The Bangladeshi Taj Mahal

Ahsanullah Moni is a wealthy Bangladeshi film-maker(a well respected figure in Dhaliwood) who aims to be Shah Jahan II. Mr. Moni has over the past 5 years spent a lot of his time and money to construct a copy of the Taj Mahal, considered to be among the new seven wonders of the world.

Mr Moni has spent US$58 million (S$87 million) to build the ‘Bangladeshi Taj Mahal‘ importing marble and granite from Italy, diamonds from Belgium and 160 kilograms of bronze. Mr. Moni said that he wanted his countrymen to experience the beauty of the Indian monument even if they were too poor to travel to see the original (Source). The copy-cat monument is situated in Sonargaon, 30 kilometres north-east of the capital Dhaka. Mr. Moni justifies his intent to build his version of the Taj saying that while it costs 20,000 taka for a Bangladeshi to see the Taj in Agra it only costs 50 taka( recently increased to 100 taka) for them to see his version of the taj.

Well, we sure hope that this doesn’t inspire people in other countries to construct their own versions of the seven wonders, cause when it comes to traveling and sightseeing there is nothing like seeing the original.

Blogging Is Fun But Who Was The First One

10 years, 100 million blogs and a new blog every second , yet, we still don’t know the founder of the blog. While Tim Berner’s Lee is credited as the founder of the world wide web and Vint Cerf as one of the founding fathers of the Internet. There is still no consensus on who started the first blog.

But there are a few contenders for the title of “First Blogger” . Dave Winer is one of the contenders, his website Scripting News is believed to be one of the first blogs and has been running since 1997. But Winer did not coin term “Web log”(although he founded a company called Weblogs.com which was later bought by VeriSign, read here) and claims that the first blogs were inspired by Scripting News.(Source)

While Winer did not coin the term, John Barger did and thus proclaims himself to be the father of the blog. The last contender in this race is Justin Hall, a Web diarist and online gaming expert whom The New York Times Magazine once called the “founding father of personal blogging”. But just hold on, if just talking about something can make you it’s founder then there is yet another contender for this title, a 19th Century Russian Prince by the name of Vladimir Odoevsky.

Odoevsky, was a gifted man who apart from writing philosophical books, stories for children and composing pieces of music, also wrote science fiction, trying to imagine what his country would look like in 2,500 years, in 4338. Odoevsky suggested in future there would be a kind of connection between houses that would allow people to communicate quickly and easily, the way they do now via the Internet.

Houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to communicate, Odoevsky wrote. Even more interestingly, Odoevsky suggested every household would publish a kind of daily journal or newsletter and distribute it among selected acquaintances, a habit which Russian bloggers immediately recognized as blogging(Source).

The Blog continues to grow at a rapid rate today and has spawned a social revolution bringing to the fore thousands of information savvy Citizen Journalists(better known as CJ’s). So while it’s good to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil, you can always use the blog to convey what you wanna say, just like our friends below.

The Desire To Be Superhuman - Understanding The Superman Syndrome

The picture above gives a classic representation of what our lives have become today as we strive to do more and more every day in our desire to become superior and more “super” than the rest. As we progress into the information age and technology becomes more widespread, people tend to be with their work for a major part of the day on weekdays and in some cases even on weekends. “For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign“, says noted reporter Jeff Zeleny while writing for the New York Times (Check here). This just goes to show the kind of pressure today’s high-ranking professionals have to face and the rise of a little known mindset called the “The Superman Syndrome“.

“the Superman Syndrome is a dangerous workplace success formula that forces men and women to leap tall buildings and outrun speeding bullets — at the expense of personal lives, families, children and even business productivity. This represents a major hypocrisy implicit in nearly every boardroom in a lot of countries: The belief that we should be accountable to work but not to our families“. Superman Syndrome can exist in various forms, a person could work days and nights sacrificing his health and family commitments so that he can get the promotion that he desires or to get a better annual review on his performance so that he gets a better salary hike. Another form of the Superman Syndrome is one where a person tries to flash his wealth and take care of the needs of everyone around him. Take the case of Trent, who writes at The Simple Dollar.

“When I was freshly out of college with my first high-paying job, I would constantly insist on paying for everything. Meals out with friends, lattes at the coffee shop, even sometimes shopping purchases - I felt this deep need to step in, bust out my plastic, and say, “I’ll take care of it!”. It took many years, but I finally realized that I don’t need to be the financial hero all of the time - or even much of the time at all. Being the credit card-bearing Superman, like in that video below, doesn’t lead to being a hero - it leads to overspending, a sense of guilt, and a false image presented to others that you must keep up .

The Learning Fountain carries an interesting read of the Superman Syndrome here. It ends with a thought provoking line “Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.”

Probably it doesn’t pay to be Superman everytime.

DelhiPlanet Weekends - Everyone Is Born A Female

Have you ever wondered why men have nipples or why some men have more feminine characteristics than others ? As much as people may like to deny it, it is a fact that each one of us has certain male and female characteristics. So not all men are burly and masculine and not all women are slim and gorgeous, although it is the biological makeup of men which tends to give them certain female characteristics. As any high school science text book would tell you, every human being gets a unique set of 23 pairs of chromosomes at conception. These fall into two categories. One pair of chromosomes determines sex–the XX combination means you become female, the XY combination means you become male.

However what most textbooks won’t tell you is that every individual is born as a female and it’s not till after the 7^th week of conception that one starts to develop any male or female features. At that early stage of prenatal life, there is a fork in the road of development. If there are no hormonal changes in the prenatal environment, the embryo developes into a female. If, however, the embryo is destined to become a male, its Y-chromosomes trigger the production of testosterone (the male hormone), which masculinizes the brain and genitalia (internal as well as external) of the embryo. But it takes no female hormone to produce a female infant (Only at age ten or later does the female body begin to produce the hormones that transform the girl into a woman).

So basically every person begins life with a proto-female brain. Testosterone masculinizes the brain (and genitals) of those embryos that are genetically marked to develop as males. Almost all male genitals are thoroughly masculinized. But, there is some direct evidence, and lots of indirect evidence, that there is a wide range of variation in the degree to which the male brain is masculinized. It is for this reason that there are many males with a lot of female tendencies all over the world, although the opposite is not that widespread (Source).

So the male nipple is basically the result of the first 7 weeks of life. Human nipples appear in the third or fourth week of development, well before the sex characteristics. As many as seven pairs of nipples are arranged along either side of a “milk line” a ridge of skin that runs from the upper chest to the navel. It is also true that both male and female babies are born with the main milk ducts intact–the gland that produces milk is there in the male, but it remains undeveloped unless stimulated by the female hormone, estrogen. Occasionally, a male baby is born with enough of his mother’s estrogen in his body to produce a bizarre phenomenon known as “witches‘ milk,” with the male glands, suitably stimulated, pumping away at the moment of birth.

Being Carbon Neutral - What It Means and What’s Being Done

As we gradually approach the end of the first decade of the 21^st century and start planning for the next, we are sure that there is atleast one existing issue that we would have to tackle. No prizes for guessing, it’s the issue of Global Warming. As oil prices soar to record highs (read our previous articles here and here) and global climates become highly unpredictable (Delhi had an unusually cool summer this time with lots and lots of rain, read here for more), the race has started to cut down on emissions and become “Carbon Neutral“.

Carbon Neutral, Carbon Trading, Carbon Credits etc etc, heck there are just so many terms being talked about these days that’s it’s hard to keep track of what each one means. How about starting with something that doesn’t seem to be capitalist and doesn’t deal with money for a change, let’s find out what “Being Carbon Neutral” means.

Being carbon neutral, or carbon neutrality, refers to zero total carbon release, brought about by balancing the amount of carbon released with the amount offset. In the loose sense it could mean either one of the following:

• It can refer to the practice of balancing carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, with renewable energy that creates a similar amount of useful energy, so that the carbon emissions are compensated, or alternatively using only renewable energies that don’t produce any carbon dioxide.
• It is also used to describe the practice of carbon offsetting, by paying others to remove 100% of the carbon dioxide emitted from the atmosphere, for example by planting trees – or by funding ‘carbon projects‘ that should lead to the prevention of future greenhouse gas emissions, or by buying carbon credits to remove them through carbon trading. These practices are often used in parallel, together with energy conservation measures to minimize energy use.

To be considered carbon neutral, an organization must reduce its carbon footprint to zero. Determining what to include in the carbon footprint depends upon the organization and the standards they are following. Generally, direct emissions sources must be reduced and offset completely, while indirect emissions from purchased electricity can be reduced with renewable energy purchases. Becoming carbon neutral has now become a major goal for the various multi-billion dollar corporations and ranks high on their corporate social responsibility initiatives.

For instance, Dell Inc. has promised that it would neutralize its carbon emissions and become carbon neutral by the end of 2008 (read here for more) while Google has started to make grants for research that would promote fuel-efficient, hybrid cars. Google also plans to switch to solar energy and has promised to create more than 2 megawatts of renewable energy by the end of 2012. Other organization that are working towards becoming carbon neutral are HSBC, ING Group, PepsiCo and Tesco.

It is interesting to note that in such times when the awareness towards carbon emissions is increasing by the hour developed economies like USA, Canada, Japan and UK are hardly taking any initiatives to control their energy needs. On the other hand countries like New Zealand, Costa Rica, Iceland and Norway have vowed to become carbon neutral in the next 30-40 years(read here for more). Costa Rica in fact aims to be fully carbon neutral before 2030. In 2004 itself, 46.7% of Costa Rica’s primary energy came from renewable sources, while 94% of its electricity was generated from hydroelectric power, wind farms and geothermal energy in 2006. In fact Costa Rica is so pro-active about being Carbon Neutral that there is a 3.5% tax on gasoline in the country which is used for payments to compensate landowners for growing trees and protecting forests.

Now that’s a tax that a lot of people won’t mind paying, instead it would actually make you feel good. Kudos to such countries and it’ll be great to see the US do something in this regard.

Tags: carbon, offset, trading, costa, rica, usa, pollution, neutral, global, warming

(Coming Soon: What’s The Connection between the Roman Catholic Church and Eco-Capitalist Companies, A closer Look Into the Carbon Neutral Myth).

DelhiPlanet Weekends : Some Cool Facts About Tequila

Do you remember anything about your last all-night party. Well, if you do then chances are that you didn’t really have a good time and if you don’t then you most likely had your fill of Tequila that night.

As evident from the poster above, Tequila is an extremely potent drink considered to be Champagne’s Wild Brother(as both of them are mostly consumed during big celebrations, tequila being famous with the young people). Just a couple of shots of this drink is all that’s required to get high. Unknown to most people, Tequila is actually a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, 65 km northwest of Guadalajara and in the highlands of Jalisco. More than 80% of the city’s 35,000 strong population lives off the income generated from tequila production as the city produces an astonishing 230,000 litres of tequila every day (Know More). Tequila is made from the blue agave plant (Agave tequilana azul), which is native to Mexico. Tequila is most often made at a 38–40% alcohol content, but there are also several varieties of tequila produced with 43–46% alcohol content.

Most of the tequila enjoyed around the world is made near the town of Tequila. Infact it is illegal to produce tequila anywhere else in the world without having to pay some kind of royalty to mexico. Recently there have been concerns over the production of “Chinese Tequila” and many Mexican politicians have been demanding action to protect the native tequila industry (Source) . The Mexican tequila industry has expanded rapidly since the early 1990s and marketing experts have tried to change its reputation from a cheap peasant drink to a sophisticated international spirit like whisky.In 2005 alone, Mexico produced a record 210m litres of tequila - almost half of which was exported. Sales to the US alone were worth more than $400m.

The US is such a big consumer of mexican tequila that it created and signed the 2006 Tequila Trade Agreement on January 17, 2006 allowing the continued bulk import of tequila into the United States. Without this agreement all tequila would have had to be bottled in Mexico. If you ever happen to visit this town then this what you’ll see from a distance.

Well, now that you’re quite knowledgable about tequila you can definetly use it at the next party you visit and show off your intellect. If you’re wondering that there is something else that’s really famous about tequila, then you’re probably thinking of the famous Tequila Song by the Champs, a brief snippet of which you can listen to below.

Tags: tequila, drinks, mexico, usa, party, champagne, champs, agreement, export, agave

Sleeping Your Way To Fitness

“Weight Loss“, is a scary two letter word that is almost always on the minds of young women and very often leads to a multitude of issues in both men and women. Excercise, Dieting, Avoiding fatty food etc are the most common terms that come to mind on hearing these words. Well, as we have talked about before (check here), weight-loss or maintaing the right weight is more about having the proper kind of lifestyle rather than crash-dieting and trying out ways to lose weight fast.

The very vital ingredient of a healthy lifestyle that is often ignored the most is one’s sleep. Most people don’t pay too much attention to their sleep and tend to either over-sleep or sleep-less. Well, recent studies show that people who sleep fewer than six hours a night or more than nine are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies. The study also linked light sleepers to higher smoking rates, less physical activity and more alcohol use.The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.(Source)

Smoking was highest for people who got under six hours of sleep, with 31 percent saying they were current smokers. Those who got nine or more hours also were big puffers, with 26 percent smoking.

It is a little known fact that one loses calories while sleeping as well. A 160-pound person who sleeps eight hours a day will lose roughly 549 calories in the process, that’s the reason why we often feel hungry after a nice long sleep. Other easy ways to reduce weight include sitting while talking on the phone for eight hours (it can burn upto 914 calories, no wonder girls are always on the phone). Driving a car for eight hours will knock off around 1,219 calories while standing in a casino for eight hours will burn about 1,402 calories.

Ofcourse nothing beats the old fashioned rule to stay fit - eat right, sleep tight and get some kind of exercise.

Tags: calories, food, weight, diet, girls, smoking, talking, sleep

Note:We got ourself a new logo. We hope you like it. DelhiPlanet also welcomes comments, suggestions on the kind of articles that you would like to read.

Back On Popular Demand - Nadi Astrology

We have received an overwhelming response to this article and for the first time ever we have decided to reproduce it with answers to some questions and more information. (You can read the orginal post here)

Can you believe that someone in Tamil Nadu at Vaithiswarankoil (290 kms from Chennai) keeps the records of your past, present and future. No way, is what you might think but the truth is quite different and very shocking. In reality everything about you has been written and recorded centuries ago by great sages on palm leaves. By just using your thumb impression it is possible to tell everything about you, your parents, your siblings and your future. Welcome to the world of Nadi Astrology, where only the facts are stated and nothing is predicted.

Nadi is an ancient astrology, which has been composed by great Maharishis (sages) of India in the past using their spiritual powers. Pleased with their fervent prayer and dedicated devotion, Lord Shiva bestowed on them this amazing skill, which is a kind of sixth sense extra sensory perception. With the help of this incredible clarivoyance the sages created records of your past, present and future on palm leaves, which fortunately are still intact even today. These records are however not available for the total population of the world, the sages created the records for only those people who are destined to know about them. These choosen souls are involuntarily attracted to read the leaves by force of circumstance or under compulsion or by severe curiosity about oneself. The language inscribed on these palm leaves is in old poetic tamil(as shown in the picture above. It looks like some kind of scribbling to a layman, but in reality contains the future of your life) and is understandable to very few who are well versed in the art of naadi reading.

Surely there must be several questions running through your mind now. What kind of process is followed by the nadi institute to get to your leaf, is probably one question you must be thinking of. After all how do they find everything about me and my family by just taking my thumb print. Is the process scientific(Read Scientific Proof of Nadi Predictions) or are you just really lucky to find your future(doesn’t explain how thousands of people have found their facts). Well, the process is somewhat like this:

1. First your thumb print(right hand thumb for males and left hand thumb for females) is taken on a piece of paper. Every thumb impression can be classified into a particular category and the leafs are categorized in bundles based on the thumb imprint categories.
2. For a particular thumb impression there could be several bundles each containing many leafs with the future of various individuals. Once the bundle matching your thumb imprint is found, the naadi reader takes you into closed discussion and proceeds to read each leaf present in the bundle.
3. The leaf reader has no knowledge of any of your details, he only reads out only what is written on the leaf as he has been trained to understand that language. The reader would one by one take up several leafs asking you to verify basic facts like your date of birth, your fathers name, your mothers name, their occupation, your current occupation etc. These facts would just be told to you and not asked from you, you just need to reply in yes/no. If you’re lucky you would get the leaf where everything that is written would match and answers to all the questions would be yes.
4. It may also be that your leaf is not found, in which case they search the records at the main center in Tamil Nadu(The main center has branches all over India, allowing people all over the country to use this facility. Only certain number of scrolls are kept at each center, while the main center has a much bigger collection.)
5. Normally, each side of the leaf would have information about one person. So a single leaf would have information on 2 people, however in very rare cases a whole leaf would have information about a single person. The naadi center hands over the leaf to you if you fall into this rare category. Sounds too startling to believe but it is absolutely true, and there have been a few cases like these.
6. The most amazing part of this process is that even though the helpers at the naadi centers spend several hours trying to locate your leaf, they do not charge anything for their services if your leaf is not found. One needs to pay a minimal amount only after your leaf has been found it’s content recorded in the original tamil form in a notebook and translated into either hindi or english by a translator. The words of the translator are also recorded on an audio cassette which one is allowed take back along with the notebook.

Some of readers have also shared their experiences with us and we reproduce some of them below:

I have seen my bhavishya at a center at PUNE. I am very surprised to know the past,present & future of myself. Many of my relatives & freinds seen this & find is perfect & correct. I advise to all to see their future & feel the exiting things in life - Anil

I’ve visited many nadi centers in Punjab & Harayna. System is very same as you told.I’ve got the nadi leaves of My entire family. No doubt nadi astrology Is great method to know future. But the predictions are not 100% accurate . Nadi readers tell the good things of future boastly & ignores the bad ones.

My neighbor’s age was told by a nadi reader 85. but he was dead in just 67th. I think the leaves r 100% correct but readers r not. To get the full knowledge about nadi system one must read book “Nadi Astrology” (English, Hindi) written by “Shashikant oak.” - Sandeep Bansal

We have also received many queries asking us about the details and locations of these centers. These centers are spread all across India and a little googling on the centers of your city should do the trick. If you live in Delhi then check here for more information on how you can see your leaf.

Tags: fate, destiny, action, freewill, life, future, palm leaf, astrology, nadi, overwhelming, pune, india, sage

The Smart Way To Lose Weight - III

We are back with Part 3 of our weight loss series. You can checkout the earlier posts on this series below

• The Smart Way To Lose Weight - I
• The Smart Way To Lose Weight - II

We continue with our weight loss tips which were started in Part - II.

• That’s it, I’m Done: At this point you are probably thinking to yourself, “how the hell would I reduce weight if I never diet and eat whatever I want“. Well, you would reduce weight this way, if and only if you stop eating at the right time. As we mentioned before, most people eat more than their stomach actually needs. This happens when your focus is not on your food but on something else. In a public experiment that was conducted to test this theory, people walking across the street in New York were asked to try a sample of popcorn that was a week old. The unanimous response was that the popcorns tasted “awful“. The same popcorns were then re-packaged and sold to movie goers in a popular cinema house and guess what, more than 90% of the people finished the popcorn without any major complaints. In the first case, the people were completely involved in tasting the popcorn and could easily judge that they were stale, while in the second case the movie audience was more engrossed in watching the movie and didn’t even try to sense the taste of the popcorn. Therefore the only way you would know, when to stop eating, is when you eat your food consciously and stop as soon as you feel even slightly full. An easy way to start, is to eat food alone for a week without any distractions. Try to chew each bite about 15-20 times savoring the taste. In a few days you would be amazed at the amount of food that you would be leaving, and from there on your journey towards weight loss would start.
• Never give into temptation: Our last piece of advice is probably something you already know and yet it is the hardest thing to follow. The approach discussed by us however is much better than any of the other diets which prohibit you to eat the really good stuff. All you need to make sure is that you don’t eat when you are not hungry.

The approach talked about here has actually become really popular thanks to people like Paul McKenna and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Paul McKenna is a British hypnotist, and television personality. According the Sunday Times he is Britain’s best selling non-fiction author with a number of titles like I Can Make You Rich, Quit Smoking Today Without Gaining Weight and many more. McKenna discusses the approach talked about here, in his book I Can Make You Thin, which is now also a popular TV Show.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the other hand is the founder of the international Art of Living Foundation and advocates a similar approach in his programs. So unlike the celebrity diets which work for very few people, such kind of approaches work for most of us.

We hope you enjoyed reading our series on Weight Loss. We Wish You A Healthy Life Ahead.

Tags: popcorn, temptation, savor, mckenna, aol, health, slim

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