Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Real Miracle

As far as Miracles is concern, turning salty seawater in to sweet water is quite amazing. Regardless of the scientific clarification being doled out—surplus freshwater flowing from the Mahim River into the sea—the thousand mass to Mahim Creek near the beachfront in Mumbai will pretty see the ‘transubstantiation’ as the deed of the late Haji Maqdoom Baba, whose shrine is in the area. Mass hysteria, of course, is only a term to clarify the hordes of believers filling plastic bottles and drinking the water. But the real miracle would be if those glugging the ‘miraculous’ water manages to flee succumbing to serious gastric illness.

The water of Mahim Creek, sweetened or otherwise, is dirty and would scandalize not only the likes of Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment. Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai have already request to people not to drink the water. Industrial waste is not the finest ingredient for a miracle. But telling this to goggle-eyed people facing even more goggle-eyed TV cameras is as worthwhile as persuasive people that a Ganesh idol sipping milk is caused by suction and not godly lactose tolerance.

Fortunately, rumors of the sweetened water turning back to its original brackish form might stop a future surge. Now we only wait for the real miracle of no one complaining of sickness.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

DVD

DVD ("Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an admired optical disc storage space media format that can be used for data storage, like movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs be similar to Compact Discs in that they have the precise appearance (i.e. diameter: 120 mm or 4.72 in, occasionally 80 mm or 3.15 in.) and both are optical storage media so similar that a DVD reader or writer can usually read CDs, but DVDs are encoded in a dissimilar format of much greater density, allowing a data storage capability 8 times greater (single-layer, single-sided).

All read-only DVD discs, regardless of type, are DVD-ROM discs. This includes replicated (factory pressed), recorded (burned), video, audio, and data DVDs. A DVD with properly formatted and structured video content is a DVD-Video disc. Everything else, (including other types of DVD discs with video content) is known as a DVD-Data disc. Consumers use the term "DVD-ROM" to refer to pressed data discs only, but that is wrong usage; moreover, the term DVD is also applied basically in describing newer video disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Petal

A petal from Ancient Greek petalon leaf, thin plate, regarded as a highly customized leaf, is one member or part of the corolla of a flower. The corolla is the name for all of the petals of a flower; the internal perianth whorl, word used when this is not the same in appearance (color, shape) as the outermost whorl (the calyx) and is used to attract pollinators based on its bright color. It is the inner part of the perianth that comprises the germ-free parts of a flower and consists of inner and outer tepals. These tepals are frequently differentiated into petals and sepals. The term tepal is usually useful when the petals and sepals are alike in shape and color. In a typical flower the petals are showy and colored and enclose the reproductive parts. The number of petals in a flower (see merosity) is analytic of the plant's classification: eudicots (the largest group of dicots) having typically four or five petals and monocots and magnoliids having three, or some multiple of three, petals.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Digital camera

A digital camera is an electronic device used to imprison and store photographs electronically in a digital format, instead of using photographic film like conventional cameras, or recording images in an analog format to magnetic tape like many video cameras. Modern compact digital cameras are classically multifunctional, with some devices able to recording sound and/or video as well as photographs. In the Western market, digital still cameras now sell more than their 35 mm film counterparts.