. The form was obviously designed by someone who loves to state the obvious.. four times over. There were separate fields for Phone Number, Contact Number, Home Number, Mobile Number. By the end of it, I was bored, irritated, and fourteen signatures weaker for my labours (you cannot truly appreciate the amount of energy and control my signature requires unless you see it - a video of myself signing a document can, and has been mistaken for a badly choreographed fight in a cheap Kung Fu movie). After ALL of this, I find, that my new account contains.. guess... oh I insist, go ahead and guess... nope. Wrong. My new account contains the Great, Grand and Glorious amount of seven hundred and fifty three rupees . The car parking fees for parking in front of the bank for three hours, amounted to a nice round twenty.
I come home, and what do I find ? What, but those deceivers-most-dreadful, those creatures-most-cunning, those who give new meaning to the phrase caveat emptor - salesmen. No less then four were crowded in front of the door, and I was besieged. I, sadly, did not emerge unscathed from the battle, being forty rupees lighter, and holding a bottle of floor cleaner as proof of my experiences.
Mbleh. Oh well. Let me see.. what news do I have ? Hmmmm...

Fresh fresher freshest

Well.. we finally had our freshers' welcome party on Monday... which was admittedly good.. kudos to Asad, and his "dynamic personality", as Dr. Nath put it.
The entertainment consisted of everything from songs to dances to jokes by Gurpreet, to altdressing (I am avoiding the term 'cross'), to Somark(self-explanatory). There were some excellently sung pieces.. and others which were.. not so excellent.. oh, &$R% it - some were pathetic. Gurpreet was hilarious.. the man himself, more than his jokes (which Tommy, aptly, classified as complex - p+ij, where the joke was.. well.. imaginary.), the violinist was quite good, and of course, the star attraction... the Mr. and Ms. fresher awards.... Ritesh aaaaannnd Stuti !
Surprise, surprise.
Please note : "We are only very good friends." - Ritesh.

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Reboot

Oh well. Xavier's reopens tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to butchering the profs again. Mbwhahahahahahahahahaha !
And IE7 is finally done. And its actually GOOD ! Just add on someting like flashblock, and I'll use it, and nothing else. This ongoing browser war seems to be, to me, at least, obsolete. IE and Firefox are now so similar, that saying something like " Get this for better browsing" or " Other assorted blah blah" is foolish. Why do these people not devote their time to building better websites is beyond me. Right now, there's a kind of.. for the lack of a better word... an almost.. communal divide between users.... Firefox/IE, Windows/Linux, Mac/PC; some are choosing Win+Apple (!!!) insteadd of the usual wintel combination. Its totally meaningless.. write one article, say, supporting Windows.. and you'll get a hundred responses from aggrieved Linux users, some of them making excellent points, others being framed with suspictions of your ancestry, sexual habits and cranial capaciy... WHY ?!!!
Its JUST a bloody comp. PEBCAC. Look outside the confines of your screen for a minute.

- Debayan.

bbbbBooM ! Pyromaniac Paradise !

Had a greeeeeat Diwali... Ahem.. Now Hear This : I have made a new record : Of lighting six (6. Get that : !@#$%SIX ) Tubris with one (that's 1. O.N.E.) fuljhari. Woo Hooooooo.
Important note to self : Beat up shopkeeper who sold defective rangmashals. Bloody thing burst while I was holding it.
Well, all that hullabaloo with the police running around, announcing that firecrackers emitting sounds above a certain intensity were banned.. along with threats of arrest turned out to be... well.. gas . The puja organisers had been specifically asked to warn everyone not to buy any illegal firecrackerss by the police. Sadly, the evening found the police selling the same to anybody with a few rupees to spare (apparently, they had siezed a large quantity of "shhobdobajis" from somewhere.. and some people saw a business opportunity).
Yen-yi-ve, I am swaying right now.. I haven't slept all night.. and I have yet to open seven out of the twelve packets of bajis that I had bought.
Burn ! Burn ! Burn !
Mbwhahahahahahahahahahaha (cough....choke) Ahem..
Wishing you all a Happy Diwali,
Debayan Gupta.

X-ray eyes.. and now Invisibility !

Remember that evil piece of ^&$* called Snell's law ? Well, finally, I am pleased to say : He was wrong. Take that, Bijon, I told you so !(Even if I was not necessarily thinking of um... whatever : He was wrong !).
All known materials, tilll now, had a positive refractive index...
"But scientists from the University of California at San Diego described in Friday's issue of Science a strange composite that has a negative index, essentially reversing Snell's law. This new mix of fiberglass and copper rings and wires (see image) is far more than a curiosity, the researchers say. It may very well lead to novel electromagnetic devices and even perfect lenses, unhindered by diffraction limits and thus capable of focusing light in unforeseen ways.
Sheldon Schultz and his colleagues produced the class of composites last year, predicting at the time that it would defy a number of ordinary properties, including the Doppler effect. Their recent demonstration is only the first of what they hope will be several to reveal the composites' unorthodox behavior. In this case, they showed that microwaves—at the same frequency as those used in police radar guns—emerged from the material in the exact opposite direction from that predicted by Snell's law. Next they hope to extend the material's powers to focusing visible light. "
And a few months after this, along came the nearest thing to an invisibility device that we have today...
Okay.. first things first : these devices are made out of metamaterials; what the bloody F#^$ are metamaterials, you ask ? "A metamaterial is a composite structure, built of metal rings and wires embedded in fiberglass, that makes light behave in weird ways. Metamaterials can be used, for example, to bend light sharply or to focus it to a higher resolution than is normally possible. More recently, researchers pointed out that the technology should make it possible to construct spheres or cylinders capable of cloaking an object almost perfectly from detection by a single wavelength of light. When light strikes a metamaterial it causes the electrons in the metal pieces to vibrate; these vibrations in turn affect the speed of the light. A metamaterial shell with the right gradient of metal elements should cause light of a particular wavelength to wrap around the shell's interior. "
Soon, they hope to be able to conquer the challenge of completely cloaking an object from the visible frequency... ahh the prospects of such a device ! Are you pondering what I'm pondering ?

- Rasevaudez, Debayan.

AHA ! Intelligent life does Exist !

Its True ! I saw the whole thing !

Acronyms

The net, it seems, is flooded with more acronyms than my ram can hold, and so, I am listing some of the ones which come to mind ...

• AFAICS = As far as I can see
• BTW = By the way
• FYI = For your information
• HAND = Have a nice day
• IMHO = In my humble opinion (egoless)
• IMAO = In my arrogant opinion (e.g.o.)
• IMNSHO = In my not-so humble opinion (a lot of ego)
• IMO = In my opinion (not much ego)
• IOU = I OWN you. (NOT I owe you, not when you're on the net.)
  
• MYOB = Mind your own business
• OTOH = On the other hand
• PEBCAC = Problem exists between chair and computer
• PEBCAK = Problem exists between chair and keyboard
• PMFJI = Pardon me for jumping in
• RTFM = Read the ___ manual
• SO = Significant other
• YHBT = You have been trolled
• YHL = You have lost

More ? You want more ? Ok. I'll Give you more ! Here you go , Master Twist.

DNA computing is on a roll...

Remember all those darwazas from Sudip's class ? Well.. loook out Silicon Valley - Researchers are developing DNA molecules to mimic the logical operations carried out in silicon-based computers as a way to improve biomedical technologies or aid in assembling nano-size building blocks into new materials. In one approach, a series of wells is filled with hairpin-shaped strands of DNA, called gates, which respond to inputs in ways chosen by the designers. A group had already shown that such a system, called a molecular array of YES and AND gates, or MAYA, can play a game of tic-tac-toe restricted to certain moves. (quoted)
The fact that DNA computing works at such a level, considering that the science is still, more or less, in its infancy, is proof of the immense potential of the subject.

Pheew.

Long time no see, eh ?
Oh well. I'm back now after a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time, and I'm here to stay.
Debayan Gupta is in the building.

2000

2000 visits to this page. I am very excited ( NOT !) .
Anyway, what's really funny was that I was going to post something to do with 2000 AD, and I suddenly see that my hit counter reads exactly 2000. Scary, eh ? Oh well, here's the link : dabludabludablu .
As for Prof. Nath's ideas about unix security : HUBBA HUBBA . But, realio, trulio, the Openwall Project is one of the best ventures I have seen - it has information, solutions, and advice - all of which are always available on the internet, but rarely accurate : this site, however, seems to be an exception, and has a lot of help for the half-nerd techie.

India Censored

India is My country. I love my country. That being said, Nuke 'em ! Nuke the bloody bastards, I say ! Politicians from our Great country who cannot distinguish a monitor from a cpu and know nothing whatsoever of the internet, suddenly decided that they were going to follow in the footsteps of Chinese idiocy, and begin political censorship of websites, to " help curb terrorism ". Nothing has been done, as of yet, about the mobile phones and SIM cards sold illegally to the terrorists responsible for the Mumbai blasts. Buuuut, apparently, the terrorists were using not email, not any groups or communities, nor any messaging services, but blogs to exchange confidential information. So, our government, in its infinite wisdom ( if you are a member of the government of India, I shall explain the previous phrase to you, as you are obviously unable to comprehend simple logical concepts - that was sarcasm, do you understand ? ) decided to block access to blogspot, geocities and typad. The morons running the ISP companies here are still tight mouthed about the whole thing, at first denying that any censoring at all has been done, then, after some persuasion ( read : bribing and threatning them ) they said that they were "merely following Department of Telecom orders which came last week", and because they did not have "the capability to selectively ban webpages" ( which is still against the principles of freedom of speech ), they banned entire domains. And this coming from the world's biggest Democracy. And the origin of one of the largest numbers of computer experts in the world. And a country which prides itself for tolerance. Our politicians should not be allowed to breed. This whole fiasco has become nothing less than an idiotic joke, and I do not like jokes of that variety. I hereby put forward the proposition that all Members of Parliament be required to take an IQ test, where, they will be asked to step down, if their score is less than half of that of a severely retarded mule ( Chimpanzees are much too intelligent to be used in this comparision.) . In other news, we had a lot of rain today - and Salt Lake was flooded, and I was late for class. News the Second : Xavier's College is off on the 21st and 24th ! YAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHOOooooooooooooo !
And, Finally, News the Third : I was so annoyed about this internet censorship nonsense that I have actually not read a book today ! Gasp ! Call an Ambulance, somebody ! I think I see a light... nope, my bad - no light. Why ? Because the rreplacement that the KMC had put up for the defective lamp post light bulb in front of my house after countless complaints, has gone Fudut ! Phew ! They had me worried for a moment there - competence and KMC are prctically antonyms. Oh, well.

Toodles, Debayan.

WTF ?

PLEASE READ THIS. THIS IS IMPORTANT, AND NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA, as Google puts it.

I was looking around on Orkut, and I found this group : We Hate India
This community is horrible !
Listen to this :

The sole purpose of this community isn't meant to offend India...its about making few statements very loud & clear to them...its about having a group of people who have enemity for India just coz of its oppressive & hostile approach...no matter how much proofs & justifications you bring up for there are many things which can't be denied & they won't be...you can flood anyone's scrapbook by talking trash & by giving up false news & stuff but it won't make any difference...i don't believe on any friendship nor do i believe on enemity but India's inclined towards doing it & i can't see that happening...though i didn't do much beneficial for my country but i tried to refrain myself from supporting indians & in embracing their Kaleidoscope culture...its not about hating Indian people & their country...its about hating all those things which are against Pakistan...against me!!!

That pissed me off. And then I read this :

" reason of enemity agaianst islam
Please do read them at least once as this might be helpful for everyone.
According to my limited understanding, these are two major reasons for the war against Islam:
1) The religion has a Holy book (Qur’an) that has not and will never change. It is obviously timeless guidance while being authentic and divine.No other religion has this privilege.
2) The stories of Lives of Prophets - referred in Qur’an (and Sunnah) are factual and Allah has given us the summaries of infinite practical life lessons to be learnt by referring them in Qur’an. This gives us an edge as compared to the followers of any other religion.
If we think deeply and contemplate on how would the enemies of Islam try to win the war against a divine religion??
) Conspiracy Theory Objective One: Change Muslims' way of thinking and try to take them away from their Holy Scripture.
How? Introduce other languages and take them away from their most powerful tool - LANGUAGE.Once the unchangeable book is translated - it won't stay unchangeable anymore!
Arabic is the deepest language in the world with a maximum number of verb forms as compared to any other language in the world.Result of this depth in verb forms is that we cannot accurately translate it to its full meaning into any other language.
As we don't know what we are praying for (as it is in Arabic) and we have our own language that we understand; our prayers don't have the required impact.
Allah wants us to understand what we are praying for!
Most of us don't really know what we are saying during the prayers - resultant is that the Salaah has become a mechanical thing instead of reflection & contemplation. Crush india 12/07/2006 19:312) Conspiracy Theory Objective Two: Create fear of this world in their minds so that they forget the lessons from Lives of Prophets.
How? Control people's minds through media. Everyone should start living in a fantasy while following the media - fabricated news etc..
3) Conspiracy Theory Objective Three: Make them weak and disunite them by making them fight with each other.
How? Create illusion, introduce fear and use "Divide & Conquer" by creating more and more sects.
How to Create Sects? Just produce another variation of translation of Qur’an. Change a few minute details through playing with words.
4) Conspiracy Theory Objective Four: Make them the Target for Hatred by General Public:
How? Introduce con-leaders and con- religious icons. Show them as terrorists so that the actual problem creators gain the sympathy of general public through fabricated media campaigns. Crush india 12/07/2006 19:31Simple Thing to Understand: Who has gained the most benefit (and still getting it) out of so called Muslim extremists?
Who gained the most out of 9/11, 7/7 and Iraq etc?
How? Create illusion, introduce fear and use "Divide & Conquer" by creating more and more sects. Take away the vision of life from Muslims by keeping them targeted.
All the above mentioned conspiracies and millions more mean nothing and cannot hurt us if we hold on strong to Allah's book and to the authentic Sunnah & Hadith.
Answer to most of the questions lies in this simple first steps (towards a journey of million miles):1) Understand what we pray (and ask for) during the Salaah2) Start learning Arabic language and learn/understand Qur’an to its fullest meaning - instead of getting deviated through inaccurate translations.3) If we understand what we are saying during Salaah - half of our problems will be addressed right away.4) Stop believing in media to the fullest. They are business men with hidden agenda (and foreign funding) and they have to sell - one way or the other.5) Always fear Allah and keep asking for help from Allah.6) Don't get bogged down with not important and useless discussions - rather try to solve the problem and suggest solutions to doable activities. "

I LOVE the freedom of speech. And, euphemisms aside, I HATE these kind of bastards. Listen up, citizens of Pakistan - I know a total of three Pakistanis, and am acquainted with one more; and all of them are wonderful, wonderful people - a lot of people in India actively hate all Pakistanis - Why, you ask ? Because of these few, who make a bad name for the rest of you, and for the rest of us, as well- no external observer would feel positively about the human species after having read this sort of thing.
I will not go into the Islam part of it - I personally believe that most religions do more harm than good - I do not care if someone believes in Allah, Christ or Krishna, as long as they are good people. However, it is these things that make others hate Islam - I confess, that after having read the latter portion of the text, I had a momentary bout of " Nuke the bastards" rush, befor my brain kicked in. So, please - I would ask you to report this group as bogus , but I like my freedom, so all I ask of you is to go, see and judge for yourself.

Most people are just really, really stupid. The rest are just bastards.

- Debayan Gupta.

00.7, Beta

Have you noticed how all softwares are "beta" versions nowdays ? Anyway, I was searching for something to remove a trojan that had *somehow, I know not how* gotten into my computer, and I found this site : http://www.knujon.com/ - It has a lot of excellent advice for newbies , as well as technical information for advanced users.

Ghonta.

And That's All, Folks

Realio, its trulio ! And now, its been proved as well : Men are more humourous than women. So, the next time your punchline fails to KO someone, instead, resulting in an exasperated eye-roll, it might not be a reflection on your material.
The study was conducted by a group of researchers ( who, according to RD, were laughing their heads off at the fact that while other researchers at the same lab were toiling nightly over malignant spleens, they were studying comedy ) at the Stanford University School of Medicine ( you can almost hear the Capital Letters, eh ?) .
See Here : Mbwhahahaha. The study results boil down to the fact that males are usually more optimistic about humour - when a funny cartoon was displayed, the females showed increased activity in the "reward centre" of the brain. When the cartoon was not funny, the activity in the area went bact to its normal, lower level. In men, however, this default level is much higher, and remained unaffected when the cartoon was funny; but, when the cartoon was not funny, the level actually declined - ie., the men expected the joke to be funny, and were disappointed when it was not, while the women expected the joke to be unamusing, and only relented when it was irrefutably hilarious . As it turns out, it is true that females tend to over-analyze things, instead of just taking the simplest solution that's staring at you in the face.

Or kut rut

Joined orkut today afer some of my friends convinced ( coerced) me. Well, I duly filled in the forms, until I came to the " Upload your Photo Section" . I tried to upload this foto :

Annd after 23 minutes, my screen was still showing this :

I tried uploading photos to other sites, and got more trouble ( uploading the two photos above took seven tries - and this, on a broadband connection). Note to self : check connection. Curiously, my download speed is unaffected. Oh well.

Tried to access a russian website today. The site informed me that I was not authorized to view this site ( which happens often ) but the message that they displayed was quite ... inspirational : If you are American, Go to Hell ( or America, if you prefer ). If not, sorry for the inconvenience. Shit happens.

In other news, KMC has actually replaced the light on the lamp-post across my house. I am still recovering from the shock.

Festina Lente, Debayan.

Ext. : For RB, check out his Orkut profile...

Water, water everywhere

We had a lot of rain here today, though I am reliably informed that it did not rain in AH block, which is less than a mile away. Perhaps Mr.Rob McKenna was passing by...

On another ( and more jarringly obnoxious ) note, I have the great pleasure(?) of announcing to the world that I have discovered yet another sub-species of that tribe-most-horrendously-evil, that group-most-sadistic, with few exceptions, the Teacher ( Torturer Extraordinare, Achiever of Countless Horrible Evils and Rampages ). This new genum seems to be exceptionally excitable, and liable to explode into action ( action = reiteration of the "importance of discipline ", which, apparently, is the "only thing in Xavier's".) and inappropriate ( and rather... unrealistic - it is impolite to call your teacher an out-and-out liar) flashbacks in the middle of teaching ( especially if it is something important ) .
Exempli Gratia : " In my time, there were some second year students. ( WOW !) There is a rule not to play in the field. They were tossing a tennis ball. Father came and cancelled their classes for two months." - In this highly condensed version, I have omitted the countless repititions, the grammar ( ie., lack therof ), the numerous "okay ?"s and the vigorous hand movements ( I know that the last one is hypocritical, but come on, this guy was practically jumping up and down ! ). Anyway, this anecdote is apparently proof of the importance of obeying the rules ( and not of the dwindling sanity of our Principal, or what is more probable, the teacher's lack of ability to make up a believable lie.).
Oh well. Note to aspiring artists : I do NOT look like an electrocuted wombat with blue striped buck teeth and orange polka dotted fish-scalesque beard.
On yet another note, My neighbour has bought.. let me see... yes, seven pieces of underwear, and apparently wishes to display them, and so, has strung them up outside my window. I am currently running up huge electric bills because of running my air conditioning twenty four hours a day. Any suggestions ?

Classes Commence

Well, Dr. Nath seems to be a good teacher, although he was just introducing some algos today.
Note to self : Get the chap a decent blackboard eraser - the one he currently uses - to great effect, but rather in the opposite direction; the duster makes more prominent marks than the chalk.
Dr.P.K.C. also seems to be quite competent - although he keeps insisting that " Electronics is at the hart of every science ", and seems to have a lot of respect ( read:obession) for someone named J.S.Kilby (Jack Kilby) .
The Physics teacher - S. Palit, I think his name was, turned out to be a bit of a... hmmmm how do I say this politely... um... Oh what the heck ! He was, based upon my first impression, a complete bastard, and a possible winner of the Bangali Dhandosh Prize . The imbecile put nearly 120 of us in a room with seating for 70, and then started teaching : his voice is very - Tendulkaresque, without the slight raspyness - so few of us could hear him, and he then started to take a rollcall, sending people out if they did not respond ( one guy forgot his roll number ). Mbleh !
Enough of this nonsense ! Mails, people, mails - Dibyayan you Sharma ! Mail me or face the wrath of the ( I will throw no titles at you )...

On Another note, Look Out Superman,

I can see through things too...

Seeing is believing -- researchers explain 'x-ray specs' effect

An annual exhibition showcasing the best of UK science and technology this year includes a novel optical effect pioneered by physicists at Imperial College London.

[...]

Mbwhahahahahahahahahahaha.... it's only a matter of time before I get the rest of your powers, and flood the world with mutated cheese and Sharma Action ( inaction ?) figures ! Mbwhahahahahahahahahahahaha !

Note : No, I am not smoking anything, but with the fumes (~~~) around here, I don't really need to.

Toodles, Debayan.

Autonomy for Xavier's

Newest advance in field of tortu-education !!! College actually checks papers !!! Gives accurate Marks !!!
Really !!!

"Ya Baby !" ( Comment by Principal Fr. P.C.Mathew during the ceremony for the "taking of effect" of autonomous status for Xavier's ) - it seems that PCM has been watching Austin Powers.

This also means :

• If you get low marks in any subject you can just harass the professor and get it increased.
• Less chance of your examination paper being stolen by a cat while being checked.
• No (or negligible) student unions.
• The * can buy special lotion for his beard.
• The ** can actually buy a helmet.
• Examinations Realio, Trulio, take place on time.

The Computer Science Head Of Department, Mr. Asoke Nath turned out to be a very nice and ... enthusiastic ( as it turns out, there is a reason why the word "enthusiasm" originates from a word meaning "possessed" ) man.

Note : This Picture was taken in a windless area, otherwise, the area of the scalp covered by hair is significantly reduced.

Before all this, however, we had introductory speeches by the Heads. PCM's speech was good, while Fr.Eaton tried to crack a few jokes, which, I must say, would have made a better impression if he had not read them off a piece of paper in a monotone. He insisted that The most important sign of maturity is knowing how to dress - ie., the finer points of the differences between partywear, picnicwear and collegewear ( his words, not mine ) and that things like pedal pushers were discouraged ( and I assure you, his tone was very discouraging ). He also seemed to have oiled his hair (?~!) today.

I must also confess that the pseudo attempted ragging session by the second years was a complete failure - I mean like, honestly, who is going to take five girls from the English honours section and a few (obviously sadly retarded) boys seriously, especially when they cannot think of anything more intelligent for a ragging session than " Say your Name in Hindi " - It actually took one of the male second years to point out that " Aaare, je bhashatei bol, naamta to aake thakbe " for the girl leading them (!) to realise her error ( I - and probably most of us - thought that she was just joking; until we came to the sad realization that she actually .. Gaah ! Even thinking about such idiocy gives me a headache. ).

Oh wll ! Regular updates from tomorrow, and

Haktufga, Debayan.

Oogabuga !!

Tada ! Thank the Gods ! Jump for Joy! Praise the Ponce !

News that is Good: I is kcab !
Bad that is News ? Whatever little semblance of geeky humour I once had has been reduced to me finding things like saying wookiewookiewookiewookie funny.

wookiewookiewookiewookiewookiewookiewookiewookie .. ahem. And even this was not original ( thank God ! ).

Sorry about the delay - which was one of the reasons I allowed Arka into the blog - I knew that I would be unable to post for a while, so... Oh well. Now, onto the reson of my inability to post : College admissions. At first I thought that the lines at Xavier's were bad, but, I have been forced to revise my opinion by Presidency College - in Xavier's, you could, at least, submit the form online - you only had to come for the interview (and for the $^_^ $). Here ? You do have an online form, but in order to pay the Rs.15 fee, in order to get it validated, you have to stand in a line for one hour and thirty seven minutes ( That is how long I had to wait ), then, you have to fill up the form, where, for some reason, they have separate fields named : Address, Parent's Address, Communication Address and Permanent Address. After filling up this form, you then have to submit it, for which there are more lines - you can go for two Honours subjects, for each of which there is a different line. I had to stand in sweltering (we are talking 41ºC in the shade with 92% humidity, which was what the instruments there indicated) heat from one thirty three to five forty nine that's 1:33 - 5:49, with no fans, no ventilation, no water, no internet access, no anything in a queue that stretched from .. well, the corridor is 200m long, and the line doubled back and turned, so it was about 350m when I reached it. This was just the Physics queue. The mathematics ( see the absence of the M? Sharma will do that to a person. ) queue was even longer.
The only reason I survived was because I never actually stood in the queue - I took my leather bag, puffed myself up, put on a SJ ( Sab Janta ) face, and walked in. Nothing succeeds like effrontery, especially on a massive scale. ( Take that, Aviroop ! Name the book, If you can... )This post is just a filler - as soon as I am able to ( read : as soon as His Most Great Highness condescends to get up from his Most Wonderful Soft And Fluffy Bed ), I shall begin posting properly.

Bye, Debayan.

P.S. : Calm down, Arka. As Anindya used to say whenever we got a sum wrong - Don't be emotional.

P.P.S. : Guess who wrote this ( No cheating by searching... or ELSE ! )

Which came first, the egg or the rooster?

P.G.Wodehouse or Bertram Wooster?

I know hawk from handsaw, and Finn from Fiji,

But I can't disentangle Bertram from PG.
I inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house,

Did Wodehouse write Wooster, or Wooster Wodehouse?
*_*

I SUPPORT RESERVATION (read on...)

I believe in reservation very strongly. I completely agree with what our PM is trying to do. But I believe that there should be reservations everywhere:

LET'S START
I am in favor of reservation if:

1. There can be reservation in Government jobs . Recruitment of only SC/ST(60%) and OBC (40%)pilots for aircrafts which are carrying the ministers and politicians (that can really help the country and save many of us the disater of many a political coup.. )

2.Allow only SC/ST and OBC doctors to operate on ministers and other politicians. (Another way of saving our land..)

3. Lets turn to sports:
i. Cricket: OBC hitting a four will be a six
Scoring a 50 will be a century
Running halfway between the creases will be considerd one run
They will be allowed 2 chances while getting out
ii. Football: Striking any part of the goal posts will be a goal
iii. Athletics: A gold Medal for running half the distance

4. All cars and planes ferrying ministers to be built by SC/ST or OBC engineers.

5. Flats and houses to be built only by SC/ST or OBC architects

LETs take INDIA ahead.
Jai Hind!!!!!

I am now a member of the masters blog and i will write from time to time

Happy Blogging
ArKa

Shaint Jebhiyaars

Well, I went to our alma mater today, to get my certificates - the rascals gave me " GOOD " on my character certificate ! Saket got the same thing thet I did - GOOD. When I asked Fr.Boristo explain, he said " It differs from Headmaster to Headmaster. And that should explain everything." GAH ! I'll boil them in castor oil and force them to watch legally blonde ( which is BAD - I was forced to watch it, and I had to take antidepressant ans antipsychotic pills before I could trust myself to speak ).
I had to wait in a very long line for two and a half hours yesterday, and two hours today before I got to meet the Principal. Honestly, it seems that every single person with a single certificate has come for " special consideration" - I went for the debaters category ( although I'll get in anyway, as I have good marks and I am a third generation Xaverian ). There were .. what.. 200-300 girls in the line, who were all, apparently internationally famous dancers - for goodness' sake, many of them had brought photos. photos of themselves dancing God-knows-where, while the form specifically spoke of certificates (at least inter school, preferably state or national level). There were many more who applied for the "Outstanding Sportspersons" option. I will not extend thiss any further than to say - I saw someone with a soccer match participation certificate from class 3.
In other news, I did worse than expected in IIT, with a rank of 2058. Oh well. All hail Abhinav, who got 292. I would also like to congratulate my cousin Nayanika who got 86% on her Madhyamik.

I will blog later.

Quota Row

( If you have not read my mail )

As you all already know, the Indian central government has , in its usual unending wisdom, begun yet another crusade into the vast reaches of stupidity ( Quote : I believe that the Universe and human stupidity are infinite. I am not sure about the former. - Einstein ) . The politicians have decided ( although the heads of the institutions concerned have said, and I quote the eloquent words of the one heads of the IITs - " What ?!!! " ) to increase the already high quotas given to SCs &STs. Now, I have no objection to the idea of helping people out, but,

1. Institutions like the IITs take only the best. That is the purpose of "Selection" examinations. By doing this, the government is basically ensuring the people get in, not by merit, but through their heritage. What this leads to is even worse - people get into these institutions, are unable to cope, and drop out later. Just to give you an idea of the extent of this, in the last 2 years, in K'pur alone, five times the students that dropped out from the general category dropped out from the "quota" seats.

2. This entire quota hullabaloo is obviously nothing more than a political move - if someone really wanted to help the BCs and BTs, then they should, and would have tried to get the number of more primary and secondary level institutions increased, which would really help a lot of people - with this quota thing, how many are getting helped ?

3. The worst part : medical students. Firstly, the number of seats is very small. Secondly, and more importantly, what most people seem to be overlooking is the fact that education has a purpose - these students are learning to become doctors; these people are going to go out into the world, and people's lives, maybe even yours or mine are going to be on the line. I, for one, will not trust my life to any but the best. I will not trust my life to somebody who became a doctor, not by merit, but because of his or her origins.

The politicians of India today ( curiously, this title has become synonymous with .. .well to find out what it has become synonymous with, just go to your local Cha and Paan shop, and kick the tablle over. What you will hear is what I cannot type .) have begun this henious act. Unfortunately, as Carl Parker once said - If you take all the fools out of the Legislature, it will no longer be a representative body. Well, since they started it, let us be the ones to end it.

P.S. : "Henious", eh ? Guess why ...

Eh?

First, a short message to those of you who know me - did you honestly think that I wrote that ? Come on ... my writing style is completely different, and more importantly, with my WBJEEs coming up, I have no time to research all that stuff. The P.S. was there for a reason.
I must say that "HUH ?!!" was my first reaction after reading the comments - Honestly, have none of you nakli-Kolkatans been to Shantiniketan ? Why do I ask ?

Well, here are the people who actually wrote this article -

Yep. Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore.

The article was originally written by these two Nobel laureates, but was not published till a loooong time later, when Roald Hoffman found the half torn manuscript in the main library at Shantiniketan, where it still resides. I just added a few lines here and there, and -TADA !!! And if anyone still thinks that it is "b**l SHiT", and that author has an enlarged ego... well ! ( need I say more ... Albein annd Rabtag )

And as Guru reminded me, about the "I have a deep rooted hatred for all XAVERIANS for their bricks of ego strapped round their heads" comment - are you by any chance acquainted with any of the current students, especially of 11&12 ? If so, then I am afraid that I must agree - most of them have egos the size of Sharma's (mathamotix). If not, then stop making assumptions about people you know little about. One thing that I have learnt during my countless debate sessions with Rb, is that making generalizations like "all XAVERIANS" is nothing less than an invitation for your opponents to destroy your points ( if you have any

^_~). Oh well... away with the trivialities.

In other, completely unrelated news, I amm now sleeping with all my windows closed, because three -not one, not two, but THREE cats have decided that my sofa is a better bed than wherever they usually sleep. And so, I have to sleep (or try to ) with little or no ventilation. Mbleh !

Bye, Debayan.

Never let Reality get in the way of a good Hypothesis

Date : Today, Time : From seventeen minutes past one to three in the blessed afternoon,
Event : 11 (eleven, E-L-E-V-E-N, aagaaro, aekadosh, etc. ) salesmen, selling everything from soap
to electric chimneys to magnetic ear cleaners ( I still haven't figured the last one out - I mean, how can one have a magnetic ear cleaner ?!!), and on top of that there was this chap who was
trying to get me to donate some money "For the Enviroment" - I was understandably reluctant after noticing the "enviroment", but I still gave him some money, and then, he tells me that
he won't give me a receipt ! So, I took the money back and kicked him out ( the first part wasn't as easy as it sounds - I had to threaten him with the local crimi..police before he gave in ).Well, after this I decided to write something about nature - Here goes...

The Vatican holds a fresco by Raphael entitled The School of Athens. Plato and Aristotle stride toward us. Plato's hand points to the heavens, Aristotle's outward, along the plane of the earth. The message is consistent with their philosophies - whereas Plato had a geometric prototheory of the chemistry of matter, Aristotle described in reliable detail how Tyrian purple (now known to be a precursor of indigo) was extracted from rock murex snails. Plato searched for the ideal; Aristotle looked to nature.

Short note : Contrary to the ideas of my next door neighbours, who are ardent supporters of CPIM, and for all I know, the ideas of many others ( although I fervently hope that this is not
the case ), Plato is the name of a philosopher, or in some cases, a distinctive dark-floored large crater on the Moon just north of Mare Imbrium, NOT a local company that manufactures
plates.

Remarkably, science today faces the quandary that Raphael's fresco epitomized. Should it follow the hand sign of Aristotle or that of Plato? Can we, for example, hope to make better composites by mimicking the microstructure of a feather or of a strand of spider's silk? Are scientists better advised to seek their inspiration in ideal mathematical forms, in icosahedra and in footballs (soccer, not the... solidified crudity that is rugby )? Or should we hazard chance?

To many people ( mainly the businessmen whose companies have to pay extra for environmentally acceptable manufacturing methods ) the difference between what is natural and what is not, is arbitrary - humanity is a product of nature, and thus, so is anything produced by it. Such a view is understandable and has a lot history, but it does away with a distinction that troubles ordinary and thoughtful people. So I will not adopt it and instead will distinguish between the actions, mostly intended, of human beings and those of animals, plants and the inanimate world around us. A sunset is natural; a sulphuric acid factory is not. The one and a half billion odd head of cattle in this world pose an interesting problem for any definition. Most
of them are both natural and unnatural - the product of breeding controlled by humans.So, the first thing that we need to decide is the definition of "natural".

The molecules that exist "naturally" on the earth emerged over billions of years as rocks cooled, oceans formed, gases escaped and life evolved. The number of natural molecules is in the billions; perhaps a few hundred thousand have been separated, purified and identified. The vast majority of the compounds that fit into the "unnatural" category were created during the past three centuries. Chemists have added perhaps 20 million well-characterized molecules to nature's bounty.

To every thing of this world, be it living or not, there is structure. Deep down are molecules, persistent groupings of atoms associated with other atoms. There is water in the distilled form in the laboratory, in slightly dirty and acid snow, in the waters associated with our protein molecules. All are H2O. When chemistry was groping for understanding, there was a reasonable reluctance to merge the animate and inanimate worlds.
Friedrich W0hler convinced many people that the worlds were not separate by synthesizing, in 1828, organic urea from inorganic silver cyanate and ammonium chloride, but even today, we divide chemistry into Organic and Inorganic - admittedly, this is mostly for historical reasons ( "organic" chemistry has many molecules which have never existed, nor are likely to exist anywhere outside of a laboratory ), but organic chemistry, based mostly upon the compounds of Carbon holds a special
importance to most humans - it is what we are made of !!! It must be very special !

Many believe that there is some kind of special beauty in "nature" - there is beauty in everything, but most of us refuse to see it. This means that we see the beauty only in what is useful to us, except in the case where the object is "natural", which, for our purposes means "already exists". Primaxin is one of the most effective antibiotics on the market, a prime money-maker for Merck & Co. The pharmaceutical is not a single molecule but a designed mixture of two compounds, imipenem and cilastatin. These are their "trivial" names. The real names are a bit longer; for instance, imipenem is

[5R-[5a, 6a(R*)]]-6-(1-hydroxyethyl)-3-[[2-[(iminomethyl)amino]ethyl]thio]-7-oxo-1-azabicyclo[3.2.0]hept-2-ene-2-carboxylic acid.

The production of thienamycin required 21 major steps, each involving several physical operations: dissolution, heating, filtration, crystallization. Between the starting material - a common
amino acid, L-aspartic acid and the desired product hienamycin 20 other molecules were isolated and purified.
The first impression that one gets is of complexity. That intricacy is essential, a laboratory counterpoint to the biochemical complexity of bacteria and us. We would like there to be "magic bullets" of abiding simplicity. The real world is complicated and beautiful. We had better come to terms with that richness. To get a feeling for the sweat, if not the blood and tears, of the process, we need to turn to the experimental section of the paper reporting the synthesis. Here is an excerpt of that experimental protocol, describing a critical, inventive step in the synthesis, the transformation from compound 8 to 9:

A suspension of diazo keto ester 8 (3.98g, 10.58 mmol) and rhodium (II) acetate dimer (0.04 g, 0.09 mmol) in anhydrous toluene (250 mL) was thoroughly purged with nitrogen, and then heated with stirring in an oil bath maintained at 80oC. After heating for two hours, the reaction mixture was removed from the bath and filtered while warm through a pad of anhydrous magnesium sulphate. The filtrate was evaporated under vacuum to afford the bicyclic keto ester 9 (3.27 g, 89%) as an off-white solid.

You can be sure that this jargon-laden account of an experimental procedure is a sanitized, too linear narrative; it is the way things were at the end: neat, optimized. Not the way it first happened. Putting that aside, you feel work, a sequence of operations that take time and effort. Sometimes, just as in our romantic notions of words springing from the brow of inspired poets, we forget the sheer labour of creation.

You ( like me) might be interested to see the way these experimental procedures change when the very same process is scaled up. You can't make hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of
tienamycin the same way you make a few grams in the laboratory. Here is the description of the industrial synthesis, for the very same step:

The solids containing 200 kg of 8 are dropped into 476 gallons of MeCl2 in tank TA-1432. Meanwhile, the reactor ST-1510 is cleaned out by a 200-gallon MeCl2 boilout. The slurry is transferred to ST-1510, followed by a 50-gallon MeCl2 line flush. An additional 400 gallons of dry MeCl2 are added to ST-1510, and hot water (65oC) is applied to the jackets to concentrate the batch to 545 gallons where the slurry KF (Karl Fischer) is approximately 0.5 g/1 H2O. Distillates are condensed and collected in another tank.

Making veal stroganoff for a thousand people is not the same as cooking at home for four.

People think writing a intriguing story is difficult, that good poetry has to be inspired by something - so do I ; science, however, has been reduced to something less.. a handful of formulae, learnt by rote, synonymous with clinical - where is the appreciation of the beauty of science ? Where is the spirit of enquiry that drove people like Richard Feynman ?If people are able to see the beauty in , and buy "modern" paintings ( many of which, to me, at least, seem to have been drawn by drunk chimpanzees ), then why can they not see the same thing in the structure of th ferric wheel ?

Stephen J. Lippard and Kingsley L. Taft of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology synthesized the ferric wheel, also known as [Fe(OCH3)2(O2CCH2Cl)]10. They discovered this exquisite molecule while studying model molecules for inorganic reactions that occur in biological systems. For instance, a cluster of iron and oxygen atoms is at the core of several important proteins, such as hemerythrin, ribonucleotide reductase, methane monooxygenase and ferritin (not household words these, but essential to life). In the course of their broad attack on such compounds, Lippard and Taft performed a deceptively simple reaction. Just how simple it seems may be seen from their experimental section, reproduced in its entirety:

Compound 1 was prepared by allowing the monochloroacetate analogue of basic iron acetate, [Fe3O(O2CCH2Cl)6 (H2O)3](NO3) (0.315 g, 0.366 mmol), to react with 3 equiv of
Fe(NO3)3·9H2O (0.444 g, 1.10 mmol) in 65 mL of methanol. Diffusion of ether into the green-brown solution gave a yellow solution, from which both gold-brown crystals of 1 and a yellow
precipitate deposited after several days.

Using x-ray diffraction on the gold-brown crystals, Lippard and Taft determined the arrangement of atoms in the molecule. The structure consists of 10 ferric ions (iron in oxidation state three) in a near circular array. Each iron atom is joined to its neighbors by methoxide and carboxylate bridges, "forming a molecular ferric wheel," to quote its makers. No one will deny the visual beauty of this molecule. It does not have the half billion dollar annual sales of Primaxin, but nobody who has seen the molecule can disagree to its beauty, which is not just the inherent beauty born ot of symmetry, but, somehow, I know not how, is as beautiful as any tropical sunset - yet this is not a "natural" molecule. Perhaps some day the ferric wheel will find a use; perhaps it will form a link in explaining the function of iron-containing proteins. I do not really care - for me, this molecule is just that ; a molecule, a piece of matter, which somehow manages to be.. there is really no other word - beautiful.

Is this not part of nature ? Perhaps this is what the old philosophers meant when they spoke of an omnipresent God - the beauty around us, within us, the wondrous beauty that prevades existence itself; a French chemist, Alain Sevin, has put it well:

The incredible richness and fantasy of Nature is an act of defiance to Man, as if he had to do better in any domain. Flying faster than birds, diving deeper than whales.... We are Promethean characters in an endless play which now is in its molecular act.

We are driven to transform. We have learned to do it very well. But this play is not a comedy.

Were humanity in search of a single icon, the outstretched hand of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity would serve well. Prometheus, a name meaning "forethought," represents the element of design, the process of fruitfully taking advantage of chance creation. Fire is appropriate because it drives transformation. The hand of Prometheus is the symbol of creation - the hand of God reaching to Adam in Michelangelo's fresco, the hands in contentious debate in Durer's Christ among the Doctors, the infinite variety of hands that Rodin
sculpted. Hands bless, caress and hide, but most of all, they shape.

Mbwhjaja !!! This is getting too sentu and aantellectual ! Well, there you go, a nice, long post making up for my lack of updates.

Bye, Debayan Gupta.

P.S. : Comment. Or Else.
P.P.S.: Immature authors imitate. Mature authors steal.
P.P.P.S. : More of this essay in my next post.

Dum de dum

Sorry for the wait, but I was was busy with the ISI examination ( NO, NOT the bloody Paki ISI, ISI as in Indian Statistical Institute.) - Well, I had a GREAT exam, I mean, exempli gratia, the subjective part had TWO sums that I had done before - that's TWO OUT OF TEN !!! WOOHOOO ! I am now going out to celebrate. I will update , with details tomorrow. ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

By Piskunov !

You are what you eat. Shabir is God.

First, TOUCHY !!! Why did you get so defensive, my dear friend ? Care to elaborate on the "infact the guy at the beer store thinks im a beer snob"?

Second, Tandoori ? Is that the best you can think of ? Pooh.

Third...Bleargh ! Enough procrastinating. I was wrong :'( about the "crude" thing ! I don't believe it ! Dibyayan is right ! I take back whatever I said about the complexity of beer - I really should have researched beer when I was writing about wine. Well, just goes to show that even I can be completely and absoloutely wrong sometimes. As for the snob ( read Dibyayan's comments ) comment... HELLO ! Debayan Gupta here ! As in free-stuff-is-my-domain, I-love-ITC, pseudo-snob-of-the-century Debayan Gupta...

Well, Dibyayan, as you have done me the great favour of pointing out my error, you have been nominated unanimously ( like in the case of Frank R. Stockton's semi-barbaric king, this means that I agree to it ) to be the one to correct this... this monstrous occurrence from happening again, ie., you have been given the great honour of being the one to correct my... misinformation. In other words, send me an e-mail with a detailed description of the different kinds of beer; please do this as expeditiously as possible. You already know all of my ususal Or Else Threats, and I can't exactly threaten you with Actual Bodily Harm from all the way here, so, let me see.. umm...er...AHA !!! Or Else I will send you photos of ... I hesitate to even type it.. let's just say it involves Fohshow, Rubidium, Shama, and ... the HORROR ! I can't type any more !!! You get the general gist of it...

Rakkun wa'azmerkal, Debayan Gupta.

Bon Vivant !

Some time ago, Dibyayan sent me a photo where he was drinking beer, of all things - at the time, my first thought was : " Beer ?!! You are what you drink; beer is... crude, at best. I must
send him some suggestions on what to drink."... my second thought was : " IIT "( to us, these three letters convey more meaning than most of Old Bill's sonnets.) . Now that I have finally found the time, here we go :

First things first :

• Aroma The smell (duh !)
• Aftertaste The flavour that lingers after swallowing
• Big Powerful aroma and flavour; full bodied.
• Body Weight and texture of a wine ( often refers to the alcohol content)
• Bouquet The complex aromas that develop as the wine ages. (The "aroma" is just an initial impression; the bouquet involves a far more detailed analysis )
• Delicate Light fragrance, flavour and body.
• Dry In which all the sugar has been converted to alcohol.
• Foxy The 'grapey wines made from the American grapes, Vitus labrusca.
• Full bodied Full proportion of both flavour and alcohol.
• Honest Without flaws, simple, but not excellent; a standard , or typical wine.
• Lively Crisp, fresh,etc. - this type of wine has a kind of...vitality, if you will.
• Mature Fully developed; ready to drink.
• Meaty Chewy, fleshy, fruity taste and texture; sturdy and firm in structure.
• Nose The overall smell of the wine - generally 'good' or an 'off'.
• Oxidised Flat or stale as a result of overexposure to air.
• Rich Full, opulent flavour, body and aroma.
• Robust Full bodied, powerful, heady.
• Silky Smooth, runs over the tongue, sinuous texture and finish.

The cultivation of wine can be traced back to several millenia before a man was nailed to a tree for suggesting that people should try to be nice to each other. The ancient Egyptians made wine, as did the Greeks, Romans - every major civilization that got past the tree-good-fire-bad stage explored the "celestial liquor". In the thirteenth century, the wines of Bordeaux were being shipped to England, and by the next, those of Spain and Portugal had also become widely available. India, however, suffered from the minor handicap of being a British "colony", which meant sky-high taxes, and consequently, low demand. Things have changed for the better, though - today, the Indian FoodGods list legendary procurers such as Marchesi Frescobaldi, Marchese Antinori and Algelo Gaja; noble houses such as the Cheval Yquem estates; fine wine producers such as Faively and Michel Laroche; the house of Gundel from Budapest, Great Australians like Torbreck and Clarendon Hills, established Napa Masters like Phelps, Mondavi and Caymus.

Many Indians suffer from the misconception that wine does not go with Indian food - the problem in question may be rephrased as : Does wine go with spices ? After all, the essence of Indian dishes is the multitude of spices used. The range of spices need not bog us down - a basic classification of their cooked form as subtle, soft or strong, is enough. For example, Turmeric would be classified as subtle, asafoetida, soft, while clove and cinnamon (and the famed garam masala they go into ) would be in the strong list. Not exactly Arun Sanyal level ;-)

Think for a minute of the ingredients of the dish - onions in dopyaaza, garlic in a lahsooni preparation and so on - if the intensity of the most persistent flavour can be harnessed with a
matched wine, ( the stronger the flavour, the younger and more robust the wine ) it will result in one heavenly ride. Remember, the strength is to enhance the taste, not try to overcome it - no wine can match good food.

En suite, classify the dish not ffor the presence or absence of meats ( white wine for white meats and red for red meats is absoloutely misleading ), but with regard to the style of preparation : roasting versus frying , or boiling, and the consequential change in texture, flavour and succulence of the food. Also influencing the equation are the actual ingredients - potatoes wil tone down the spiciness, crisp veggies add a different... facet, and the tanginess and texture of gravies and sauces are integral to the overall flavour of the food, and thus, the choice of the accompanying wine. Wines can be similarly classified, from elegant and light to medium bodied to full bodied and robust. However, serving a ricch wine with a rich dish may not always produce the desired effect as the two may clash cataclysmically in the mouth in a cacophany of flavours and lead to utter discord ( sorry, was just re-reading Auguries of Innocence ). Just like you wouldn't wear bright orange and electric blue together ( unless you are me, Lorne, or heading the Mardi Gras ), don't pair wines together because you like them individually.

I shall later post some combinations of dishes and wines that I have tried and enjoyed. Comment ! Vox populi, vox Dei, and all that...

- Yours ( NOT ! ) nayabed.

P.S. : Thanks to ITC WelcomGroup Hotels for Free Food, and Zest, and also a special thank you to Ira and Natane for all your help with this post ( and subsequent posts on the subject of wine ).

Delay

This is Abhishek Dasgupta writing on behalf of Debayan Gupta:

My ethernet card decided to become angry and blew up. So I am not able to access the Internet now :-(

Rorys

Well, I have been extremely .. busy is not the right word.. occupied... for the last few days - I was trying out notpron. There are 138 levels, and the object on each level is to somehow get to the next level using the clues on the page to find the URL of the next page, or the username and password required .The riddles are very addictive ( I'm on level 45 right now, and I came to know about the site the day before yesterday ) - many of them require the use of Photoshop ( in some cases an exif editor can be very handy - if you do not have one, you can just open the jpeg file in notepad and scroll for legible text, or maybe search for "city" or "location"), or in some cases, downloading the background music and in many other cases URL modification is needed and the sense uncommon in common man is absoloutely essential. If anyone wants hints - hints, NOT answers, I will not give out the answers outright - but, if you want hints, email me ( I might later put up the hints on the blog itself ). If you want the hints for a level, do not just send me the number - I do not have them memorized; send me a description of the page, or the URL, or the picture ( the last one is probably the best ). Levels get slightly challenging after level five or so, and although the increase in difficulty level is not completely uniform, on the whole, the riddles get harder as you go on.
I took Guru, Kunal and Rajat (a-z) to ITC Sonar Bangla Sheraton on Wednesday - we took a tour around the place, and had lunch at the Eden Pavillion ( free, as is usual with me and ITC )- the food was, as usual, excellent : all of us, except Rajat ( who had more dessert than actual food ) ate like Shabir. I asked Dasgupta to come, and later Swastik, but they couldn't make it. Oh well.
IMPORTANT NOTE : those of you who want short videos of school ( like Sharma teaching, or Arup asking Bijon " Aapnar love marriage na arranged marriage ? " ) - mail me.

Good(s) Bye(s), from, The Divine Kurta ( as my speech recognition software puts it ).

Yawn, etc.

I am very very bored. I am so bored that I am using short sentences. All of you who are reading this, if you have any ideas on how I can Conquer Boredom, mail me. PLEASE !!! ( kuzutsu@gmail.com ).
On completely unrelated news, my next door Rabindrasangeet fanatic has now taken to watching Goopi Gyne, Bagha Byne The Movie. Six times. Well, he's watching it again, so make that seven. My other neighbour ( who has enough diseases to kill about twenty elephants before rendering the twenty first one comatose ) has, for some reason, decided to go around trying to convince everyone to vote for CPI(M).
Anyway, I will be going to Eeshkul on Tuesday, so those of you who have any of my books, CDs, DVDs, or any other stuff that you have borrowed, or "borrow"ed, Bring Them Then.
- Tra Laa Laa, Debayan Gupta .

HURRAY ! ( and other exclamations expressing joy, etc. )

Cool...

The most evil IITs are now over. Finished. Finis. Done. Completed. Concluded. Over and Done With. No Longer There. You get the gist - No more Seebeck, Wurtz or L'Hopital, no more Hanshpatal treatment : It has been observed that taking the IIT examination is, for the student, an experience remarkably like undergoing major surgery - You are pampered, but not allowed to eat anything but stew, or go out ( in case you catch a cold) when you are at the examination hall (the operation theatre) your parents stand outside all day, and all your relatives call to wish you and ( in some cases ) console you. Thankfully, my own examinations were quite satisfactory ( except for the time in the Physics examination when I found my desk full of broken glass, from the nearby window, and due to the invigilators incompetence, lost about seven to ten minutes, after which the fellow spent nearly five minutes ascertaining that my signature was, in fact, mine. I have already reported the fool, and if I have my way... but what's done is done, and expect my Physics marks to be a bit below par, since, effectively, ten to twelve minutes were wasted - oh well, I have no intention of going to IIT anyway - if I leave Kol, then there is no way I'm staying in India - I mean, its my Matribhumi and all, but COME ON ! HONESTLY !

Enough talk about IIT - now onto Good News : (i) I'll be visiting SXC within the next week, (ii) I will indulge in a massive book buying BOOM in College Street within the next few days - I have not bought any new books in the last two or three months.. OKAY, so I sneaked out and bought two, or four, but ...no SIGNIFICANT purchases - nothing above 250 or 300 ! HAPPY ? #_#... anyway, so I have about 7500 to spend, and college street is bibliophile Heaven !!!

Mbwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, etc, Debayan Gupta

P.S. : Comment, or I shall unleash the Unimaginable Horror of a recording MriGos singing ! Bwhahahahaha !

IMPORTANT NOTE : As, for some reason I cannot edit my old post, here is a
Gleba Message : Thank you very much, Dibyayan and Ira. I have fixed the mistake. Yes, it was a mistake. " b-o-o-K-s and not b-o-o-B-s , etc.

Fanfiction

Mbleh ! Preparing for IIT's is a real... female dog ( My mother is in the room ) and so , I was just reading a few fanfics, ( ffnet, ficwad, aff , etc. ) and I saw an old link in my favourites section, which I had not touched in quite a while ( those of you who know me know why this is - the link was located in Leisure/Reading/Fanfics/Others ) and decided to check out the link before deleting it , and it turned out to be the coolest ffsite I've seen - most of my favourite authors are there , and although I'm already part of most of their individual Yahoo! groups, this site provides easy access, and al LOT of excellent fanfiction. http://www.fanficauthors.net/

Bye, Debayan Gupta .

The Big Crunch !!!

And Thus Ends the Big Bong !

This is a wall. It is made up of bricks and cement. I am losing

my creativity at dC/dt= Dr. Arun Sanyal 's IQ .

TADA !!! Bengali examinations are over, and thus ends the horror that is ISC... for those among you who are not acquainted with the vile workings of this council most evil, the ISC is a collective venture of some of the most sadistic carbon based bipeds ( and some who are unquestionably alien creatures - I am saying that they're alien ; Dasgupta agrees with me, so that's that ! ) that ever walked, or in some cases, waddled on planet Earth ( for directions check old post on location of Earth. It's Mostly Harmless. ), which seeks to take over our planet by ensuring that the next generation of humans will be mindless zombies, using a long term brainwashing method called "education".I have already made a ( rather small ) bonfire using some of my school books ( those of you who know me can understand how bad these books must be for me to do this ; for those who do not know me , I am a bibliophile, bookworm , gronthokeet, etc. : I LOVE boobs. ), which my mother found disagreeable for some reason - I mean, WHY, in the name of every obscure deity known to exist, would anyone want to keep such horriffying texts inside the house ? King has nothing on these stories - you read one of his books, and you get a thrill, and you'll be a little ... alert for the next couple of days. You read " Shabek Monushatta aar Haler Shine Kora " and " Shopnodorshon Biddabishoyok " and you'll be scarred for life... let me put it this way - on the DisgustoHorrifiMeter, they rank just under being permanently painted pink and just above witnessing a showering Sharma. ( Yes, I really, REALLY hate Pink. ).IIT preparations purodome cholche, I spent all of yesterday solving practice papers from Brilliant Tutorials and doing other such depressing stuff.
I am really sorry about the long wait, but it was unavoidable - IIT studies are very time consuming, and I have been...persuaded to lower myself to the henious task of learning band theory and colloids ( in the past few minutes ) and other such vile stuff of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics as nightmares are made on, and our massive syllabus is rounded with an examination. Pathetic, really, look at me, reduced to quoting from something as mundane as Shakespeare, instead of say, something of Maurice Leblanc or Shashi Tharoor, or Kenzaburo Oe or Yasunari Kawabata, or even Wislawa Szymborska or GGM - sad.. just sad. I think I'm turning into a Vogon.

-Bye, Debayan Gupta .

Algebra Simplified

Hall and Knight

or 'z + b + x = y + b + z'

When he was young his cousins used to say of Mr Knight:

'This boy will write an algebra - or looks as if he might.'

And sure enough, when Mr Knight had grown to be a man,

He purchased pen and paper and an inkpot, and began.
But he very soon discovered that he couldn't write at all,

And his heart was filled with yearnings for a certain Mr Hall;

Till, after many years of doubt, he sent his friend a card:

'Have tried to write an Algebra, but find it very hard.'
Now Mr Hall himself had tried to write a book for schools,

But suffered from a handicap: he didn't know the rules.

So when he heard from Mr Knight and understood his gist,

He answered him by telegram: 'Delighted to assist.'
So Mr Hall and Mr Knight they took a house together,

And they worked away at algebra in any kind of weather,

Determined not to give up until they had evolved

A problem so constructed that it never could be solved.
'How hard it is', said Mr Knight, 'to hide the fact from youth

That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!'

'It is', said Mr Hall, 'but if we gave a b to each,

We'd put the problem well beyond our little victims' reach.
'Or are you anxious, Mr Knight, lest any boy should see

The utter superfluity of this repeated b?'

'I scarcely fear it', he replied, and scratched this grizzled head,

'But perhaps it would be safer if to b we added z.'
'A brilliant stroke!', said Hall, and added z to either side;

Then looked at his accomplice with a flush of happy pride.

And Knight, he winked at Hall (a very pardonable lapse).

And they printed off the Algebra and sold it to the chaps.

-- E. V. Rieu

Well, well, well, what do we have here ? As far as I am concerned, ( and as far as just about every student is concerned ) , "accomplice" is just the right word.

Mbleh ! I have been the victim of conspiracy most vile : for whatever reason, all the text that I view on a web page has been reduced to Times New Roman size 8, and I cannot open my own blog page - I can go to the Dashboard, etc., but everytime I go to http://nayabed.blogspot.com , This happens :

What in the name of Irodov, Piskunov, and Finar is going on ?

403 error ? I am forbidden from viewing my own blog ? for(int i=0;i<32767;i++)cout<<"?";

Holy Holi and 420 + websites

Please excuse the pathetically pitiful pun. Due to circumstances beyond my control (much as I hate to admit it ) , I am not anywhere near my creative best. Computer theory examinations are over, and all that is left now, is Bengali.

A cross-section of my brain.

( The language I use proves this statement.)

Mbwhahahahahahahahha... Well, I am currently studying for my IITJEE examinations, which are... let me put it this way : to compare an A level exam to IIT would be to compare a morderately sized puddle to the Pacific. Both are water bodies, but... ( notice how many "..."s I'm using ? This is what too many examinations do to your creativity. )
The IIT exams are..."The IIT entrance exam is not really an Engineering aptitude test. It is a difficult exam, simply because the test is based entirely on a syllabus which is "out of reach" for the average A-level student. The IIT entrance exam is based almost entirely on questions taken out from the first-year engineering syllabus. The "eco-system" that has evolved around the IIT entrance exam specialises in preparing you to cram and regurgitate the first year engineering syllabus. One can set an even more difficult exam, by fairly limiting the syllabus of the exam to whatever the students have studied up to the average A-level across the country, but the IIT entrance examiners take the lazy way out and take perverse pleasure by making the test difficult simply based on a syllabus "out of reach" of the average student. If one takes a look at the American entrance test used uniformly by all undergraduate universities across America, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). The SAT is based entirely on the high school syllabus, and is a true "aptitude" test having a proportionate share of questions more tougher than any of the IIT entrance exam setter can dream of." - Not entirely true, but I'm harbouring a lot of hatred for the IIT right now, so ... I'm just basking in the satisfaction that comes when you shout at something you really, really don't like.

I have spent the last 24 hours running and hiding from those obnoxious brats that are my neighbours' children : celebrating Holi is quite all right, but I draw the line at trying to colour me purple and pink. I managed to finish about half of my Physics syllabus today from H R W , witnessed some horrifying "entertainment" on television - The only morderately good thing was Chronicles of Riddick, but weigh that against shows on the nocturnal habits of different kinds of sloths and massive, hour long "shows" which are actually trying to sell you stuff : They were trying to sell an anti -evil eye poendant on the History Channel today. I mean HONESTLY ! Anti-nazar ( evil eye) pendant ? I can tolerate religious zeal, but hello ? 2006 here ? What really scares me is that people are actually buying this stuff - and these people, for the most part are not uneducated ; most of these people have degrees, good jobs, money, and , apparently, enough stupidity to keep all of that in equilibrium.
Notice : Please do NOT mail me any more invites to weird, uninteresting, and completely pathetic sites like namesdatabase, bingbox and hi5 : Yes, they might be very nice, and you might get to know a lot of people, but there is no privacy whatsoever : exempli gratia, the namesdatabase site is owned by opobox ( even the name is all o's and x's ), part of whose so called "Privacy" staatements reads : You grant Opobox a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free right to (a) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat Your Information in any media now known or not currently known, and (b) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Opobox will not pay you for Your Information. Opobox reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit Your Information, but does not regularly review Your Information.
The third page is worse : it has six addresses which you HAVE to fill in, which will be used for "non-commercial" purposes, and if you do not fill one in, or give them an address they already have, you are forced to fill it in again till you give a satisfactory entry. Its horrifying. See this blog conversation. Even the more trustworthy sites like Google are being forced to release information to the bloody US government, and these sites are basically doing legally what professional conmen do outside the eye of the law.

On the brighter side of Today, I found some great movie bloopers and re-read Samit Basu's New Year Post as well as this great post. Just go to his blog http://samitbasu.blogspot.com/ and check out the Archives - I found out about the Lightning Thief from there a long time ago, and I like anybody who can recommend a good book to me ( which I haven't read yet ) .

Well, now that THAT's done with, Happy Holi !
- Bye, Mbleh !

And There He Stands, As if Alive...

If you have no idea what the title means, click it.

And Here's Dibyayan...

The Big(?) Eight

His Next Duchess ?

Same Question, I'm Afraid...

Is that Beer ?

Well, I asked Dibyayan to send me some photos from way-over-there, place-outside-the-Indian-education-system, too-many-hyphens, etc. , and he obliged, but, he has decided to keep his friends' names to himself, saying " Maybe i'll include them depending on the interest received overseases " ( HA! Take that Dibyayan ! Criticising my ungrezi indeed ! Graumph! ).
Oh, and by the way, check out Dibyayan's List Of Titles : Dibyayan (Dev) Basu, Co-op Management Finance Specialist, University of Toronto 2009, MESA Financial Experience (FinEX) Volunteer. (Wipes Tear) Just 18, and he's got half the alphabet after him. It seems like just yesterday that he was jumping up and down shouting "treat" during breaktime. The Wheel turns.

Xavier's College has at last, become autonomous, and is now offering two new courses - Astrophysics and an integrated Biotech course ( Which just happens to satisfy the criteria for getting a Rs.1200000 grant from the state ). SXCS, as is usual where FohShow is involved, is steadily sinking deeper into intellectual depression .

- Bye, Debayan Gupta .

P.S. : Did you know? :

(i) In France, it is illegal for a person to kiss another on railways.

(ii) In Quebec, Canada, an old law states that margarine must be a different colour than butter.

(iii) Anssi Vanjoki, a director of the Finnish telecommunications giant, Nokia, was caught on his Harley motorcycle, doing 47mph in a 31mph zone. His fine was calculated at 14 days of his average income in 1999, which worked out to 116,000 Euros ($148,573US today), the record fine at that time. But wait! You know how the technology market is up and down. Well, Vanjoki petitioned the court for a reduction in the fine, because his 1999 earnings were based on large share options that he had cashed in at the end of the year. A subsequent drop in the market, meant a big dip in his income the next year. He ended up paying only 5% of the original fine. Vanjoki's case apparently didn't serve as a warning to others, because in February of 2004, another fast Finn felt the fickle finger of fine fate. Jussi Salonoja, the 27-year old heir to his family's sausage business, was also nabbed for doing 80kph in a 40kph zone. The fine? A new record- 170,000 Euros, or $217,736 in today's US dollars. The amount was based on tax records that showed his earnings in 2002, amounted to $13,243,279.

P.P.S. : Comment, or I will unleash upon the world the horrors of Sharma's failed love poetry ! Mbwhahahahahaha !