varnam

In an article about Santosh George, who could be India's first space tourist, PTI writes

He will pay around Rs 1 crore for the two-hour-flight on SpaceShip Two but there will be no landing on another planet. The tourists will experience zero gravity and re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.[President meets India's would-be first space tourist]

Imagine the disappointment of Santosh George, when he knows that he cannot get off at Saturn as planned. Seriously, how old is the person who wrote the PTI  article and how old is the Rediff editor who approved it?

That was a question from the first Republican debate held in the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Among the 10 candidates, the people who raised their hands to say that they do not believe in evolution are Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo (who?).

These people want to be the President of a county which  decoded the DNA, and the country which has the largest number of Nobel Prize winners. People in India and China, leaders of Tom Friedman's flat world, would think this is one of those late night comedy sketches.

When you see the word, Christian Conservative in the website of any candidate, you should be scared.

Mini-continent discovered

A mini-continent that was formerly joined to India has been discovered deep under the southern oceans by the world’s most powerful ice research vessel, said German scientists. They spoke as the ship, the Polarstern, docked on Saturday in its homeport of Bremerhaven, Germany, after a 19-month research voyage to Antarctica.
The ninth phase of the voyage was a study of the undersea Kerguelen Plateau, which was orphaned after the ancient continents separated, with India drifting away from Antarctica. The findings suggest that the plateau, about the size of Germany and France combined, is just the tip of a bigger piece of lost continental crust, the scientists said.
Geophysicists did seismic and magnetic surveys to explore the gap between the little-understood plateau and East Antarctica, the Alfred Wegener Institute of polar research in Bremerhaven said. “This plateau was created by a massive volcanic eruption shortly after India and Antarctica separated about 120 million years ago to form the Indian Ocean,” said geophysicist Karsten Gohl.
"For the first time, we have been able to see how the succession of volcanic deposits at the southern side of the Kerguelen Plateau, which reach right to the Antarctic continent, mostly have continental crust underneath them.
"Our findings show that a continental fragment of a size hitherto never suspected must have existed between India and the Antarctic."

The spectacular Indian rock art is not very well known both in India and outside. Though the most famous one is Bhimbetka (near Bhopal), there are other sites like Karabad,Shamla Hill and others. Now a record is being set in India, for the longest chain of ancient rock art.

The 12-km-long site, with most of its petroglyphs or pre-historic rock carvings intact, has been discovered in Mandsaur district of Malwa region, which is also home to Bhimbetka, the UNESCO world heritage site, 45 km south of Bhopal. The Rock Arts Society of India (RASI), which knew about the existence of the site for sometime, has now gone official saying the site in the Vindhyan tableland, a plateau lying north of the central part of the Vindhya range, is indeed the "longest chain of rock arts in the world".

"Nowhere in the world has anybody come across such an extensive chain of rock arts with little interruption. What's exciting is most petroglyphs are intact," internationally acclaimed paleontologist and former RASI secretary G L Badam told TOI.

Earliest carvings in the chain are mostly of animals like rhino, nilgai , bear, panther, elephant, monkey, turtle and crocodile. But there are also pictures of cow, bull, buffalo, pig and horse. Experts have called the discovery of the Bhanpura rock arts as "an important milestone in the history of anthropology". "The presence of a variety of rituals, processions and fighting scenes goes to prove the continuity of the art and early man's culmination into community living," said Badam. [World's longest rock art chain in Vindhyas]

Speaking at the DYFI meet alongside N. Ram, Malayalam cinema actor Mammotty said

He added that the Gujarat carnage in 2002 would not have happened, if the Communist Party of India-Marxist's (CPI-M) youth wing had been stronger in that state. [Mammootty captures the hearts of DYFI activists]

Who better to trust our lives with than the peddlers of the imported murderous ideology called Communism. The ideology which gave us Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and that psycho cum t-shirt revolutionary Che also gave us Indians, Maoists, Naxalites and the latest, Nandigram. Then when you are the chairman of the Communist television channel  you have to the sing the official bhajan.

The last time a piece of wood was discovered during under water archaeology in Dwaraka, tall claims were made about the antiquity of the civilization which could not be substantiated. Sceptics suggested that the piece of wood could have come from anywhere due to tidal action and ocean currents.

Now a circular wooden structure has been discovered in a near shore excavation near the Samudranarayan Temple. The underwater structure was made of stones but its lowermost portion was made of wood with wood joined with dowels and nails.  Though many stone structures have been obtained in previous expeditions, they were not helpful in determining the date since stone cannot be dated easily. This particular wooden structure can reveal new information and whether it was part of the ancient city of Dwaraka which was destroyed by tsunami will be found after more analysis.

See Also: Dwaraka Update (1), Dwaraka Update (2), Dwaraka Update (3): The City submerged by Tsunami

An ancient staircase used in a royal funeral procession led an Israeli archaeologist to solve a 2,000-year-old mystery, the location of the tomb of the Roman-anointed "King of the Jews," Herod the Great.

The pieces of the "large unique" sarcophagus, made of Jerusalem reddish limestone and decorated with rosettes, was discovered on the northeast slope of the mesa, where archaeological excavation began in August 2006.

"Only very few similar sarcophagi are known in the country and can be found only in elaborate tombs," he said.

It "was broken into hundreds of pieces, no doubt deliberately," Netzer said, adding that it appeared to have been destroyed between 66 and 72 AD during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans.[Israeli archaeologists unearth King Herod's tomb]

The Lost Gospel by Herbert Krosney, National Geographic (April 6, 2006), 352 pages

The Gospel of Judas, which disappeared before the 4th century and was discovered sometime in the 1970s  in Al Minya in Egypt takes the story of Judas as the betrayer and turns it upside down, similar to what Malayalam novelist  M T Vasudevan Nair has done many times. According to  this Gospel, Judas did not betray Jesus for money, but because Jesus asked him to.

Also in this Gospel, written in Greek by someone who revered Jesus, Judas is the favorite disciple to whom Jesus imparts secret teachings. Contrary to the teachings of other Christian texts, Jesus came to save the world, predicted his own death and used Judas as an instrument in that process.

This book, published by National Geographic, is written by Herb Krosney, who first alerted the National Geographic Society about the existence of the document and convinced them to publish it. Besides narrating the history of early Christianity and the significance of this new Gospel, the book also explains the 30 year journey of the fragile papyrus from Egypt to the offices of National Geographic.

This Gospel written in the century that followed Jesus'  life gives fresh insight into the evolution of early Christianity like what the Nag Hammadi codices revealed. The thirteen Nag Hammadi codices, again translated from Greek to Copt, contained texts that inspired the Gnostic movement. Gnostics -- religious mystics who proclaimed knowledge and not belief in death and resurrection of Jesus as the way to salvation -- expanded beyond the teachings of Jesus, were highly intelligent and used symbolism which were difficult to understand.

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While the story of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection is known by everyone, no one knows what he did between the ages of 12 and 30. The Bible is silent about this period in his life and after the mention of Jesus as a 12 year old, discussing the Hebrew Bible with the rabbis, he surfaces at the age of 30, full of divinity and wisdom.  The History Channel recently showed a documentary titled, The Lost Years of Jesus which suggests that Jesus could have been in India or England or Qumran or leading a revolution against the Romans in the missing years.

The Jesus in India theory comes from author Holger Kersten who wrote a book about the same. Though without proof the idea comes from the observation that the teachings of Jesus are similar to Buddha who lived in India, 500 years before Jesus. Since there was a trade route to India from the Roman empire which passed through Palestine, it would have been possible for Jesus to travel to India, learn Buddhism and go back to Palestine.

Glastonbury  in England has a legend connected to Joseph of Arimathea and according to one tradition, Joseph was Jesus' uncle and established the first church in England. Joseph, involved in tin trade lived in the tin mine areas of England and it is believed that Jesus came along with him. According to the legends, after the death of Jesus, the Holy Grail (the cup and not the Dan Brown version) was buried in Glastonbury by Joseph.

Another theory is that simplicity of life and the concept of baptism all came to Jesus while he and John the Baptist lived with the Essenes. These Essenes later moved to Qumran due to the fear of Romans, but they believed that they would be lead by a leader called Messiha. While Jesus is portrayed as a peaceful man, there is one instance in the Bible where he says, "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword". Also when Jesus was arrested, one of his disciples took his sword and stuck down a slave of the head priest. The theory suggested is that Jesus was a revolutionary fighting the Romans and his revolutionary activities were left out from the Bible since it would be difficult to circulate such a Bible in Roman Times.

The documentary, though telecast by the History Channel, is very speculative. The Jesus in India theory is not taken seriously by most people and the Jesus in England theory is also as the story says, "legend". It is not even sure if there was a person called Joseph of Arimathea for so far no one has been able to find this place called Arimathea.

The documentary also mentions that what we know about Jesus  is pure speculation and comes not from historical documents, but from the Gospels. Though there were many historians who were alive at that time who wrote about events in Palestine, it is surprising that the no one mentioned about this person. 

Considering that the Gospels, both the canonical and the heretic like the Gospel of Judas were written with the aim of glorifying Jesus, the bias in it would not be, let us say, minuscule. The Gospels were not first hand accounts, but oral tradition written down much later. From the Gospels it cannot be decided what is historical and what is not, for the authors of Gospels were evangelists, not historians. The documentary which establishes the lack of historical evidence for Jesus then goes on suggesting the above theories based on  legends and gospels, which was kind of ironic. 

National Public Radio  and local affiliates like KQED in San Francisco  bring some of the best interviews and discussions you can hear in American Media. Here are some interviews worth listening.

• The war in Iraq was justified partly based on forged documents which came from Italy. Here is an interview with Carlo Bonini who broke the story.
• What's the big deal about twitter?
• George Tenet on the war, intelligence and his role.
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Randomness and Probability

(For all these links, click on the Listen button to hear the interview)

See Also: Public Radio Links (1), Public Radio Links(2)

More than a decade back when  Yahoo! and Hotmail provided webmail services it was a great innovation, but over time those services became stagnant without any major break through. These services provided only a paltry 4 MB of storage, but were reliable. Then Google came and changed the game. Besides providing storage in the GB range, Gmail also provided a threaded view of the mails which is not a Google innovation, but was something new in the webmail world.

There was one small innovation which Gmail did, something which the other providers did not think about. In Gmail, when you start typing the first few characters of the receiver's name, it auto completes the name. This not so hard to implement feature saves a few keystrokes in typing the address, a few mouse clicks in finding it from the address book and spares a few neurons from having to remember the email addresses.

No one takes the concept of distinguishing themselves from the crowd more seriously than Apple. If you go to an Apple Store to buy something, you will find that they don't have the traditional cash counters. Instead, the staff will take a hand held device, scan your items, and  send the receipt to your email address. The staff can walk around with these devices and thus preventing any queues in the store. Sending the receipt to your email address keeps Al Gore, an Apple board member, happy too.

Costco did not get rid of the cash counters, but instead if the queues were getting too long, an employee would walk down the queue, scan your items and give you a bar coded receipt. At the counter you hand over the paper and pay  thus speeding up the queue.

The small things that make a difference can be found by studying your competitors. If you are an NRI account holder in HDFC Bank, you need to dial an Indian number to get help. When you call that number you are often asked to come to the bank and when you go to the branch you are asked for your ration card. All that is for another post. If you have a Citibank account, they provide a 1-800 number which also takes you to India, but at least it is toll free.

In a field where there are many competing players, it is small things like these which distinguish the great ones from the ordinary.

It is not the oldest or longest, but more rock art dating back to 1500 BCE has been found in Tamil Nadu.

The paintings have been done on a rock surface that is 40 feet long and 20 feet tall. He and other experts put the date of the ancient rock paintings around 1500 B.C. These paintings include a tiger with its mouth wide open, a deer with straight horns, a porcupine, a wild boar, a peacock and elephants.

There are paintings of marching men in anthropomorphic form within a circle. Below are also men in marching form but not within a circle. There are scenes of an unidentified animal chasing another, an elephant seizing a man with its trunk with another man running after the elephant, etc.

Human figures are aplenty, showing men fighting and dancing. A rare painting has a man in profile, with a peculiar headgear. There is a glut of "mystic" designs and ancient graffiti. A leit motif is the figure of a ladder made out of bamboo poles. Such ladders are used even now to extract honey from beehives situated at heights near the tribal villages. [Ancient rock art dating back to 1500 B.C. found in Tamil Nadu]