If You'll Drink, Then Let Others Drive

Hey Guys Merry Christmas.

Hope you people have enjoyed the auspicious event of Jesus Christ's Birthday.

Now its the time to welcome our New Year. And I am damn sure all my good friends out there in the world will definitely enjoy and celebrate this amazing eve with lots of things to do.

Apart from celebrating it food, there is one more thing which we people are prone to is drinks. No I am not talking about soft drinks, am talking about alcoholic drinks.

There is no problem to me if you drink even if it is not good for health and for emotional relations, but still I know we are human and we will do things which we are asked not to do.

But guys this is a request to you people that do DRINK if you want to but please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, DON'T DRIVE after you drink.

Driving while either intoxicated or drunk is dangerous and drivers with high blood alcohol content (BAC) are at increased risk of car accidents, highway injuries and vehicular deaths.

Don't drink and drive and don't ride with anyone who has too much to drink. Remember, it is usually themselves and their passengers who are harmed by drunk drivers. The risk of collision for high BAC drivers is several hundred times higher than for a non-drinking driver.

Its not that you will loose your life, one mistake done by you will affect many others directly and indirectly.

So lets a take resolution right now dont wait for the new year to pledge for it;

DO DRINK BUT DON'T DRIVE

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.

Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.
"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.
He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.

Parthenogenesis has occurred in other lizard species, but Buley and his team said this was the first time it has been shown in Komodo dragons -- the world's largest lizards.
Scientists at Liverpool University in northern England discovered Flora had had no male help after doing genetic tests on three eggs that collapsed after being put in an incubator.
The tests on the embryos and on Flora, her sister and other dragons confirmed that Komodo dragons can reproduce through self-fertilization.
"Those genetic tests confirmed absolutely that Flora was both the mother and the father of the embryos. It completely blew us away because it (parthenogenesis) has never been seen in such a large species," Buley explained.
A Komodo dragon at London Zoo gave birth earlier this year after being separated from males for more than two years.
Scientists thought she had been able to store sperm from her earlier encounter with a male but, after hearing about Flora's eggs, researchers conducted tests which showed her eggs were also produced without male help.
"You have two institutions within a few short months of each other having a previously unheard of event. It is really quite unprecedented," said Buley.
The scientists, reporting the discovery in the science journal Nature, said it could help them understand how reptiles colonize new areas. A female dragon could, for instance, swim to another island and establish a new colony on her own.
"The genetics of self-fertilization in lizards means that all her hatchlings would have to be male. These would grow up to mate with their own mother and therefore, within one generation, there would potentially be a population able to reproduce normally on the new island," Buley added.

Itsssssssssss True

A venomous snake is a snake that uses modified saliva, venom, delivered through fangs in its mouth, to immobilize or kill its prey. The term poisonous snake is infact false, due to the fact that poison is inhaled or ingested whereas venom is injected. (In contrast, most non-venomous species are constrictors which suffocate their prey.) Snake venom can contain many different active agents, it can potentially be a mix of neurotoxins, hemotoxins, cytotoxins, bungarotoxins and many other toxins that affect the body in different ways. Snake venom is never a single type of toxin. Neurotoxins attack the nervous system, while hemotoxins attack the circulatory system. Venomous snakes include several families of snakes and do not constitute a formal classification group used in taxonomy.
Venomous snakes that use hemotoxins usually have their fangs to secrete the venom in the front of their mouths, making it easier for them to inject the venom into their victims. Snakes that use neurotoxins, such as the highly venomous mangrove snake, have their fangs located in the back of their mouths, with the fangs curled backwards. This makes it both difficult for the snake to use its venom and for scientists to milk them.
It has recently been suggested that all snakes are in fact venomous to some degree. Snakes all evolved from a common lizard ancestor that was poisonous, from which poisonous lizards like the gila monster and beaded lizard also derived. The research suggests that snakes all have venom glands, even species thought totally harmless such as the corn snake, commonly kept as a pet. What differentiates 'venomous' from 'non-venomous' is the evolution of a venom delivery system, the most advanced being that of vipers, with fangs that are hinged to prevent self envenomation, and curl out as the snake strikes.

Chai Ki Tapri (Tea Stall)

Chai (Tea) the only thing that anyone can have at any point of time without any reason or say they will find a reason to have that chai.

In India tea is considered as the most essential need for the day. People can stay without food but they this thing called Chai (Tea). Some drink tea to complement with an excuse to smoke, some go for it to chat either business and even non-sense. Some drink it just to pass their time while bird watching.

But no one takes it seriously.

But the best part is that everyone likes to have it from a specific small place on the corner of the road also known as Chai Ki Tapri (Tea Stall).

Tea stalls are small-time vendors who primarily sell tea, coffee and milk along small road-side shops in India. Tea stalls have a movable kitchen set up either with a kerosene or an LPG stove. Indians gather at tea stalls right from daybreak to have a fresh coffee or tea.
Some enterprising tea stalls sell soft drinks, cigars, betel leafs and betel nuts, gutka and newspapers too. Tea stalls generally have strong local knowledge and thus often become human Yellow Pages and discussion tables for the respective localities.
Hot drinks are traditionally served not in a cup-and-saucer but in a metal or glass drinkware called a "tumbler". In South India, a metal tumbler is usually placed inside a squatter, broader metal vessel called a "davaraa".
When a shop operator is asked to cool a cup of coffee or tea for the customer, a skilled server can pour the hot liquid from tumbler to davaraa and back with a flourish. The liquid stays stretched out almost horizontally as the vessels whiz past, collecting it in each direction. Not a drop is spilled, and the drink gathers an impressive froth.

The best part of drinking from this stall, is sipping with noise like uuuussssssssssuuuuuussssssss

Credit Card PLease

"Credit Card" a status symbol for people specially in the developing countries.

A credit card is nothing, but a thin plastic card, usually 3-1/8 inches by 2-1/8 inches in size, that contains identification information such as a signature or picture, and authorizes the person named on it to charge purchases or services to his account -- charges for which he will be billed periodically. Today, the information on the card is read by automated teller machines (ATMs), store readers, and bank and Internet computers.

the use of credit cards originated in the United States during the 1920s, when individual companies, such as hotel chains and oil companies, began issuing them to customers for purchases made at those businesses. This use increased significantly after World War II.

The first universal credit card -- one that could be used at a variety of stores and businesses -- was introduced by Diners Club, Inc., in 1950. With this system, the credit-card company charged cardholders an annual fee and billed them on a monthly or yearly basis. Another major universal card -- "Don't leave home without it!" -- was established in 1958 by the American Express company.

Later came the bank credit-card system. Under this plan, the bank credits the account of the merchant as sales slips are received (this means merchants are paid quickly -- something they love!) and assembles charges to be billed to the cardholder at the end of the billing period. The cardholder, in turn, pays the bank either the entire balance or in monthly installments with interest (sometimes called carrying charges).

The stripe on the back of a credit card is a magnetic stripe, often called a magstripe. The magstripe is made up of tiny iron-based magnetic particles in a plastic-like film. Each particle is really a tiny bar magnet about 20-millionths of an inch long.

After you or the cashier swipes your credit card through a reader, the EDC software at the point-of-sale (POS) terminal dials a stored telephone number (using a modem) to call an acquirer. An acquirer is an organization that collects credit-authentication requests from merchants and provides the merchants with a payment guarantee.
When the acquirer company gets the credit-card authentication request, it checks the transaction for validity and the record on the magstripe for:
Merchant ID
Valid card number
Expiration date
Credit-card limit
Card usage
Single dial-up transactions are processed at 1,200 to 2,400 bits per second (bps), while direct Internet attachment uses much higher speeds via this protocol. In this system, the cardholder enters a personal identification number (PIN) using a keypad.
The PIN is not on the card -- it is encrypted (hidden in code) in a database. (For example, before you get cash from an ATM, the ATM encrypts the PIN and sends it to the database to see if there is a match.) The PIN can be either in the bank's computers in an encrypted form (as a cipher) or encrypted on the card itself. The transformation used in this type of cryptography is called one-way. This means that it's easy to compute a cipher given the bank's key and the customer's PIN, but not computationally feasible to obtain the plain-text PIN from the cipher, even if the key is known. This feature was designed to protect the cardholder from being impersonated by someone who has access to the bank's computer files.
Likewise, the communications between the ATM and the bank's central computer are encrypted to prevent would-be thieves from tapping into the phone lines, recording the signals sent to the ATM to authorize the dispensing of cash and then feeding the same signals to the ATM to trick it into unauthorized dispensing of cash.
If this isn't enough protection to ease your mind, there are now cards that utilize even more security measures than your conventional credit card: Smart Cards.
The "smart" credit card is an innovative application that involves all aspects of cryptography (secret codes), not just the authentication we described in the last section. A smart card has a microprocessor built into the card itself. Cryptography is essential to the functioning of these cards in several ways:
The user must corroborate his identity to the card each time a transaction is made, in much the same way that a PIN is used with an ATM.
The card and the card reader execute a sequence of encrypted sign/countersign-like exchanges to verify that each is dealing with a legitimate counterpart.
Once this has been established, the transaction itself is carried out in encrypted form to prevent anyone, including the cardholder or the merchant whose card reader is involved, from "eavesdropping" on the exchange and later impersonating either party to defraud the system. This elaborate protocol is conducted in such a way that it is invisible to the user, except for the necessity of entering a PIN to begin the transaction.
Smart cards first saw general use in France in 1984. They are now hot commodities that are expected to replace the simple plastic cards most of us use now. Visa and MasterCard are leading the way in the United States with their smart card technologies.
The chips in these cards are capable of many kinds of transactions. For example, you could make purchases from your credit account, debit account or from a stored account value that's reloadable. The enhanced memory and processing capacity of the smart card is many times that of traditional magnetic-stripe cards and can accommodate several different applications on a single card. It can also hold identification information, keep track of your participation in an affinity (loyalty) program or provide access to your office. This means no more shuffling through cards in your wallet to find the right one -- the smart card will be the only one you need!
Experts say that internationally accepted smart cards will be increasingly available over the next several years. Many parts of the world already use them, but their reach is limited. The smart card will eventually be available to anyone who wants one, but for now, it's available mostly to those participating in special programs.

Loves Me?, Loves Me Not?

What makes us fall in love?

We all have a template for the ideal partner buried somewhere in our subconscious. It is this love map that decides which person in that crowded room catches our eye. But how is this template formed?

Appearance
Many researchers have speculated that we tend to go for members of the opposite sex who remind us of our parents. Some have even found that we tend to be attracted to those who remind us of ourselves. In fact, cognitive psychologist David Perrett, at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, did an experiment in which he morphed a digitized photo of the subject's own face into a face of the opposite sex. Then, he had the subject select from a series of photos which one he or she found most attractive. According to Dr. Perrett, his subjects always preferred the morphed version of their own face (and they didn't recognize it as their own).

Personality
Like appearance, we tend to form preferences for those who remind us of our parents (or others close to us through childhood) because of their personality, sense of humor, likes and dislikes, etc.

Pheromones
The debated topic of human pheromones still carries some weight in the field of love research. The word "pheromone" comes from the Greek words pherein and hormone, meaning "excitement carrier".

In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.

The existence of human pheromones was discovered in 1986 by scientists at the Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and its counterpart in France. They found these chemicals in human sweat. A human VNO has also been found in some, but not all, people. Even if the VNO isn't present in all of us -- and may not be working in those who do have it -- there is still evidence that smell is an important aspect of love (note the booming perfume industry). An experiment was conducted where a group of females smelled the unwashed tee shirts of a group of sweaty males, and each had to select the one to whom she was most "attracted." Just like in the animal world, the majority of the females chose a shirt from the male whose immune system was the most different from their own.

SUDOKU?

Lets explore the game of Sudoku.
You Know;
The name "Sudoku" is the Japanese abbreviation of a longer phrase, "Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru", meaning "the digits must occur only once. The numerals in Sudoku puzzles are used for convenience; arithmetic relationships between numerals are irrelevant. Any set of distinct symbols will do; letters, shapes, or colours may be used without altering the rules. The attraction of the puzzle is that the rules are simple, yet the line of reasoning required to solve the puzzle may be complex.
The strategy for solving a puzzle may be regarded as comprising a combination of three processes: scanning, marking up, and analyzing.
1) Scanning:
Scanning is performed at the outset and throughout the solution. Scans need to be performed only once in between analyses. Scanning consists of two techniques:
a) Cross-hatching: the scanning of rows to identify which line in a region may contain a certain numeral by a process of elimination. The process is repeated with the columns. For fastest results, the numerals are scanned in order of their frequency, from high to low. It is important to perform this process systematically, checking all of the digits 1–9.
b) Counting 1–9 in regions, rows, and columns to identify missing numerals. Counting based upon the last numeral discovered may speed up the search. It also can be the case, particularly in tougher puzzles, that the best way to ascertain the value of a cell is to count in reverse—that is, by scanning the cell's region, row, and column for values it cannot be, in order to see what remains.
Advanced solvers look for "contingencies" while scanning, narrowing a numeral's location within a row, column, or region to two or three cells. When those cells lie within the same row and region, they can be used for elimination during cross-hatching and counting. Puzzles solved by scanning alone without requiring the detection of contingencies are classified as "easy"; more difficult puzzles cannot be solved by basic scanning alone.
2) Marking up:
Scanning stops when no further numerals can be discovered, making it necessary to engage in logical analysis. One method to guide the analysis is to mark candidate numerals in the blank cells. There are two popular notations: subscripts and dots.

a) In the subscript notation the candidate numerals are written in subscript in the cells. Because puzzles printed in a newspaper are too small to accommodate more than a few subscript digits of normal handwriting, solvers may create a larger copy of the puzzle.
b) The second notation uses a pattern of dots in each square, where the dot position indicates a number from 1 to 9. The dot notation can be used on the original puzzle. Dexterity is required in placing the dots, since misplaced dots or inadvertent marks inevitably lead to confusion and may not be easily erased.

An alternative technique is to "mark up" the numerals that a cell cannot be. A cell will start empty and as more constraints become known, it will slowly fill until only one mark is missing. Assuming no mistakes are made and the marks can be overwritten with the value of a cell, there is no longer a need for any erasures.

3) Analysis:
The two main approaches to analysis are "candidate elimination" and "what-if". In "candidate elimination", progress is made by successively eliminating candidate numerals from cells to leave one choice. After each answer has been achieved, another scan may be performed—usually checking to see the effect of the contingencies. In general, if entering a particular numeral prevents completion of the other necessary placements, then the numeral in question can be eliminated as a candidate. One method works by identifying "matched cell groups". For instance, if precisely two cells within a scope (a particular row, column, or region) contain the same two candidate numerals (p,q), or if precisely three cells within a scope contain the same three candidate numerals (p,q,r), these cells are said to be matched. The placement of those candidate numerals anywhere else within that same scope would make a solution impossible; therefore, those candidate numerals can be deleted from all other cells in the scope.

In the "what-if" approach (also called "guess-and-check", "bifurcation", "backtracking" and "Ariadne's thread"), a cell with two candidate numerals is selected, and a guess is made. The steps are repeated unless a duplication is found or a cell is left without a possible candidate, in which case the alternative candidate must be the solution. For each cell's candidate, the question is posed: 'will entering a particular numeral prevent completion of the other placements of that numeral?' If the answer is 'yes', then that candidate can be eliminated. The what-if approach requires a pencil and eraser or a good layout memory.

There are three kind of conflicts, which can appear during puzzle solving:

basic conflicts - there are only N-1 different candidates in N cell in the area
fish conflicts - when eliminating number from N rows/columns, it will disappear also from N+1 columns/rows.
unique conflicts - this pattern means multiple solutions, all numbers in the pattern exist exactly two times in every area, row and column. If there are only one candidate in the cell, any virtual candidate can be added.

No "Kissing" Is Not A Sin....

• Kissing itself can actually help prevent tooth decay because it stimulates saliva, which helps reduce the incidence of cavities.
• Kissing releases the same neurotransmitters as intense exercise, like parachuting or distance running. The heart beats faster and breathing becomes deep and irregular.
• Between 10 million and 1 billion groups of bacteria are swapped with each smooch. But saliva also contains antibacterial chemicals that kill most bacteria before the germs are exchanged.
• A simple pucker uses two muscles, the upper and lower orbicularis otis surrounding the lips. A passionate kiss uses all 34 facial muscles.
• Ninety percent of the people of the world engage in kisses on the lips, anthropologists say. Some other cultures, such as Eskimos, use the "smell kiss" -- rubbing noses.
• A kiss slows the aging process, toning the cheeks and jaw muscles.
• Kissing prompts the brain to produce Oxytocin, a hormone that gives us that good-all-over feeling we experience when kissing.
• People who kiss their spouses each morning miss less work because of illness than those people who don't lay one on their husbands or wives. Those who kiss also have fewer car wrecks on the way to work, earn 20-30% more a month, and live five years longer.
  

So the English poet Rupert Brooke was right: "A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years," or the anonymous person who said, "Hugs warm you from the outside, but kisses warm you from within."

So friends never hesitate to kiss just, do it whenever you feel so

HAPPY KISSING

Is Cricket The Only Religion For Indians

Agreed, cricket is a very famous and the most adorable sport in India and may be even in countries of Asia. Indians live, drink, eat and dream only cricket. Its not just the game of bat and ball, its something more than that.
It is the game of heart, emotions, expectations and much more. If you'll ask anyone to define cricket, they can speak about it for hours, and can even fall short of words to describe it. But if you ask them about our other national sport i.e. Hockey, very few people know and many are not even aware about the scenario of our Indian Hockey.
Even i dont know much about Hockey; I swear! It just striked me yesterday, coz i saw Dhanraj Pillai standing on road. I wondered and felt so bad, that our Inddian Hockey team's ex-captain is standing on the road, still noone is aware of him.
I'll firstly blame our Indian media for this, they played the major role in depriving other sport and the respectinve sport personalities to become famous and well known among Indian masses. Our media just concentrated on cricket, bollywood, and politics only.
Even i dont about hockey so hereby i'll en my conversation now. I'll try my best to get more knowkedge about our Indian Hockey and its players and hopefully on future i'll try to share more on Hockey.

Hats Off

2nd Of December; First Nuclear Reaction------------------
Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi demonstrates the first controlled nuclear fission reaction in an unused squash court in a basement at the University of Chicago. Two years earlier, Fermi, along with Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard and German-born physicist Albert Einstein, wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt warning of the danger of Nazi development of an atomic weapon. Roosevelt approved a U.S. atomic program; the "Manhattan Project" to build an atomic bomb began in 1942. Fermi, who won the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics, scored one of the program's early triumphs with his demonstration of a nuclear reaction. In July 1945, the United States successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb, and in August two such bombs were dropped on Japan. Fermi died in 1954, and the element fermium was named in his honor one year later.

More On This Day
1998 In Britain, Conservative leader William Hague sacks his leader in the House of Lords, Lord Cranborne, for going behind his back to negotiate a deal with the Labour Government over the scrapping of Hereditary Peers.
1993 Colombian drugs baron, Pablo Escobar, the so-called King of Cocaine, is shot dead in a gun battle with police.
1990 West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wins the first all-German election since 1933 following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany.
1966 In Britain, the symbol of the Swinging Sixties, the Mini skirt is banned from the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
1965 The hit musical 'Hello Dolly' opens at Drury Lane in London.
1954 The anti-Communist witchhunt comes to an end in America when its main instigator, Senator Joseph McCarthy, is condemned for conduct unbecoming a US Senator.
1950 United Nations agree to hand over Eritrea to Ethiopia.
1927 The successor to the Model T Ford, the Model A, first goes on sale.
1907 English footballers form the Professional Footballers' Association.
1904 Members of the British Parliament representing Ulster, form an organisation that becomes the Ulster Unionist Council.
1901 American businessman King Gillette patents the safety razor with a double-edged disposable blade.
1859 American anti-slavery campaigner John Brown is hanged for killing five pro-slavery men and leading an attack on the US arsenal at Harper's Ferry in October, 1859.
1852 Second French Empire is declared by Emperor Napoleon III.
1823 In the United States, the 'Monroe Doctrine', announced by US President James Monroe, warns all European powers against interfering in the politics of the American Republics-including any further colonisation of land on the American continent. Any breach would be considered a threat to US peace and security.
1816 Spa Fields Riots in England: a large crowd, gathered to demand political reform, decides to march on London.
1805 Napoleon defeats Austro-Russian armies at the battle of Austerlitz.
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor Napoleon I by Pope Pius VII.
1697 Opening of the new St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
1934 English Actress Maggie Smith
1924 Former US Secretary of State General Alexander Haig.
1923 Greek-American operatic soprano Maria Callas born in New York.
1899 British conductor and cellist Sir john Barbirolli
1993 Colombian drugs baron, Pablo Escobar, the so-called King of Cocaine, is shot dead in a gun battle with police.
1969 English writer Stephen Potter, inventor of 'gamesmanship'.
1859 Anti-slavery campaigner John Brown is executed in Charleston, West Virginia.
1814 The Marquis de Sade, the French aristocrat whose perverted lifestyle gave the world the word 'sadism'.

HIV & Mosquitoes- THE MYTH

One of the most prevalent myths about HIV transmission is that mosquitoes or other bloodsucking insects can infect you. There is no scientific evidence to support this claim. To see why mosquitoes don't aid in the transmission of HIV, we can look at the insect's biting behavior.
When mosquitoes bite someone, they do not inject its own blood or the blood of an animal or person it has bitten into the next person it bites. The mosquito does inject saliva, which acts as a lubricant so that it can feed more effectively. Yellow fever and malaria can be transmitted through the saliva, but HIV does not reproduce in insects, and therefore doesn't survive in the mosquito long enough to be transmitted in the saliva.
Additionally, mosquitoes don't normally travel from one person to another after ingesting blood. The insects need time to digest the blood meal before moving on.