SMS and SMS

SMS and win or SMS and make another win.....

For the mobile providers and their partners in business the above was a very brilliant idea which continues to reap harvest after harvest.

I am yet to waste my SMS but yesterday Hubby’s interest was caught by the cricket match (the one that was lost to Aussies) and I got to see yet another such call on TV. I believe it was the Bindaas Khel by the Indiatimes (Times Group) whereby one could win the following prizes by answering a few questions and these answers are to be SMS’d at premium rates.

Daily Prizes: Daily 5- Gold worth Rs. 1,000 each

Bumper Prize: Bumper- Gold worth Rs. 125,000

The site does give enough warnings and disclaimers which take out every kind of responsibility and those who indulge in messaging can do so even if they have closed the contest before a winner is even announced.

TIL expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. Neither does TIL make any warranty that the items / products made available under the contest will meet your requirements, or the delivery of the item / product will be timely, secure, nor is TIL responsible for any damages done in transit.

TIL reserves the rights to terminate / suspend the Contest at any time and/or withdraw, or extend the Contest without any prior notice and no correspondence in this regard shall be entertained.

If the above is in hope of winning a prize for oneself there is yet another by the Reality TV shows where your SMS will decide the winner (so they claim).

The one from Kerala called Idea Star Singer (Asianet Channel along with Idea Cellular Limited) has been very successful and continues to keep millions glued onto their televisions sets and many among them faithfully send their SMS too. This year’s grand prize will be a Rs 1 crore villa.

Is it the love for art or a personal desire to make the contestant win that makes a person part with an SMS?

I am sure there are individuals and groups sending their requests to friends and co-workers (I myself have received emails) for a particular contestant and this may eventually influence the decisions of many.

Whether it is out of selfish interest or selfless interest, it has been proved beyond doubt that enough and more money can be amassed for a cause through SMS.

The below is an excerpt from broadbandindia.com

At the end of Aug-2008, the top 5 GSM Mobile Service Providers in India based on no. of subscribers are,

• Bharti Airtel -74.8 mn
• Vodafone - 52.8 mn
• BSNL - 38.5 mn
• Idea Cellular - 29.3 mn
• Aircell - 13.1 mn

If the following news is to be believed,

By 2010 the Number of Mobile Subscribers is Expected to Increase to 348 Million in India!

This set me thinking as to why our NGO’s or even the mobile providers themselves are not teaming up for special projects.

Or have they already?

If one is ready to part with their SMS without much ado won’t a lot more do if a specific cause or a project is featured.

Right now I can think of Projectwhy which could use a lot of help in this manner. Let those who are conducting the business along with the mobile providers take their share, still there should be enough for any project in our country. (Of course one can have the normal checks and balances too.)

But this excericise would also have involved millions in the process of giving for a good cause.

Can Husain return?

I am no artist and if I see a modern painting I would muster all my intelligence and try to match the name of the painting with the artist’s illustration. Most of the time I fail the test. Guess one needs imagination too. Hence personally my adulation would always be for a picture that is straightforward and which can be seen by my own eyes.

I believe an artist sees the world in many different ways and his/her illustrations may or may not strike a chord with the viewers. One may also see something entirely different from what the artist set out to illustrate.

Anyway this is not about paintings. But because of my ignorance about artists and paintings I never knew that 94 year old M F Husain has been living in exile (in Dubai) for the past few years.

Did India really sent an artist away from his country of birth for his paintings?

Wikipedia gave the following:

One of the most highly rated artists in the world today, his work sells at astonishing prices and are grabbed almost instantly by international art collectors.

According to Forbes magazine, he has been called the "Picasso of India".[1]

At the age of 92 Husain was to be given the prestigious Raja Ravi Varma award by the government of Kerala.[10]

In early 2008, Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12, a large diptych, from the Hindu epic, fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.[3]

Unfortunately the higher in stature he grew, the bigger the controversies too. Every religious / patriotic sensibility seems to have been battered by this frail old man.

In the 1990s some of Husain's works became controversial because of their portrayal of Hindu deities in the nude or in an allegedly sexual manner.[12]. The paintings in question were created in 1970, but did not become an issue until 1996, when they were printed inVichar Mimansa, a Hindi monthly magazine, which published them in an article headlined "M.F. Husain: A Painter or Butcher".

Husain's film Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities[26] was pulled out of movie theatres a day after some Muslim organisations raised objections to one of the songs in it.[27] The All-India Ulema Council complained that the Qawwali song ‘Noor-un-Ala-Noor’ was blasphemous.

And now he wants to return to India as per this report.

Centre plans to pave way for M F Husain's early return

Is the stage set for the next political drama?

2 Americans, Israeli win Nobel chemistry prize

2 Americans, Israeli win Nobel chemistry prize

Trio’s work is ‘directly assisting the saving of lives,’ academy says

STOCKHOLM - Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for mapping ribosomes, the protein-producing factories within cells, at the atomic level.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work has been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life and has helped researchers develop antibiotic cures for various diseases.

Crtsy: MSNBC

-------------------------------

As the name suggests...Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is an Indian but it needed America to make him shine....and also to claim his success...

Venki Ramakrishnan

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan wins Nobel for Chemistry

London, Oct 7 (PTI) Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced today.

Born in 1952 in Chidambaram, Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".

Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and his Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University.

He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.

Indians have the brains, the will and determination but yet the factor for success in India seems to have left its shores..

Thekkady too...

It is just not right... a place frequented by so many tourists cannot be such.

Who lets them be so careless?

After every tragedy, we have shocks & tears and then we have commissions, reports and experts. Yet nothing changes. Precious lives are lost for no reason.

They say that boat capsized since the tourists moved to one side of the boat to watch the wild animals. And experts say that even if every person moves to one side, a boat meant for such trips should not capsize. I heard one survivor say on TV that it was not because the people went on one side, but that the boat turned over while the driver was taking a turn to let the tourists from both sides watch the animals. Whatever be the reason, those who came to a tourist spot to enjoy their holidays, honeymoon, school trips have been let down very badly and Kerala is mourning yet again. Having been on those boat trips many times and twice in Year 2008, I have seldom seen the boats being packed tightly. Only after the lower decks were full would they allow us to enter the upper decks and I read that for every two person in the lower deck, one person is allowed in the upper deck to keep the balance of the boat. Since I grew up in a place not far away and since as children we used to make these trips many times, never in my life time have I heard about an accident at Thekkady. The drivers have always been careful and they know the place well.

I think over the years the number of tourists has grown but sadly the authorities have not grown up in time. There were not enough life jackets and I think this particular boat was not tested right. We heard the current Chairman of KTDC (Kerala Tourism Development Corporation) say that this new boat was built in Chennai and that it had the necessary license but was it right for Thekkady?

As usual, we now read that the Safety Inspectors have not been inspecting right. And now we will have commissions and enquiries and reports. Enough and more money will be spent on these exercises while no concrete steps will be taken to prevent more such accidents.

Sadly Thekkady has now lost its innocence and many like me and my family will not dare make a boat trip in Thekkady.. but does the authorities care?

Projectwhy

Did not post anything since I was busy enjoying the 9 days holidays that we had in Kuwait.

Today I want to write about a blog which energize me each time I visit it. The blog, Projectwhy drowns my cynicism and taunts me too. I often lament about things but don’t do much about it, other than blog. But at projectwhy, one sees the other side of life and the way it is dealt with, in such a sincere manner. The author touches so many lives and continues to shine ever so brightly for them. I also love the way she deals with many of our current issues..



Here are my sincere wishes and prayers to Projectwhy.

Families paid to claim YSR shock deaths

Couldn't resist posting this... it answers some questions... while it makes me hate the Congress party even more.... God help us...

but what about all those newspapers that reported the deaths in the first place...can someone sue them? it is sad to see the media acting so irresponsibly.. do we have any trustworthy media left in the country?

Families paid to claim YSR shock deaths

Families of the "victims" admitted that they were paid Rs 5,000 each by Congress leaders for funeral and other expenses. In return, they were told not to disclose how these people actually died. The Congress leaders also reportedly promised to secure the release of ex-gratia to the families once Jaganmohan became CM. Take, for instance, the death of 70-year-old Uppalaiah, a potter from the remote Lakshmipuram village of Parakala mandal. His poverty-stricken family stays in a small hut. On September 3 afternoon, a few hours after Reddy's death was confirmed, Uppalaiah died.

His son Mallaiah claimed the old man had "suddenly died" of a heart attack on the day Reddy's body was found. But, his wife Lakshamma said that Uppalaiah had been ailing for over a month and was suffering from breathlessness.

Inquiries revealed how local Congress leaders had got into the act to show the old man had died of shock following the news of Reddy's accident. A local Congressman had called up a reporter of Sakshi television channel, owned by Jaganmohan, to say that Uppalaiah had died of a heart attack after watching the news of Reddy's death on television.

Within minutes, this appeared on the scrolling on Sakshi TV. Then, other media organisations too picked up the news. The YSR shock deaths myth was slowly being built. But, it was founded on a cruel lie because Uppalaiah's desperately poor family does not own a television set.

Similar stories emerged from other areas as well. Congress leaders reportedly had little trouble in learning of these deaths because they had mostly occurred in party strongholds.

On September 4, 40-year-old B. Srihari, a registered medical practitioner, died of a heart attack in neighbouring Nagaram village. His brother Ramesh said that Srihari had participated in a rally organised by the local Congress workers in Reddy's memory. He had returned to his clinic and treated a few patients, before collapsing. "Srihari died before we could take him to hospital. We informed the local Sakshi reporter, who carried the news on the channel," Ramesh said.

He also said, "Minister for Women and Child Welfare Konda Surekha called on us and paid us Rs 5,000. She also promised all help to us once Jaganmohan took over as chief minister," Ramesh said.

At Kowkonda village, Chukka Sayamma, an 80-year-old woman died in her sleep on September 4. But her death was linked to Reddy's helicopter crash.

In another instance, 45-year-old Rajamouli of Kamareddypalle village died after allegedly consuming poison in his fields on September 5. His daughter Padma did not say how the death had occurred.

However, his neighbours said that Rajamouli had been drinking heavily the night before after participating in a Congress rally. He had quarrelled with his wife at night and was found dead the next morning. His name was reportedly put on the list of those who "gave up their lives" for Reddy because he had taken part in the Congress rally.

The death of 25-year-old Teegala Chiranjeevi at Peddammagadda in Hanamkonda is interesting. Local residents said he was a vagabond and mentally deranged. On September 5, he committed suicide by setting himself on fire.

Since there was no one to take care of him, local NSUI workers informed the media that the man had immolated himself demanding that Jaganmohan be made chief minister. The police, however, registered the case of suicide.

"We know that 90 per cent of these deaths are natural. But nobody would speak the truth either out of respect towards YSR or fear of reprisal from Congress leaders. The family members of these victims too do not reveal the facts because they have been promised ex gratia by the leaders," a mandal parishad member said.

Courtesy: Mail Today