Largest Aircraft In The World

There is a huge amount of hype going on about the largest plane in the world being the Airbus A380. The fact is, it is not. The West is quite keen on advertising their achievements while the Russians as always do not really create such a huge hype about things that they achieve. There is no doubt that Airbus A380 is one of the largest and one of the most complex aircraft ever built, but it looks like no one seems to notice the existence of another mighty giant, which actually is the Antonov 225 nicknamed 'Mriya' which means 'Dream'. This aircraft was built by the Antonov Design Bureau during the 80s and was originally built to carry the Soviet space shuttle 'Buran'(again another fact that the many don't know). This aircraft today is still the largest in the world. Mriya's wing span is not as expansive as that of Hughes H-4 Hercules 'Spruce Goose' built by Howard Hughes, but it is longer than Spruce Goose.
Mriya has 6 engines and the main landing gear has 32 wheels , far more than any other aircraft in the world. The aircraft was first internationally displayed at the Paris air show in 1989. At the time when it was displayed, some industrialists even started speculation about converting it into a flying 3 floored luxury hotel. This aircraft is presently used to transport large cargo that conventional aircraft cannot carry.

It is estimated that, if converted into a passenger aircraft, this aircraft can carry upto 1500 people which is almost 3 times that of what A380 can carry. The immediate question that comes up is why this aircraft was not used for this purpose. The answer could lie in the fact that given the security scenario and given the fact that very few airports in the world have the capacity to handle the traffic generated by A380 without need of any restructuring, it could be a daunting task to handle the traffic generated from Mriya if it were to be turned into a passenger aircraft!!

Largest Moving Object.... Jahre Viking

From my childhood I had an obsession for large moving things, especially ships and aircraft as their size and capabilities can easily beat that of all other large and moving things. Large ships have always intrigued me, I used to wonder how such large things could move.
From the historic times ships have moved people, civilization and knowledge across lands and territories that could not be imagined even in the wildest of dreams. Men had always wondered what lay beyond the horizon and where the blue sea would take them if they dared to sail its waves. Ships have become carriers of men's dreams from time immemorial and even to this day it is a fact that the world moves on ships. Most of the world's cargo is still moved over ships and ships have grown bigger and ever bigger as the world began to see more economic and scientific development. There is no other way to carry such huge amounts of cargo as ships do today.
If you had been wondering how large, ships could get here you go.......
The largest man-made moving object ever in history is a ship called Jahre Viking also know as Seawise Giant, Happy Giant and Knock Nevis. The ship was built in Japan during the 70s at Oppama Shipyard and was launched in 1979. The ship was built to carry oil(oiltanker), it's capacity is 5,65,000 DWT( Dead Weight Tonnage, which means it can carry 5,65,000 tonnes of oil at a time and is classified as an Ultra Large Crude Carrier(ULCC). It is so large that it can be docked at very few ports in the world, and it cannot pass Suez Canal, Panama Canal or even the English Channel.


The ship is 458.45m long, 68.86m wide and 29.80m. On it's side it is 50 feet longer than Empire State building and four buildings of the size of St.Paul's Basilica can be easily fit into it's tanks !!!
After it's engines are stopped it takes 5.5 miles to come to a halt and to turn, it needs to traverse a circle more than 2 miles wide. Eventhough this ship is so large it has a crew of only 35 men and most of the high ranking officers including the captain of the ship are from India.
Here is an image from the Wikipedia that compares it's size to that of other large man-made structures in the world.



An interesting fact about the ship is that it was sunk off the coast of Iran, after being hit by missiles during the Iran-Iraq war in the Strait of Hormuz. But it was re-floated from the Ocean, which in itself is a gargantuan task, repaired at the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore and started voyages again.



The ship has now been converted into a Floating Storage Unit and is now stationary, permanently anchored at Qatar Al Shaheen oil field in the Persian Gulf.

Assassination...Answer To Mumbai Massacre

We are in a disgraceful slumber, yes we are and the government is too bent on walking the Gandhian steps way as we have reaped the fruits of walking that much adulated path in the form of betrayal from China and repeated attempts by Pakistan to push our nation into oblivion. We are surrounded by one the worst rogue states there could ever be in the history of the world. The countries around us like Pakistan and China are rogue states which will endanger the lives of millions of people around the world directly or indirectly through their policies. It is a fact that China supports in-human regimes like in North Korea and Myanmar and Pakistan is a safe haven for terrorists the world despises so much.
Think of this...could Gandhi's principles work if another nations invaded us? The answer is No, there shouldn't be a wee bit of doubt about this. We can't stand a chance of bailing out our nation from the present crisis by following Gandhian ideals.
Terrorists hijacked our plane and we simply had to release other terrorists to save the lives of the people in it. Now where did the perpetrators go ? They went into Afganisthan and Pakistan. WE STILL KEEP BEGGING to hand them over to us. This is unlikely to happen in our wildest dreams. Now the monsters have struck again in Mumbai and young people lost their lives for no reason. Our leaders sit cribbing about the incidents and still we are begging Pakistan for action. It is a disgrace that terrorists attacked our Parliament and the perpetrators are still alive.
Now where should we look for answers? A very likely answer could be what Israel had done to the murderers of their athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
During the 1972 Olympics, members of the Black September had taken 11 Israeli athletes hostage and murdered them. The response from Israel was interesting and inspiring. It is a fact that those who carried out the massacre can never be brought to justice in Israel, so the next logical step was to assassinate them ! Mossad, Israel's intelligence organization carried out an extensive campaign to assassinate the terrorists involved in the incidents even though they were scattered across the globe.
Imagine this....if stateless terrorists can carry out operations of such great proportions we see today, what could a country with unlimited resources( as compared to the terrorists) can do ?? In fact a lot can be done.
Terrorists who attacked Mumbai and India as a whole are stateless people and are no gentlemen in anyway, and fact is that these people are harbored by rogue nations!!
There is no point in kneeling down before these nations and begging them to hand them over to us. If we cannot get them why not assassinate them ?? Our leaders should wake up from the slumber and the false impression that we can bring those people to justice. Just getting the terrorists killed without any investigation will send out a strong message to the world that we are not week, we should prove to the world that there are teeth in our tolerance and non-violent attitude towards other nations in the world. Our leaders should wake up and prove to the world that we are not week and we can inflict the same amount of damage to the people that so mindlessly inflict such pain on us.

Free Markets And Our Future

There is a lot of discussion going on about this topic around the globe. In fact, free markets have been a bone of contention between world powers since the dawn of industrialization, which gave rise to the two world wars and after them as well between United States of America and the Soviet Union. This issue has come into the limelight, more so in the recent months, because of the present economic conditions prevailing around the world.
Free markets can basically be defined as economies controlled and influenced by private individuals with minimal intervention of the state.
The proponents of free markets say that free markets encourage a competition between players in the industry and stimulate the growth of the economy. It is true to a large extent as we have been seeing the western world being far ahead of other state controlled economies. Historically free markets have been more vibrant than their state controlled counterparts. In free market economies individuals are allowed the freedom influencing a country's economic course.
The one remnant of imperialism and expansionism that we can still see are capitalist economies. Industries in these economies tend to compete with each other and create enormous amounts of wealth, a part of which is vented to the people working for them, who in turn look for more ways to spend their wealth, in turn creating a demand for a lot of other goods and commodities and this cycle goes on until there is a surplus in every everything that is produced. At this point the industries look for other places to sell their products and foreign expansionism starts. This kind of an economic structure has created enormous amounts of wealth in western economies. Think of this...per capita income of India is now about $1000 whereas that in EU and USA averages between $35000 to $40000, this is huge. In Norway and Canada even tribesmen living in remote areas have their own trucks and cars to move about. The best example is the difference in standards of living of Sami tribesmen in Scandinavia and Russia. In comparison to this there are no close analogies we can draw with tribesmen in India and other poor countries !!
This wealth is one of the reasons that prompted Mikahil Gorbachev to initiate economic reforms in the erstwhile Soviet Union, which ultimately destroyed the union itself.
And these days, after looking at what happened to former Communists countries and comparing with what is happening in the western world, many countries in the world have been drawn into the enticing realm of free market economies and what do we see now......?? We see that the world is going through a turmoil and even the richest nations aren't being spared. Rich nations are under great stress because their markets are now being eaten up by competitors from the hitherto closed economies.
The living standards in USA and EU are highly artificial, they cannot be even thought of in underdeveloped countries. People in the developed world thrive upon the poverty of the underdeveloped countries and guzzle up a large chunk of what is produced in the world. Now, the recent rise in wealth of the most populous countries like India and China are leading to a crunch on the world resources and if more countries get onto the juggernaut of free markets, we might well see a gargantuan global economic bubble being created based on demand for raw materials and a subsequent bubble-blow caused by a crunch on the natural resources.
The one big question that we need to ask ourselves is....DOES OUR PLANET HAVE THE NECESSARY RESOURCES FOR ALL COUNTRIES TO HAVE THE SAME PROSPERITY AS USA AND EU ??
The answer is a NO. There aren't enough resources for everybody to enjoy the same standard of living as in USA and EU. The result will dictate a colossal restructuring of the global economy in the near future and there could be a bigger economic turmoil than what we are envisaging now.
Are our leaders even thinking of this resource crunch ? Are people thinking of it? Well, nobody seems to be. Some alarming articles have been published in newspapers during the last few months, and they have gone largely unnoticed, masqueraded by the global liquidity crisis. Some estimates are bone chilling, they say that if the present rate of expansion goes on we would need two planets by 2030 !! and according to the UNO the world is clearly spiraling out of control when it comes to food production in the world. Only a strict tab on the demand and supply can give time for the world to cope with the crunch we are heading for and this well may men embracing the Soviet economic system that the western world holds in great disdain !

World Is Run By Women !!

The header of this blog itself seems to be a myth. Yes, look around, where is the world run by women?? Women are always the ones at the receiving end of our ideology, religious beliefs( yes, the burdens that men can't carry are often left to women) and simply the power men seem to have.
If we look around, we see women always carrying a lot of burden, all on their own without men lending a helping hand and yet they always get the job done. Most of the key positions in the world are held by men and not women, and women are fighting for their rightful place in this unforgiving world. It looks as though men are running the world. But think again, this doesn't seem to be the case. Where did all the men, and the relatively few women we see around learn to be what they are ?? It is a fact that universities in their present form don't contribute anything to the personalities of people. Educational institutions only contribute to the knowledge levels of people but not their personalities.
We see women today, fighting for their rightful place in the world, vying with men for equal opportunities in all arenas. But in all the mayhem, men and women alike seem to forget that the world is already being run by women. The world has come this far only because of women. Think of this.....where does anyone learn life? Is it in schools and universities ? Absolutely not, it is rather the time we spent with our mothers and grandmothers that taught us what life is !!
Women have unknowingly been contributing to the world, by moulding empty personalities into powerful and meaningful ones we see now and have seen over the millennia. People have learned all the basics of life in the laps of their mothers and their grandmothers. When our forefathers were in the wild, men were hunting while women were making 'men and women' and even today, men work and women silently create personalities. It is the time spent in childhood with their mothers during which people learn life, I am what I am only because of the time I spent with my mother and grandmother.
Newer generations around the world are at the verge of losing this magical spell with more and more women leaving homes for jobs. Truly, we have brought his onto ourselves by crushing women and not recognizing their true contribution to the world. Women should certainly be given a chance to wield their power in all areas and it perhaps is the time for men to innovate ways to help women still caste that magical spell they have been casting all through, since the primordial man learned to walk the face of this planet.

Vortex....Interesting Photograph

I had been reading an article about Vortexes in The Wikipedia and found that this image is very interesting. It is real and shows the turbulence generated around an aircraft's wing as it moves on. Colored smoke was used to show the pattern of the vortex that formed around the wing as the plane takes off.
More on the image and the article can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex
BTW, Wikipedia is an excellent place to read about things, whatever they are. Eversince I've started using the Internet I've fallen in love with this place in the cyber space.

Dowry.......This Goes To All 'Educated' Men

This particular word "Dowry" sounds very sweet to Indian men, but it is oblivious in the western world. Dowry is something that a woman brings to her husband's house after marriage. This is a purely ceremonial thing and is just a way of supporting a new household. Any newly wed couple requires a lot of help, financial as well, from people on both sides and this in most cases, is a requisite and allowable.
But look around in our country, it has crossed all leaps and bounds, it has crossed all bounds of reason and surprisingly more so with "highly educated" youth. This subject has always irritated me, it irks me a lot because people are simply unable to see that they are cutting the branch that they are sitting on. It is a completely pathetic situation that is prevailing on our intellect. It is a fact that millions of girls have/are just vanished(ing) off the face of the earth, even before they were born, just because of "enlightened" youth we come across, and how could we trust youth like these to lead our nation?
I had discussed this topic with several people and often received disgusting remarks and suggestions from them, and all the people I've talked to are well educated. I am so surprised and dismayed that nobody just gets the point right!!
Here is a peek into what some of my 'enlightened brethren' had to say :
A software engineer said just after he got his first job - " I am thinking of getting a car and a house and may be a million rupees in cash. It's got to be at least that much for taking care of the girl for an entire life"
A chartered accountant said - " Whatever reason it is, women cannot do without men, and for this reason at least they got to pay before marriage(shows me some bungalows and says that something like that would be great !!)"
Another chartered accountant said after a discussion - " All this talk is unreasonable, I'm gonna see how you'll get married without dowry "
All religions hold this institution called marriage in high esteem and is in fact the best of all relationships in the world, more so because it keeps the world going !
We don't love people in the world, not even our own closest ones. Can't we unconditionally love the person we are going to stay with for the rest of our life?
Can't we be grateful to the woman who so painstakingly brings another being into the world? Can't we have respect for a woman just like our mother, without whom we are just bone-bags ?? Are we marrying people or money and wealth ?
And it is sometimes disheartening to see even women in thirst for dowry for their sons, just forgetting what their parents had to face to get them married.
Lastly, one very disheartening situation I've come across, an acquaintance of mine showed me nuns in a parish and said in a mocking tone " most of these people are not here with true devotion, they are here because their fathers cannot get them husbands "
Truly, I am not sure whether that is true, if it is true, what a shame have we brought upon ourselves and in which we take pride to dwell !!!
All religions talk about a time to come when all love from peoples' hearts evaporates into thin air, this is that time we are living in, shame on us, we cannot even love our closest companions !!

Now Hear This

This animated film from 1962 is one of the best animated films I've ever seen. This was directed by Chuck Jones and often features in the Looney Tunes series of animated films shown on various cartoon channels like Pogo.
This cartoon shows a high degree of creativity which impressed me a lot. The message of this cartoon also is quite good and deep. It tells the story of a man who finds a listening horn, which actually is the lost horn of the devil. The man tries the horn and finds it more appealing than the horn which he already possesses. So he decides to relinquish his old horn for the newly found attractive red horn.
When the man starts to hear through the horn, it sounds incredibly good after which follow all the travails and finally the man, after going through a lot of physical trouble, decides to throw away the red horn. The creativity displayed by the creator of the cartoon is incredible and the cartoon is also apt for the present condition prevailing around the world. The world has chosen to go ahead with 'sweet sounding' reforms while dumping all care and here we stand, at the threshold of another great global recession. Governments have chosen to over look what had happened before the IInd World War(the great depression of the thirties) and here we are, reaping the results of all we have chosen to do.

Positive Thinking, Luck And Achieving Heights In Life

Well, the heading reads great and inspiring to a lot of people and there have been umpteen books written on these lines and umpteen bestsellers and equally good number of people who became rich by writing books on these lines. But if you could see carefully there is one word that seems pretty odd...yes it is 'Luck' !! This is what many achievers and many many authors who write about achieving things in life usually hate or at the least have a disliking for. The word 'Luck' is both lucky and unlucky as well, as it is seen by people in different ways, both favorable and unfavorable.
I like to use another word 'Chance' for our word 'Luck', why ?? It goes something like this.......it is by chance that you got conceived, it is by chance that you are what you look like , black or white , beautiful or not, see red as red and green as green and so on.
These are pretty trivial things that we come across, while there are some other more important things like one can be born with a gargantuan amount of brain power, some might simply never cross childhood even after they cross their thirties, some might be born in cozy homes while some might be born in the midst of famine, war, sickness and unfathomable peril. What if somebody was born in the middle of a raging war, bitter poverty and could never go to school ?? Psychologists say that a person's behavior moulds mostly upon his/her early experiences and stimulus received from parents and others around, what if circumstances were not as favorable ?? Nobody can become what they are not made for.
Then what is the point in striving anyway ?? Yes there is.There is one basic fact that people tend to forget in all the mayhem, it is that we are what we are and not more than that. It is always good to understand one's self and set goals accordingly. Respecting one self and understanding limits that one has does a lot to the mind and body. Always giving the best that can be done and never giving up will conjure magic by giving good results and also imbibing great confidence.
In the race to succeed, people often scramble for answers in books that were written about achieving things and reaching unprecedented heights, often citing examples of great people like Albert Einstein, Newton and so forth. It is for sure that those great people never became great by reading books written about achievement. They had the intellect to contemplate things of such grandeur and magnitude. What if the same person Einstein were to be born a retard ??It is never good to over-estimate one's self but the one thing that surely can be immensely beneficial for personal development is to do one's best and never give up on what can be done. If not once the second time and if not, the third time and so forth. Even in thick forests there is always a trail and a pathway along the way people daily tread. Once there is a tendency to compare one's self with others there is every chance that the person loses respect in his/her own sight which is a chief cause of stress and depression, and it is a fact that a rising number of depression cases among youth is due to over estimating themselves and loading themselves with excessive targets.
The key to having a fulfilling life when it comes to learning, work and achievement is to understand one's self properly, knowing one's limits and respecting them,stop comparing with others,putting in the best efforts and never giving up on what effort can be put into.

Expensive Food

Well this doesn't seem to be a very interesting thing to blog about but this is something that has been going on in my mind for a while. There are a lot of restaurants around, some with international brands that make very simple food stuffs and charge a very huge amount for what they server.
The best example is pizza. It gets as exuberant as it can get for a loaf of bread and a very little amount of toppings on it. If one can shell out bucks to have a lunch in restaurants that serve stuff like these, it would easily cross the average monthly salary of an Indian farmer who actually breaks his back for growing wheat and vegetables in his farm. There are a lot of instances around the globe where farmers struggle very hard to get the minimum price for what they produce while there are people eating the same food shelling out hundreds of times more money. Are we deceiving ourselves by encouraging people who sell these exuberant food to us ?? Yes, absolutely !!
There are farmers across Africa who just cannot sell their products because of cheap dumps from rich countries, there are farmers across India dying of hunger only because they cannot get the right price for what they have produced after breaking their backs in the burning sun. All this happens while the rich sit in luxurious restaurants paying thousands of bucks for simple luncheons while it is a courtesy to go half hungry even after paying so much in the restaurant.
Situation cannot change until people understand what they are doing and governments wake up to the conditions and seek ways to solve the inequalities between rich and poor, this also means rich countries and poor countries. It is a fact that all the rich countries that are now rich are rich at the expense of poor countries who cannot match the purchasing power or the production capacities of the richer countries. An instance could be drawn from what is happening to Italian furniture makers after the Chinese entered the market in a big way.

GOD

This subject called GOD fills my mind to a great extent and keeps my mind occupied for a significant amount of time. This is because HE intrigues me a lot and most of what I do is bound by what I believe about this entity. So here is my take about what GOD is.........
Before I talk about whether GOD is there or not there is one question that lingers in my mind viz., when did human beings start to develop a fear about dead men coming back from graves when there were dead animals as well around? Where has this fear of ghosts, demons and supernatural beings come from? The answer to this lies pretty much in the question itself.
There certainly are somethings we simply do not understand, around us. The one thing I believe to the core is that we shouldn't say that something is not there if we do not understand it.
It is rather better to say that we do not understand that instead of saying that it doesn't exist at all.
Things so far don't put forward that GOD exists but an important question can be asked, are we thinking in the right direction?
I personally believe that GOD is somebody/something that exists above everything and yet is present in everything and guiding everything. GOD is something that cannot be explained. The proposition is simple......if something is shown and said that it is GOD it simply isn't. This is because there could be something above that and from which this thing has emanated. Ultimately HE is something that cannot be perceived or understood with the limited intellect we have.
This is where the major division among religions in the world comes up. There are just two kinds of religions in the world viz., the ones that don't attempt to name or attempt to explain this entity and others that try to explain the entity and therefore have given the entity a name.
The next big question that comes to our minds is, if GOD does exist why all this uncontrollable destruction and pain in the world, more so as people consider GOD to be good ?
The answer to this question is simple too, consider this - Try to save an ant that is in trouble and it is most likely that it may bite, it doesn't understand that we are trying to bail it out.
Although this isn't the best analogy I can draw to drive home the point, we can easily see that it is difficult to see what HE is doing. HE has through many ways made it clear that we should just listen to what HE says and everything will be fine. But it has never happened that we did that.
Well, this leads to a very controversial topic viz., "Free Will", I'd make an attempt at digging this soon.