The beautiful 16-day Olympic dream came to an end on August 24, 2008 at the Bird’s Nest National Stadium. The world looked in awe as the poignant love story came to an end, bathed in a kaleidoscope of color with the mesmerizing dance patterns, breathtakingly spectacular choreography and grand fireworks.

The closing ceremony of one of the most remarkable Olympics the world has seen in recent times was an emotion filled affair. The celebration of unity, brotherhood of humanity and China’s reassertion that there is nothing impossible was all there for the crowd of more than 90,000 and the whole world to see.

The motto of the Olympics, “Higher, faster, stronger” was outlined in the best possibly way by the athletes, who surged ahead with their world-breaking sporting performances and by the host athletes, who showed excellence and dominance in such a way that they redefined the image of the communist nation internationally.

China was on top of the world and there was not a single soul that grudged them their success. For China, it was a journey of confidence and self-belief. The doubts had melted, leaving feelings of euphoria in their wake.

The IOC President Jacques Rogge declared the games closed with the words, “Tonight, we come to the end of 16 glorious days which we will cherish forever. Through these Games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world. These were truly exceptional games.” Read the rest of this entry »

The hype around Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” even before its release was massive with speculation on whether the success of “Batman Begins” will be repeated. Luckily, this is one release that let everyone concerned heave a huge sigh of relief, as the movie far exceeded the high expectations.

The Dark Knight has outdone every other Batman movie with the superbly crafted scenes and memorable moments piecing the movie together.

Bruce Wayne, Batman (Christian Bale) teams up with the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and James Gordon (Gary Oldman) to clean up the streets of Gotham and get rid of the evil that plagues it, by locking up criminals. A ray of hope begins to shine over Gotham until a vicious criminal mastermind, the Joker, enters the scene. Ironically, there is nothing funny about this “Joker.” The Joker (Heath Ledger) has plans of bringing more chaos to the already downtrodden city.

He plans to kill batman and makes an announcement to the city of Gotham that if Batman removes his mask and reveals himself, he would stop his games and killings. However, as long as Batman does not remove his mask, people continue to die due to the Joker’s sadistic killing methods of subjecting his victims to a slow and painful death.

Batman, in spite of his efforts to clear evil from Botham, is seen by many as a sort of a villain, and this feeling only intensifies with his refusal to give in to the Joker’s commands. They attribute the murders of important people to Batman. Batman is desperate to defeat the Joker and put a stop to him, but initially he has little success against the sadistic Joker. Read the rest of this entry »

How about just picking up that car from the corner of the office room, taking it out, unfolding it and driving it back home? The new sports car is almost like a toy car coming to life.

A sports car that can be folded into half is the most innovative creation of a young 22-year-old British designer, Daniel Bailey. He states that his creation has been inspired by the Peugeot 908 and Lamborghini Murcielago.

According to Bailey, this sexy, sleek and mean looking car goes up on its nose, allowing the back wheels to slide under the car on two rollers. This way, it becomes half its size and makes parking easy. Obviously, people will have to get out of the car before it can be folded.

Bailey says that this car will run on hydrogen fuel or electricity and he came up with the concept of a folding car, in order to take care of the two main problems that most modern cities face; that of pollution and population. The lack of parking space in major cities due to the large number of cars is a big issue and the ability to fold a car up to 50% of its original size when parking, alleviates the need for creating even more parking space.

This design has been submitted by Bailey in a competition held by Peugeot to create a concept car that is designed to evolve perfectly in the cities of the future with large population and huge number of cars; while including aspects such as environmental awareness, economic efficiency, social harmony and interactive mobility.

A similar prototype of a lightweight electric folding car model is said to be under creation by scientists led by Bill Mitchell, professor of architecture, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.) This stackable and foldable car is named, “City Car.” MIT says this car can be mass produced and rented by commuters following a business model of shared-use. It can be folded and stacked just like grocery carts either at subway stations or other sites. The key to this concept is said to lie in the wheels design. Read the rest of this entry »

While parents wonder how to go about making their teenagers understand human sexuality, whether it should be done at home or at school, teens are taking it into their own hands and learning much more than needed from a totally different source – the Internet.

It is a known fact that minors and teenagers spend hours online. What is it that most of them do online? Statistics show that about 40 percent of them visit x-rated sites that show explicit content, either accidentally coming across the sites or being led to those sites.

Teenagers today are targeted with salacious junk, from MTV, to video games to the internet. There is simply no way they can escape all the trashy pictures literally thrown at them, and it is as simple as typing the word “sex” on the Internet to be lead to hundreds of hard-core porn sites. It is estimated that more than 40 million Americans visit an estimated one million porn websites each year. As disconcerting as this may sound, this is not the main cause of worry. The concerning factor is the impact this ease of access has on kids and teenagers, for whom porn has become just part of the culture now.

Researchers have found that there is a typical pattern to teens entering these cyber-porn villages. It usually starts on a day when the parents are away and teenagers being inquisitive in nature search for a little porn. Searching for one, they find thousands of sites that can gratify their curiosity. Then they end up registering at some of the sites. This is how it starts and then they are hooked for life.

Sometimes, what starts off as innocent chatting in a chat room also takes these unsuspecting and innocent teens to the sugar-coated chat of pedophilics. Shockingly, to make things scarier, there are said to be several pedophilics hanging around on the internet, that trap teenagers into cyber sex. These child trappers even go to the extent of asking for nude pictures of the children. In fact, they entice children into doing what they want by rewarding them with on-line cartoon CDs or some such things that they know kids and teenagers find irresistible. Read the rest of this entry »

Who does a child need more, mother or father? The unanimous answer would be “both,” since the mother and the father have different influences on the child and both are essential to the overall emotional growth.

However, there are single women who do not wish to have a husband but wish to have children and are confident they can raise a child all by themselves. One of the popular methods of achieving this is the IVF or in vitro fertilization; wherein the ova (egg cells) are removed from the woman’s ovary and then fertilized with sperm, in a fluid. Once they are fertilized, the zygote (fertilized egg) is transferred to the woman’s uterus, and this establishes a pregnancy.

There are several sperm banks, where the sperm from volunteers is frozen and stored. There is no length of time that the sperm can be stored and people have even conceived from sperm frozen for more than 20 years.

This sperm supplied by the sperm banks is being increasingly used by women without a male partner and even by single or coupled lesbians. Until now, sperm banks had to abide by supportive parenting, before giving out the sperm, which means the sperm was not made available to most single women or lesbians.

The law makers were of the opinion that children without fathers are more likely to have behavioral problems, problems at school with drugs and drink. Read the rest of this entry »

The bewildered look on the shop keeper’s face when a customer hands him his mobile phone instead of a credit card, shows that the shop owner is not keeping up with the latest technology.

The new technology takes advantage of the fact that mobile phones are every person’s constant companion and people may forget their wallets at home but not their phones.

When shopping in malls, instead of trudging along several credit or debit cards, shoppers can just swipe their mobile phones. It is now also possible to pay bills through mobiles, including credit card bills, phone bills, electricity bills and other utility bills.

Mobiles phones are doubling up as wallets or credit cards, apart from doing their regular job of being a communication medium. Such phones will either have an embedded number or a bar code to ensure security of transactions. Since mobile phones are given the capability to do a lot of banking transactions, such as checking the bank balance and viewing mini statements or even ordering check books and transferring funds, the security aspect becomes crucial.

Researchers are currently in the process of conducting a trial in London, where hundreds of people are given special handsets that are fitted with built-in credit card and Oyster card, the device used to pay for bus and train tickets. When the phone is passed over a scanner in shops or stations, money is deducted from their bank accounts towards payments. People can also buy things from select cafes and shops using their handsets. Read the rest of this entry »

This book with a juicy title, “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die,” creates a sense curiosity in the reader.

It almost sounds like a challenge or even edging on insult to the reader’s intellect. If you look deeply, it suggests that you as a reader may not have read even half the list of books and dares you to find out whether your reading powers have been up to the mark created by the writer.

This book is British and as it is well-known, the British love literary lists. Peter Boxall, who teaches English at Sussex, supposedly asked 105 critics, academics and editors to submit lists of all-time great novels and from this list, he is said to have derived the list of 1001, and the British publishers felt that “books” sounded better than “novels” in the title.

The list excludes Shakespeare and Milton; however Professor Boxall could come up with a lot of books.

Even assuming that a reasonably educated person would have read 300 books, there still remain 701 books. If a good reader can complete one book a month, it still takes 701 months, at the end of which, upon reaching title No. 1001, which is “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, death may almost be a relief. Read the rest of this entry »

Beauty has always been considered a woman’s domain. However, it is not just women who are beauty-conscious; men are toeing the line and visiting parlors more than they ever did. Men of today are as eager to slap on a beauty mask as a woman. Facials, manicures, pedicures and even Botox are just some of the treatments that men subject themselves to, in their quest for eternal youth.

Men’s skin is also exposed to pollution and smoking, which is harmful to the epidermis and they need all these beauty treatments to look and feel good. A man needs to care about his clothes and grooming because it says a lot about him personally as well as making a huge difference in business. Men with pronounced lines between the brows are usually perceived as stressed or angry and nobody wants to look that way. Botox is fast becoming a man’s favorite treatment, which has been favored mostly by women until now.

Statistics show that about 250000 Botox procedures were performed on men alone in the United States last year, making it the leading cosmetic treatment for men; so much so that it has gained the nickname “Boytox.”

This growing interest for Botox in men has been said to be fuelled by the growing competition, among other things. Men want to look younger because once they reach a certain age; they begin to feel the pressure of the younger generation waiting to take their place.

Botox is a natural and purified protein that temporarily reduces contractions of the facial muscles that cause lines, by blocking nerve transmissions, leaving the skin unwrinkled. This creates a smooth and a more youthful appearance. Read the rest of this entry »

“The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at his moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.”

This message was from the Second Vatican Council many years ago.

However, this regard for women does not extend to allowing them to serve God as priests. Priesthood is considered to be the domain of men and women are not given entry, and women who force entry are not forgiven either.

The Vatican City made an announcement that women who try to ordain themselves or bishops who ordain women as priests will be automatically excommunicated from the church. People who are excommunicated from the Catholic Church cannot share in acts of public worship.

This decree, which was published in the Vatican daily, is said to absolute, universal and effective immediately. According to a Vatican spokesman, this decree reiterates in no uncertain terms, the ban that already exists in the form of Canon law of 1378, preventing women from being ordained as priests.

The Canon law states, “Both he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, and the woman who has attempted to receive the said sacrament incurs in latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See.”

This decree has been passed because of the many women trying to be ordained as Catholic priests. The most recent ordination attempt was by a woman named Kathy Redig from Winona, Minnesota, who participated in an ordination ceremony. The Bishop of Winona expressed his sadness that she has excommunicated herself by her actions. Vatican stands by the rule that only men can be priests. Read the rest of this entry »

Burying of the dead was invented as far back as 3000 BCE, in the stone age. It was said to be first used in Europe and became the most common method of disposing dead bodies by 800 BCE in Greece and 600 BCE in Rome. Other societies followed other methods: in ancient Israel, tombs were used for burial and cremation was shunned, even the early Christian church rejected cremations, bodies were embalmed in Egypt, they were buried in China. Later on when Christianity become the official religion of the Roman Empire, burial was the only method followed throughout Europe.

With so much significance attached to the disposal of bodies, the new way of bidding goodbye to the dead can prove to be shocking to most people - dissolving their bodies in lye and flushing the brown syrupy residue down the drain.

This process of flushing down dead bodies is called alkaline hydrolysis and was first started in the United States 16 years ago, when it was used to dispose off, animal corpses in big steel cylinders that were like steam cookers.

These new inventions are not used by any funeral homes in the US or anywhere else in the world. In fact, they are used by only two medical centers in the US to dispose human bodies, and that too on cadavers that are used for research.

The funeral industry feels that this method of disposal of human bodies has several environmental advantages and someday in the future, this may very well be used more than even cremation or burial.

According to the newsletter Funeral Service insider, “it’s not often that a truly game-changing technology comes along in the funeral service. We might have gotten hold of one.” Read the rest of this entry »