With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

            Most of you might have heard this famous quote by friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, who learnt it from his Uncle, Ben Parker. Ben Parker was not a super hero like Spider-Man, then how come he knew about “Great Power” and "Great Responsibility". This article’s focal point is on the story, Uncle Ben and the said quote. 

            During WWII Steve Roger’s volunteered himself for an experiment conducted by a Scientist known as Dr. Abraham Erskine. After the successful transformation of Steve to a super human, scientists named him Captain America. Shortly after the experiment, A German Spy (some stories say it was a Nazi) damaged the lab and Dr. Erskine lost his life in the same tragic accident. 

            With the remnants of the lab, fellow scientists conducted further experiments and created five more super humans. But their abilities couldn't last long as that of Captain America’s. So they were all given specially designed rings to control their power, preserve it and use when necessary as long as they kept the rings on. Those five super humans along with Captain America, formed a team called Six Super Warriors and fought Nazis during the WWII. But Captain America’s baffling disappearance lead to the six super warriors’ team dissolve.

            One of the above six super humans was Keane Marlow A.K.A Destroyer, who was best friend of Uncle Ben (was aware of Keane’s super power). Keane married the woman, he was in love with. One evening the couple witnessed a bank robbery, immediately the Destroyer wore the ring and faught the thugs, but the thugs use gun fire to stop the Destroyer who could put them to justice. In the crossfire the Destroyer lost his beloved wife. 

            Keeping his best friend Keane and his super power in mind,  Uncle Ben quoted to young Peter Parker “With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility”, but he never shared the story of Keane with Peter Parker.  

NOTES: From John Semper’s Six Forgotten Warriors, Season five of Stan Lee's Spider-Man.

It’s been an Year…

It’s been almost an year since my last post, being busy with important happenings in real-life, the longevity of no internet days are the reasons for this paucity. Though didn’t write anything throughout the year, my mind never stopped thinking about writing, out of those hundreds of ideas/incidents only few are worth sharing like “My Encounter with Talking Dog”, “The Night I Traveled with Super Woman”, “The Alluring Dreams” and “An Untitled Thriller”. I definitely share these incidents with blogger world sooner.

Meanwhile, I kept myself busy with reading books, learning new technologies in professional life, enjoying sitcoms like never before, and as usual balancing my diet and work-outs. 

Reading Books: Throughout the year couple of my friends’ suggested me wide variety of readings. These guys influenced me so strong that I wanted to read 1000 books. Current book shelf score is 60/1000 hope one day I reach the mark. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” and Sigmund Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” are among the best readings of the year.

Enjoying Sitcoms: I used to watch over 200 movies per year during the salad days of MUMBAI life. But due to the catchy phrases, mind-boggling comedy timings, and short and sweet length of the episodes made me watch sitcoms almost daily. Now I am a regular follower of CBS comedies “HIMYM”, “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men”. Thanks to STAR WORLD for acting as INDIA’s CBS. Apart from these sitcoms I got the privilege to watch Stan Lee’s Spider-Man and The HULK. These anime gave lot of insights on many things that I barely knew in childhood.

Diet and work-outs: Completely kept myself away from gym throughout the year. But sporadically pushed myself in skipping and jogging. Cycling is something I want to try very fondly, waiting for better time and place. Coming to diet, increased the intake of Carb’s, gradually reduced the intake of Milk from 3/4ltrs per day to NILL and replaced it with Coconut water and Chaas.

Anticipate on tenterhooks for next post. Hakuna Matata.

Cipher...

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11

Off late, one of my friends shared this link about confidence in Facebook; I was going through other related searches and then I saw this video. Sadly, sometimes algebra makes people skeptical but simple tricks and practice can make everyone certain. So I wanted to share couple of tricks regarding timeses and divisions w.r.t number eleven. 

The first one is about the timeses of 11. For example, if you want to find 11 times of 532 

i) your answer consist of right most digit as it is (here it is 2) then

ii) add on its immediate left hand side (LHS) digit to it(i.e. 2+3= 5)

iii) and place it towards the LHS in result(i.e., 52) repeat the same process with all the remaining digits towards LHS, one by one, and at the end you will get the result  as 532*11=5852

See it below in detail:

•  First take the right most digit i.e., 2,
• Then immediate LHS digit is 3, sum it up with earlier digit i.e., 2, sum is 2+3 =5, place it to the LHS of previous result i.e., 52
• Next immediate LHS digit is 5, sum it up with earlier digit i.e., 3, sum is 3+5=8, place it to the LHS of previous result i.e., 852
• Repeat the same steps till you reach the extreme right digit of the given number and you get 5852 as final result.
• Key step in this trick is, if there is no carry-forwards, we will go ahead with simple addition of adjacent digits, if there is any carry-forward from previous addition (take an example of 11 times of 2365, when we are adding digits 5, 6 we get the total 11, then place the units digit value (here it is 1) to the LHS of previous result set (here it would be 15) and carry-forward the remaining digit to the next step. The end result of the example is thus 26015.

The second one is about whether a given number is divided by 11 or not. It’s very simple and indeed we can calculate it faster than the machine sometimes!!! 

If the sum of the odd positioned digits is equivalent to sum of the even positioned digits of the given number, then it is divided by 11.

For example in the above result 26015, the even positioned digits are 6, and 1; their sum is 7. And the odd positioned digits are 2, 0, and 5; their sum (2+0+5=7) is 7, which is equivalent to the sum of the even positioned digits. So the given number is divided by 11.

We can imply the same trick with little modifications to the operations related to the numbers 22, 33, 44, so on and so forth.

Travelogue: Ramoji Film City

My friend Simon and I have had unsuccessful plans to visit Ramoji Film City (RFC, the largest film studio complex in the world) in the past. All those times it was a wild goose chase for us as someone or the other from our friend circle couldn’t make it on time, eventually we scrapped all the plans.

Last week I have been to home for vacations. And this time Simon and I managed to visit RFC. There are ample of packages to visit RFC nonetheless we opted for a regular one-day trip offered by a private travels. We covered the below events in exact order.

• Eureka
• Caterpillar show
• Vintage bus tour
• Photoshoot
• Lunch @ Alampana
• Kripalu caves
• Spirit of Ramoji Show and
• Stunt show

The trip was enthralling and worth sharing. 

My Turn-ons of the trip:

•  Hoola-hoop twirled by a lady performer was Stupendous. I couldn’t capture the stunt but this is what it was like.
• Delicious hyderabadi biryani was available at regular restaurant rates.
• Spectacular locations and
• Pollution free air.

My Turn-offs of the trip:

• Potty rooms @ the entrance (can’t compete with the counter parts of multiplex locations, huge scope for improvement) and
• Hot sunny weather.

P.S: Apart from RFC trip I felt titanic difference in pollution (excessive use of motor-bikes, people in Hyderabad prefer motor-bikes to bicycles to go to next street) this time in Hyderabad. I became ill because of the pollution and I am bit scared to relocate in Hyderabad now because of the pollution.I may come up with another article in regard of my contribution towards conservation.

Travelogue: Janjira Fort and Kashid Beach

As monsoon season began in Mumbai, my friends suggested for a trip to one and only impregnable fort of Maharashtra, i.e., Janjira fort and a beach near by the town called Kashid. And we have been to the place last weekend. I wanted to share my experiences of the trip with the blogger world.

My Turn-Ons of the tour:
              My Gang
              Long journey in cab and boat
              Videos captured with my N97 mini
               and Below snaps

My Turn-Offs of the tour:
               Humidity through out the tour
               and Sun burns

P.S.: Bridget is the trigger for this article.

Evolution...what???

During Aurangabad tour, my friend asked me, “What could be the reason for moon-phase?” I have asked the same question to many of friends, but nobody could answer the exact reason, except this. That befuddlement, lead me to learn the rudiments of EARTH. So I dipped into “A Brief History of Time” that ignited an interest to know about our (human) evolution so I skimmed “Human Evolution and its Uniqueness”.

Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time”, discussed about how the earth formed from solar nebula, the probabilities of “Big Bang”, nature of “Black Holes”, evolution of earth w.r.t “Space Time” and composition of earth with various factors of Universe, how human beings formed from the star dust, probability of life on outer-space and nevertheless existence of GOD!!! Apart from the book he wrote, the author himself is an inspiring persona to know about.

C.V.Rao, specialized in physics from Andhra University, presented the human evolution on a large canvas with broad strokes about the evolution of mankind, in his “Human Evolution and its Uniqueness”. The book dealt with the concept of “cosmic evolution”, “origin of life on earth”, various phases of human evolution like “Homo Erectus”, “Neandertals”, ”Cro-Magnon”,  “Homo Sapiens” and about their respective living conditions, life style in a detailed manner.

There may be ocean full of concepts about evolution of Universe, these books lead me to understand a tiny drop of it and increased my interest in anthropology.