The Great 'Firewall' of China

                    "If you open the window for fresh air, you should expect some flies to come in." 


                     This is a famous quotation of Deng Xiaoping, the then head of China who was the man behind liberalization of Chinese Economy. It is intended to say that, opening the doors of Chinese Economy will lead to allowing of various unnecessary things and unwanted ideologies.

                      The communist government of China imposes internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. Various laws and administrative regulations are brought into picture with respect to the usage of internet. As per these laws, censorship systems are implemented by state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations. This censorship is one of the world’s most sophisticated one.

                       As per the regulations, No one can use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:

•    Encouraging the breaking of Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations
•    Encouraging the overthrow of the government or the socialist system
•    Encouraging the division of the country, harming national unification.
•    Encouraging the hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities.
•    Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society.
•    Promoting feudal superstitions, gambling, violence, murder.
•   Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity.
•   Openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people.
•   Injuring the reputation of state organizations.
•   Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations. 

               A project to automatically filter the content that falls under above mentioned category was started in 1998 and went on till 2006. The project was named as 'Great Firewall of China'. The Golden Shield Project consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the Internet gateways blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through.

                In China, 

• One cannot participate in social networking, where information will be shared across the globe.
• One cannot call for protests or propagate inflammatory speechs via internet.
• Discussions in forums are not not allowed.

                However, in the other China-controlled territories like Hong Kong and Macau, there is no such censorship.

                In 2006, an activist shared some information to outer world on protests via yahoo.Yahoo was summoned to provide the information of the user. He was later sentenced for ten years of imprisonment.

                It is estimated that, at least 18,000 websites are blocked in mainland China. Certain topics like Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, agitations related to freedom of speech and democracy,  Taiwan independence, Tibetan independence movement etc are blocked forever. Foreign media websites such as BBC News, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia are occasionally blocked. On the twentieth anniversary of the government suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the government ordered internet portals, forums and various other sites to shut down their servers for maintenance. When the Wenzhou train collision happened in China, the news reached the outer world after many days. Such an effective internet regulation is operational in China.

               However, one cannot stop the technology and innovation. A search engine called 'Elgoog' was developed. It is nothing but 'Google' spelled backwards. It gave results with all the strings reversed. Thus, they escape the Chinese firewall as it makes harder for the blockages to track on what users are looking for.

              Kapil Sibal is planning for a similar firewall to control internet usage in India. Let us wait and see how it works here.

Flowering of Bamboo - Famine connection

                        Bamboos flower every year. But, most of the species flower at intervals as long as 65 or 120 years. The longest mass flowering interval known is 130 years, and is found for all the species.

                       

                         Since the time of Mahabharata, this mass flowering is believed to be followed by a famine in various regions. People in ancient India believed that whenever mass flowering happens, severe scarcity of food grains would occur in the next 2-3 years. North-eastern state's 70% of agriculture is dependent on Bamboo. And in those days, even Burma was part of India. So, if a famine occurs in this region, whole of India would be severely affected.

                         It was in 1958, when it mass-flowered in North-east. The local Mizo District Council cautioned the Assam government of an famine. However, the Assam government rejected the cautions on the grounds that it was not scientific. It will be interesting to know that a famine did occur in the region in 1961.

What is the connection between Bamboo-mass flowering and a famine?

                        When bamboo plants flower, they produce a large volume of seeds. These seeds are a source of food for many predators, especially rats. As the mass-flowering produce huge amount of seeds, rats are attracted to such an area. When they begin consuming such protein-rich seeds, they multiply rapidly. Since the supply of bamboo seeds is limited, when the supply falls down, the rats divert their attention to standing crops, rice, potatoes etc. As a result, the local farmers, who are fully dependant on agriculture are subject to famine. This problem is so severe that many hectares of crop will be destroyed in just few months.

                        When this reason was traced out, local administration started some good initiatives like introducing a reward scheme of Rs. 100 for every 100 rats that were killed etc. The farmers were supposed to produce the killed rat to claim the reward. When the most recent cycle of bamboo flowering in the region began, villagers were killing about 5 lakh rats a year. By the time the flowering peaked up, the number had risen to 2.6 million rats killed each year.

                        Then the government thought of another solution for this problem since killing the rats cannot be the only solution and it may in-turn affect the Eco-balance and the food chain. The government asked the farmers to plant the crops which cannot be eaten by the rats in the flowering period. These crops include ginger, turmeric etc.

                        Meanwhile, in other regions of India where there are no Bamboo plantations, the central government will concentrate on increasing the stocks of food. Since then, we have handled such famines properly.

About Indian Currency

      What material is used to make the Indian Rupee note?

                         If I ask this question, about 90% of people would say 'Paper'. But, it is not made up of paper. It is 100% pure cotton.

Here is another question...
    

     Why steel coins are replaced with Brass and bi-metallic coins these days?

                        These days we are seeing brass, bi-metallic, alloy and various cheap material coins. Earlier, we used to have all our coins made of stainless steel. Government decided to reduce the use of steel and replace steel with low-cost alloys.

 The reason behind this decision:

                         The ever- rising prices of stainless-steel have made these coins worth less than their original metal value. This has led to high level of shortage of coins in parts of India. It seems that, major portion of this 'chillar paisa' or 'chuttaa' goes to the North-East where there are many tiny-scale industries which melt these coins and manufacture stainless steel razor blades out of it. The blades are then smuggled out of the country for sale in Bangladesh. Now, it is estimated that, with one 1/- coin, we can prepare 5-6 blades. So, on an average, value of 1/- is equal to 30 rupees (Bangladeshi Takas) . So, government decided to introduce brass/alloy coins in-order to reduce the illegal melting of coins by individuals and using the steel to manufacture razor blades.

                         This coin-for-blades concept came into light when the police in Kolkata arrested a grocer and seized a huge coin melting unit. The coin shortage was so high in those days that... the tea estate managers of Assam had to give card board coins in place of original coins to the workers which have validity in their gardens since they never had coins with them.

                         Indian History has already seen the consequences of introducing copper coins in the place of silver coins by Muhammad-Bin-Tughlaq of Delhi Sultanate. That decision in those days resulted in turning every house of Delhi into a mint and hence helped in depreciating the value of currency.

                        Now, I could say that we have advanced a lot in this aspect. We have created history in increasing the coin's value.
                        Who says.. India is not advanced....?

How is TRP rating evaluated ?

                      Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan was listed in the Limca Book of Records as the world's "most viewed mythological serial" based on the TRP ratings. Recently, during the closing ceremony of XIX Commonwealth Games, it is estimated that 82% of the Indian population viewed Doordarshan Channel.
                      We hear this word 'TRP Rating' quite often. Based on the TRP rating, advertisers sponsor the programs.

Now, what is this TRP rating and how is it calculated?

                      TRP is 'Television Rating Point'. It is a scale to calculate the popularity of a channel or the program. Earlier, DART used to be the only agency which calculated this rating point for Doordarshan programs. Now, an agency is set up which works with various organizations like Nielsen in evaluating the TRP. This agency is known as INTAM which means Indian Television Audience Measurement.

How this evaluation is the done?

                         DART used manual surveying in 33 major cities to evaluate the TRP rating. However, this method is prone to mistakes and subjectivity. Various factors like age of the viewer, gender etc are supposed to be taken into consideration while evaluating them. So, this process is almost obsolete these days.

Now, two new techniques are introduced in the last ten years.

•     People Meters
•     Picture-match technique

                        INTAM uses these two methodologies for calculating TRP. It has chosen many sample homes across the country both in rural and urban parts and has installed electronic gadgets which monitor the TV channels.

• People Meters:

                        'People meter' reads the frequencies of the channels, which are decoded into the name of the channels. This data is consolidated and the agency prepares a report on this basis. But there is a small problem here... our cable operators change the frequencies many times before sending signals to our homes. Also, the frequency of the channel we see is not same all over the nation. Moreover, with the advent of direct to home (DTH) , Dish TV, Direct Plus etc., people have started using their own satellite decoders. So, frequency recognition is a tough task and hence, this process has become complex.

• Picture-match technique:

                         In picture-match technique, instead of recording the frequency, people meter continuously records the portion of the picture or the logo of the channel that is being watched on that particular television set at that particular time. Data collected from the sample homes is later used to evaluate the channel name and the popular program nation wide.

                         Many claim that all these TRP ratings are not authentic but we should understand that there is a lot of analysis associated in this evaluation. However, these agencies are not appointed by the Government of India.. so we should not except them to be 100% reliable.

Caisson

We have been building bridges on rivers for decades.

A usual method followed in the construction of bridge is..

1. Start constructing the pillars in summer when the river is almost dry.
2. Divert the water flow at the point where we intend to raise a pillar using some means 
3. Raise the pillars 
4. Assemble beams
5. Finish it.

But, what about the bridges on sea?

                        We cannot divert sea till the time we build pillars on the sea bed. Also, there is no dry-time for a sea. I always had question.. how 'The Worli-Bandra Sea link' is built ? Have done some R&D about this recently.

For this... a Caisson is used.

                        A caisson is a watertight structure which is used to work on the foundations of bridges, dams, repair of ships etc. In simple terms, these are suspensions into the sea bed. When we throw an object into water.. the upward acting force caused by fluid pressure opposes the weight. So, the object never gets a proper grip on the sea bed. Hence, after caissons are suspended, compressed air is pumped into it so that the it gets a firm hold of the ground. Then, the water is pumped out, keeping the working environment dry. These huge steel caissons are towed out, then gradually filled with concrete and water, and sunk. Then, beams will be placed over these pillars and bridge will be constructed.

A Caisson looks like this:

 Problems associated with this...

                     First thing is.. the workers work at extreme conditions as the pressure at sea bed is very high. In addition to that, we pump high pressurized air into the chamber. So, workers who work here without taking necessary precautions, are quite often affected by a disease called as 'Caisson Disease' which is also known as decompression sickness. Affected workers may even be paralyzed for life. So absolute care is supposed to be taken by the construction companies.

Do we all see the same color?

Can anyone prove that we all see the same color? 
     Are there any cases where one sees brown and others see it to be green, but they both call it Red?

                     When one grows up, either his/her parents or teachers tell what a color is called...like, they show leaves and say it is green in color. But, can anyone assure that both the teacher/parent and the child see the same color? There are cases in which one sees some orange, but his parents and teachers call it some purple. And, it is true that throughout the life, right from the birth, one feels that sky is always red (which he calls to be blue but is actually the pleasing blue to others).

                      For the question, if everyone sees the same color, answer would definitely be 'Yes' since we all have the same photo receptors that detect color, we all see the same in this until and unless these receptors do not function properly. So, there is no confusion with respect to color that we see.

                      This improper functioning of those receptors can be termed as color blindness.

How do a color blinded person see the world?

Let us consider this example:  Look at this figure....

For people with normal vision: We can see 0 to 9 in different squares

For color blind people.. it looks like something this:
There will be no differentiation between the shades.

Here is another example:

Consider the following illustration:

This figure if shown to a person with normal vision, he can see number 7 between pink, yellow and orange bubbles.

But, if we show the same figure to a person who is color blind, it looks something like this to him:

He cannot see 7 in that figure as the pink, yellow and orange seem to be green (different shades of green) to him.

                    The interesting thing is that, right from his childhood, he has been thinking that the color which everyone terms as pink, and which he feels to be pink is actually green and he will never ever know the same in his life.

                    Around 5% of population is color blind as per some study. We never know if we are color blind... Chances are high that the color which we feel to be particular color may actually seem another color to other...

What happens when an overhead electric cable breaks and falls on the train we travel?

I have an interesting question...
                
                      Suppose, a person who is standing on the roof of an electric train touches the 25,000 Volts cable and gets electrocuted... or suppose the overhead electric cable breaks and falls on the train...What happens to the passengers in the train? Do they get electrocuted?

               
                       The body of the train is Cast Iron, the Railway track is made of Mild Steel and the interiors of the compartment are also made of steel. All these conduct electricity. So, obviously, the whole compartment should get electrocuted and since the railway track is a continuous one, entire system should be affected.

                       But, it is not the thing that happens. Thanks to the safety department of Railways which ensures passenger safety in such a case. Of course, the power is active when the cable comes in contact with the train but it goes to the ground through the compartment. Immediately after the cable breaks, the high voltage circuit breakers will interrupt the power supply, and stop the power in very less time.
           
                       Hence, the passengers would not be affected unless they come out and touch the ground and the railway track. As long as people stay in the train they are like a bird on a wire and nothing happens.

                       So, no problem... we can travel safe without any fear...