sexypablo’s blog

The Thai government have allowed a new human zoo.  It features long-necked women.  The fair is held in Sattahip in Bankok.  There are criticism around the world about this exploitative tourism.  The residents are part of the ethnic group whose women wear brass rings around their neck.  This is studied by the anthropologists as a cultural trait.  This is a status symbol to those who wear them.  They are called Padung or long-necked Karen in Thailand.  But they consider them denigrating and call them "Kayan." 

Seven Kayan villages are already marketed as the tourism attractions in Thailand!!!  They are located in the northern provinces of Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai.  Some people living in these villages are resident of Myanmar.  A new village has been opened in the Chonburi province, 100 km south-east of Bankok and a few kilometers from the Pattaya beach resort.  An entrance fee will be charged costing 25 baht for Thai visitors and 250 baht for foreigners!!!  See the foreigners are charged so high!  For seeing long neck/throat, they are going to cut your throat I mean pocket he he !!!!  But Sattahip district chief Narong Thirchantarangkoon brushed off this accusation of opening a human zoo.  He thinks that the Karen are willingly living there.  He thinks that this place is helping them to live a better life rather than starving.  The rings weigh 10 kg or more and over the years this pushes down their shoulders and collar bones.  Just think of it folks!!! A life long harness!!! This makes their neck longer.  This women came to Thailand as refugees and now they are lured to the border camp where the unscrupulous Thai businessmen use them for money making them a commodity to be displayed to the tourists who watch them with amazement!!!

In 1924, Frederick Micahell-Hedges, a banker turned adventurer went in search of the lost continent called Atlantis in the Central American Jungle.  It turned out to be a sculpted human skull curved in bock of translucent quartz crystal.  His daughter toured the world until her death at the age of 100 in 2007.  She claimed she experienced strange sensations on touching the skull.  She had dreams of ancient Mayan rituals at night!!!

This skull has been dubbed the "Skull of Doom"  It has some supernatural power.  I was an anthropology student and handled lots of skulls in the laboratory of anthropology in Bangabasi College, Kolkata but never experienced such a thing!  I should thank God for that!!  Anyway, lets come to the point!  This artifact was 3600 years old!!  This artifacts have been looked for never have been proven to exist or have been proven to have the powers that have been ascribed to them.   George Lucas thinks that there are people who believe in it!  The experts doubted whether the origin of the skull is Aztec.  One of the specimen is found in British Museum and the other can be found at Smithsonian Institute. 

A skull at the Quai Branly museum was acquired in 1878 from Alphonse Pinart.  It is an Aztec Masterpiece hundreds of years old!!  The museum now thinks that the skull belonged to 19^th century rather than the Aztec period!  The Paris skull to be exhibited on May 20, 2008 represents the Aztecs' Mictlantecuhtli.  He reigned over the land of the deceased, Mictlan.  According to a fable, reuniting the 12 existing skulls plus a skull supposed to exist 13^th could prevent the earth from tipping over!!!    The Quai Branly said that the result of the skull analysis on 2007-08 states the skull is from 19^th century!!!!  The London skull was examined twice and found to be fake.  It was examined in 1996 and 2004.  The final conclusions have not been made public.  Though no crystal skull found in the archeological digouts prove to be authentic, the 12 located around the world continue to arouse interest and speculation among the archeologists and critics!!

An designer in London created a jacket.  The jacket changes color when the cyclist applies brakes!!  It has won a prize money of 6000 pounds in an international design competition.  Michael Chen designed this cycling jacket at an age of 28!  I would love to thank Mr. Chen for his invention!  A chameleon like thing, isn't it?  He has designed the Reactiv cycle jacket.  It has built-in brake lights and indicators.  He got top honors at the James Dyson international design awards in New York.  He invented this jacket just to feel safer in the busy streets of London! 

The jacket works using an accelerometer to sense movement.  It can change the color of LEDs fitted in the jacket.  The LEDs turn green while accelerating!  It changes to red when braking, it is wonderful, isn't it..??????  There is a tilt switch which makes the LEDs in the arm to flash amber when the wearer tilts the arm to indicate a turn. 

An amazing thing is happening in Southern Chile!  A glacial lake is swelling and then empty suddenly sending "tsunami" rolling through the river.  Fortunately no one was injured as it is a remote region!  Gino Casassa is a glacial scientist.  He observed the Colonia Glacier is melting and he blamed it on the rising world temperature, filled the Crachet Lake and increased the pressure of the ice sheet.  The water bored a 5-mile tunnel through the glacier.  It finally emptied into the Baker river on April 6.  Casassa studied from the Center for Scientific Studies in southern city of Valdivia.  He found that it is a real river tsunami.  He observed that the mass of water moved against the current of the river!  The lake was again full by late Wednesday.  The temperature was unusually high in the recent Southern Hemisphere Summer.  It is a phenomenon that occurs in the summer season.  The basic cause behind this is the global warming. 

The Tempano Lake in Chile's Bernardo O'Higgins National Park abruptly disappeared in 2007.  It has recovered some of its volume!  NASA's top climate scientist states this and the fossil fuel industries are hiding it as they think that it will create panic among people around the world!  James Hansen, director of NASA thinks that we had already reached a dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  But he thinks that there are ways to solve this problem.  The CO2 has reached the tipping point of 385 parts per million!

In human society, the most handsome guys can win a girl's love.  This does not apply to Anopheles gambiae mosquito.  In the mosquito world, the average sized male seemed to get the most attention.  The research on mosquito in Tanzania at the Ifakara Health Research Center enclosed 30 males of varying sizes to compete for the attention of 10 females. 

The scientist observed that average-sized males had sex 6 times more as often as the biggest males and twice as often as the smaller ones. 

This highlights that the size of the body does not matter in sex life in mosquito world.  The average mosquito gets more attention than those larger in size!!!

In a human society, you will see beautiful girls pairing up and roaming with not so handsome guys.  You will find that ugly girls roaming with handsome guys!  Opposites attract!  In physics, we all know like poles repel and unlike poles attract each other (laws of magnetism), isn't it?

Every year we celebrate Durga Puja in the month of
October.  It starts with Saptami, then
Asthami, Nabami and finally Dashami.  On
the last day, the idol of the highly respected Goddess is immersed in the water
of Ganges! 
We enjoy this occasion.  A lot of
people come on this auspicious occasion to city to visit the pandals.  We go to relatives houses at the time of
Durga Puja within the periphery of Kolkata. 
We buy new clothes before the puja stock finishes!  We get bonus and enjoy our puja to the
fullest to make every puja day a memorable moment in life.

Businessmen take this opportunity and sell goods at
discount.  Branded T-shirts like Koutons
and Big Bazaar offer special discount for more sales and thereby more
profit.  Many companies offer prizes for
the best performing puja.  Some of the
notable companies are Asian Paints, Berger Paints, Shalimar Paints, etc.  Many insurance companies award prizes to the
clubs for their arrangement in the puja. 
In this way, Durga puja has turned out to be profitable for the
organizers and also for the business class whose awards and presence in the
advertisements around the pandals increased their contact with the common
people.

Many people sell goods. 
Some people sell toys.  Some sell
foods.  Fast food center spring up like
mushrooms during the puja.  You will ask
me why I am writing these obvious things. 
The purpose of this writing is make you aware that the Durga puja has
moved far beyond what our parents or grand parents thought it to be.  The grand parents saw the puja as a religious
occasion.  Gradually the popularity risen
and the radio channels provide programs.

The program of Mahalay of Birendra Krishna Bhadra is still
regarded unique by the Bengalis and there has been no substitute to this
wonderful program.  It is a program where
the direction of the program is still regarded as unique and highly recommended
by top radio artists like Jagannath Basu who has appreciated the program.  He has given 100% viewer satisfaction ratings
to the program.  He felt that without
this program and according to many listeners of this radio show that the Durga
Puja is incomplete without this memorable program.  Radio in the morning starting at 4 p.m. has
become a habit for the Bengali devotional program lovers.  Even who do not watch or listen to the
program listen to this show every year. 

Advertisement has become a great source of income to the
puja organizer.  Now the pandal is made
with bamboo and rope and outside the structure comes the skill of the artists
who conceive beautiful South Indian temples, Igloos, White House, old temples
in Bengal, etc.  One pandal in South Kolkata exhibited dances
of various types in India
among the tribes.  There are beautiful
idols of tribal man and woman in their dancing dress and the pattern of dance
prevalent among the tribe is written in Bengali.  It is wonderful to see a cave where Goddess
Durga is posing in a stylish way.  Such
goddesses are found more in Bhawanipore of Kolkata.  There are a large advertisements around the
pandals like the Badamtola Ashar Sangha where an organization of Mithun
Chakraborty, a famous Tollywood actor, organizes a beautiful puja worth
observing every year.  There are
beautiful structures of pandals in South Kolkata
and the beauty of the Goddess Durga in various forms in different settings is a
center of attraction among the young and old.

Durga puja has reached outside in different states.  It has reached many people outside India.  In those places, the devotion is the same,
people love to worship Maa Durga and take her blessings in the same Indian
style hiring some Indian priests.  It is
wonderful to see how the religion binds people from all castes. 

Now I am going to tell you something about pandal hopping
and watching the puja through internet and television.  I have got 2 days off in this month of
October.  I work in a back office where
you all know we work with America
and in our case, hospitals are our clients. 
So keeping both sides, the company gave us 2 off days instead of 4 off
days.  I got off on Saptami and Astami.

On the morning of Saptami, i.e. October 6, 2008, I went out
from my house at 1:30 p.m. and went to see Mohd. Ali Park and College Square
pujas.  These 2 pujas are
spectacular.  I went to see
Badamtola.  On October 7, after giving my
puspanjali, I saw puja of Bhawanipore and some other places.  I went to Rabindra Sarovar and saw some
pandals.  I went to see the puja of
Belgachia, which is walking distance from my house.  The name of the puja is Belgachia Sarbojonin
Durgotsav.  I saw my puja and visited the
pandal very close to my home.  The name
of the puja is Madhya Paikpara Sarbojonin Durga Puja.  I saw the puja with zeal and I gave
puspanjali along with my neighborhood friends in Astami.  I felt lucky to have off on that day.  I gave the puspanjali and had my breakfast.

I went to see the pujas on these 4 days of Durga puja with
enthusiasm and wearing my new clothes I bought from the K.C. Dass of
Shyambazar. This shop with its shopping mall look and 3 floors provide
fashionable clothes at all prices of men, women and children.  The quality of dress is good and
longlasting.  It provides the ideal
atmosphere of shopping. 

The puja of Madhya Paikpara is well performed with efficient
men who provide "bhog" of khichuri and sweets to the devotees who donate during
the pujas.  The puja pandal this time is
designed in the form of terracotta temple
of Bengal.  The idol of Goddess Durga is big.  The face of the Goddess just like the
previous years is very charming and attractive! 
In the park, the puja is held in the center.  There are different food stalls and ice cream
stalls.  The park is beautifully
decorated with lights.  It is located
over Northern Avenue.  The name of the park is Northern Park.  This park is prepared before one month.  One of the small gate have been sealed and
the railings have been renovated.  The
club arranges many music shows in this beautiful occasion to make the puja
evenings of Saptami, Astami, Navami purely musical!  Music adds charm to the occasion of Durga
puja. 

During the Durga Puja, the park of Belgachia
is wonderfully decorated with lights.  A
big pandal is made and the fair held in this park stays till Lakshmi Puja.  The Durga Puja in this park has a fair where
soft toys, prickles, jams, jellies, wonderful toys, food items, nagor dolla,
different types of game shows, etc. entertain the minds of the young and the
old visitors.  The fair in this park of Belgachia adds attraction to this Durga
Puja.  A lot of people make their living
making good business till Laksmi Puja. 
It is the blessing of Maa Durga that this puja is going on from my
period of consciousness peacefully in a well organized way.  The spirit of Durga Puja is well maintained
with low volume speakers making the atmosphere even more heavenly!

My office on Navami and Dashami on the 8 and 9 October have
not spoiled the puja.  It was a morning
shift and I left my office early to enjoy the puja and returned home.  On the day of Dashami, I was missing my mom
and dad as they both went to Gopalpur in Orissa for 5 days to avoid the hustle
and bustle of the city life in the puja time. 
Gopalpur is a wonderful place beside the sea. 

Durga Puja is a festival which lasts for 4 days, but its
memories last quite long.  It is a
festival which is awaited by  the young
and the old.  It is a puja which fills
your mind as you visit from one puja pandal to another and feel the environment
created by the prize winning pujas of South and North
Kolkata.  The Durga Puja is
a wonderful occasion where you love to do photography with your favorite
camera.  It is not important whether the
camera is digital or ordinary.  It is
important to have the passion of taking photos which gives your photos a human
touch.  You feel great when you get the
printed photos of the puja.  Well, what
is the photography?  A photograph is a
moment frozen.  It is a particular moment
frozen in a 2D-frame.  You become excited
when you see the photo is suggesting something more than what you expected it
to be!  When you observe a photo, you
will see its talking!  Just like a human
being, a photo can tell you a story. 
Photos taken during the durga puja time and published on the net can
help you share your feelings about the almighty Goddess Durga!!

Monastery of Moghalmari in West
Midnapore

Archeologists have dug out a 30 foot high mound in a village of West Bengal.  It may yield one of the biggest archeological
finds.  It is the remains of a
monastery.  This monastery is mentioned
in Hueng Tsang's memoirs.  The monastery
dates back to 7 th century.  This was the
time when Tsang came to India.  This site is in Moghalmari in West Midnapore.  It
is 5 km from Dantan.

The excavation is being carried out by the department of
archeology in Calcutta
University and it has
been partly funded by the Archeological Survey of India.  Hueng Tsang had visited Bengal
in the reign of Sasanka.  He wrote in
detail about Tamralipta.  This 30 foot
mound was called Sakhisena by the local people. 
It is the stuff of local legend.  This
project has been backed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research.  The experts wanted to find the
ancient navigation routes.

The key finds from this site are as follows:

1.  Cells measuring
2.5m x 2 m along all sides of the building which opened to a central courtyard.

2.  A rare Buddha
stone sculpture.

3.  Some seals of post
Gupta era.

4.  Gandhar style of
ornamentation.

Now I am going to tell you about the uniqueness of this
site:

1.  The design on the
walls are made of stucco, a kind of lime sand plaster used to cover buildings.

2.  The length of one
site is the largest 61 meters, one of the largest in the country.

3.  It may be one of
the Buddhist monasteries Hueng Tsang visited.

Asok Datta opined that the local people showed them hundreds
of artifacts and statues of stone, stucco, and terracotta that they had
collected for generations.  These
precious relics adorn their homes, schools, libraries etc.  The excavations prove that it is one of the
largest monasteries of the eastern India.  The most exciting thing about the find is
that the discovery of a rare Buddha stone sculpture from the stratified
context.  I am going to tell you what is
strata.  When you are digging the soil,
the soils have layers and each layer can be distinguished by the mineral
content and the color of the soil.  So
the archeologists name the strata and mention the finds obtained from those
strata.  Being a student of anthropology,
I feel this discovery of the monastery in Midnapore will throw more light on
the history of the region and we will probably come to know more about
Buddhism.  Asiatic Society is documenting
this project.

On October 12, 2008, I went to Indian  Museum of Kolkata.  It is located in Park Street.  This museum has a large number of
archeological, anthropological exhibits that has always amazed visitors far and
wide.  Many foreigners come to this
museum.  Many people outside Kolkata come
to this museum.  I visited this museum on
Sunday.  I had the opportunity to visit
this museum in the afternoon.  My office
allowed me to get out quite early from the scheduled  timing of 5:30  p.m. 
The shift today started at 7:30 p.m. Due to low volume, the office
allowed us to leave during lunch time. 

I entered the museum buying a ticket of Rs. 10.  I kept my bags to the security.  The bag was passed through a scanner.  I was given a token and another token was
attached to the bag.  I kept the bag in
the shelf.  I took a water bottle and a
note book and pen to note down the items that really amazed me.  Now I am going to tell you about the
galleries that really amazed me and some of the items which are worth sharing
with you.  I had the opportunity of
visiting this museum many times before. 
Sometimes the occasion was my zoology field work, sometimes I casually
came, sometimes I came with my parents, every time there is a sweet memory and an
amazement attached to it.  This museum is
so big that you can only visit a few galleries thoroughly.  You have to come again and again and you feel
you are in a totally different world!  As
you enter the fossils gallery, you are lost in the prehistoric dinosaur
age.  As you enter the zoology gallery,
you are lost in some Amazonian jungle. 
As you enter the Egyptian gallery, you are lost among the mystical
pyramids of ancient Egypt.  As you enter the paintings gallery, you are
lost in the sea of works of art that will amaze you!  Each and every time "Wow!" factor is
common! 

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FOSSILS!!!!

The fossils notable in this gallery are as follows:

1. Melursus
   theobnaldi (Kangra).
2. Stegodon
   insignis (Potwar)
3. Mastodon
   longirostris (Miocene ' 2^nd upper molar).
4. Gharialis
   curvirostris (Sind)
5. Amblypterus
   symmetricus (Carboniferous — 360-245 million years ago) (Jammu and Kashmir).
6. Fish
   Vertebra (Lower Siwaliks — Punjab)
7. Phyllotillon
   haricus (Gujarat).
8. Phyllotillon
   naricus (Gujarat).
9. Equus
   sivalensis (horse —premaxilla?Narmada
   Valley —Geological
   age-Pleistocene?1.6 to 0.1 million years).
10. Hippohyas
    lyddekeri (skull with shattered teeth—Hasnot, Punjab, Pakistan).
11. Deinotherium
    pentapotamiae (elephant?Kusalagas).
12. Hydaspitherium
    megacephilum (middle Siwalik)
13. Sivatherium
    gigantium (Siwalik Hills).

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FOREIGN
TERTIARY BIRDS!!!

The fossils notable in this
gallery re as follows:

1. Diornis
   sp. (New Zealand
   ' Protopliocene).
2. Cremiornis
   calcitrans (Proto-pliocene?New
   Zealand).
3. Diornis
   lidiformis (New Zealand).
4. Diornis
   elephantopus (giant flightless bird in New Zealand).
5. Hippopotamus
   sivalensis (Potwar district, Pakistan— 3 lower molars).
6. Hippopotamus
   irravadicus (Punjab).
7. Baluchitherium
   osborni (Giant Extinct Rhinoceros).

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF STONE
SCULPTURES!!!!

The stone sculpture exhibited in
the museum are as follows:

1. 
Kalpadruma (Pillar capital- Sunga- second century BC?Besnagar Madhya
Pradesh).

2. 
Buddha (10 th century, Bihar,
Kurkihar).

3. 
Buddha (Pala School, 10 century Bodhgaya, Bihar).

4. 
Avalokiteshvara (Pala School, 9 th century AD, Suraj Kund, Nalanda, Bihar).

5. 
Varahavatara.

6. 
Tara (Orissa, 10 century, Lalitagiri).

7. 
Revanta (Orissa 10 century, Lalitagiri).

8. 
Jambhala (10 century, Bihar).

9. 
Composite Image of Surya and Shiva (13 century, Konark, Orissa).

10.  Buddha in Bhumisparsha Mudra (10-11 century).

11.  Architave Scenes from Buddha life (6^th
century, Sarnath, Bihar).

12.  Fintal of Stupa Jina attended by elephant (11
century AD, Madhya Pradesh).

13.  Architectural Fragment Mahishashuramardini.

14.  Brahma and other deities (Sen School, 12 th
century AD, Gaur, WB).

15.  Elephants in a row Belvedere (10 century AD).

16.  Elephants and sword bearer (13 th century,
Konark Orissa).

17.  Vishnu (Pala school, 10 century, Bihar).

18.  Surya (Pala school, Bihar,
9 th century).

19.  Nine planets and 10 incarnations of Vishnu
(11 th century, Bihar).

20.  Gorgoyle Makara (11^th century Bihar).

21.  Mukhalinga
Temple (Bihar,
pala school, 11^th century).

22.  Purnakamtha and Krittimukha (11 century, Bihar).

23.  Temple door (Gupta school, 6 th century,
Bodhgaya Bihar).

24.  Votive Stupa (Pala school 11^th
century).

25.  Buddha foot print (Pala school 11 th century,
Bodh Gaya, Bihar).

26.  Fossil tree (Dadoxylon sp. 250 million years
ago, found in Asansol, West Bengal, in 1924 during construction of railway
line?original length 28.36 m, 22.25 m preserved length.).

To be continued ..

The recent incident of Karthik Rajaram shooting his family members and then shooting himself also is really shocking.  This shows how stressful is life!  Karthik used to live in Los Angeles.  He bought a gun on September 16.  He was one time financial wizard.  He wrote 2 suicide notes and will.  He killed his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons!  You may have some financial crisis but can you do such a heinous crime?  You can't as a devil was residing inside Mr. Rajaram.  So he had done as he wanted to end everything!  This shows that there is a panic in the urban community in the US.  Los Angeles police deputy chief Michel Moore thinks that they should take steps in the times of financial crisis.  Rajaram once made 1.2 million dollar in a single deal in a London based venture fund.  But this stock market collapse recently has made him miserably poor!  So he could not stand by the financial pressure.  The family had 2 cars, a Chevrolet Suburban SUV and a Lexus.  They lived in Portar Ranch in a Spanish-style neighborhood.  Rajaram was a highly qualified, an MBA from the University of California.  His got profit 70 times his capital!!  Can you even think of it?  He was such a wise man!  It was equivalent to 1.2 million dollars!!!!  Just imagine the amount he earned through his wise investment!!

Financial crises may come and go but you have to be mentally stable.  If you invest in stock market, it is better you invest in small amount for a long period of time!  Let it grow!  If you see market is down, then do not invest.  Just wait and if the market is up then sell it!  Even the experts of CNBC and other channels may never know when a stock will be up and when they will be down!  They only speculate!

The financial crisis in America is seen after the World Trade Center attack on September 11.  It was seen in the recent crash of the giant Lehman Brothers!  Those who have invested heavily suffer a big loss.  It is important to tackle the financial loss.  It is important to accept the reality that there might be loss also.  You can't always make profit!  Life is a game, if one wins, the other loses.  You have to accept the fact that you have lost.

Tata took the decision of going away from West Bengal.  I think this is a wise decision.  This should have been taken much before investing a penny in West Bengal.  The political atmosphere in West Bengal is not fit for industry set up.

For example, in the back office industry, where I am working since 3 years, I see no big companies coming here.  The big medical transcription companies are Worldtech, Focus Infosys, etc.  The companies based on Hyderabad and Bangalore are unlikely to set up their branches in a better way in the near future.  They are not going to invest here as there are strikes and the working atmosphere is not congenial for work!

Now I am going to take you to the greener pasture where Tata is going to set up its Nano Factory in West Bengal.  The spot is called Sanand.  It is 35 km west of Ahmedabad.  The area of land is 1100 acres.  The land is owned by Anand Agricultural University.  The land was used for cattle farming.  I think this is the ideal land for factory set up.  As it is not used by man for agriculture as in Singur.  Tata should have selected such a land instead of trying to set up a factory over an agricultural land.  The decision itself was not wise.  They should not have listened to our Chief Minister for setting up the factory.  They have lost crores of rupees for compensation to these poor farmers.  The gain was made by the farmers whose land was taken for factory set up.

Now the big question is what will be done with the land where the factory is half made.  The land could not be used for agriculture.  So a land wastage, isn't it?

The place in Ahmedabad where the factory is going to set up is close to airport.  It is near the Mumbai-Delhi highway.  Rajkot is near it, only 225 km away, is an ancillary hub.

Gujrat has been a very busy industrial spot of India.  I think the working environment is much better.  You open a geography book!  You will industry of all types are set up there!  Big companies have built factories for its production.  I think there the industry gets the opportunity of growth.  So businessmen throng there for more money!!  In the words of Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujrat, "You are stupid if you do not invest in Gujrat."