1 GB – 20 years before and now

One day, a rich dad took his son on a trip….

One day, a rich dad took his son on a trip. Wanted to show him how poor someone can be. They spent time on the farm of a poor family.

On the way home, dad asked, “Did you see how poor they are? What did you learn?”.

Son said, “We have one dog, they have four, we have pool, they have rivers, we have lanterns at night, they have stars, we buy foods, they grow theirs, we have walls to protect us, they have friends, we have encyclopedias, they have Bible.” Then they headed, “Thanks dad for showing me how poor we are.”

 

MORAL LESSON: It’s not about money that make us rich, it’s about simplicity of having God in our lives.

Fire Waterfall – A Rare Sight!!

Yosemite National Park, California, USA

This park was gazetted as a national park in 1890. It is world famous for its rugged terrain, geysers, waterfalls and century-old pine trees. It covers 1200 sq km and the “fire” waterfall of El Capitan is one of the most spectacular of all scenery.

The spectacular view of the waterfall is created by the reflection of sunlight hitting the falling water at a specific angle. This rare sight can only be seen during a 2-week period towards the end of Feburary. To photograph this rare event, photographers would often have to wait and endure years of patience in order to capture it. The reason is because its appearance depends on a few natural phenomena occurring at the same time, and luck.

First is the formation of the waterfall. The water is formed by the melting of snow and ice at the top of the mountain. It melts between the month of December and January and by the end of February there might not be much snow left to melt.

Second is the specific angle of the sun’s rays hitting the falling water. The sun’s position must be exactly at a particular spot in the sky. This occurs only in the month of February and during the short minutes of dusk. If it is a day full of clouds or something is obscuring the sun, you can only take pictures of your own sorry faces on the waterfall. It coincides with the fact that the weather in the National Park at that time of the year is often volatile and unpredictable. It compounds the difficulty of getting these pictures.

However, someone DID and we all get to see them!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scientists surprised to find Egyptian princess had heart disease

An Egyp­tian prin­cess had cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease more than 3,500 years ago, sci­en­tists say, in find­ings that chal­lenge the con­ven­tion­al idea that heart ill­ness is a mod­ern-day scourge.

“To­day, she would have needed by­pass surgery,” said Greg­o­ry S. Thom­as of the Uni­vers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, Ir­vine, the stu­dy’s co-principal in­ves­ti­ga­tor, of Prin­cess Ah­mose-Mer­yet-Amon of Egypt. Cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease is a blood ves­sel ob­struc­tion that can lead to heart at­tack, an­gi­na and death, and of­ten re­sults from sed­en­tary lifestyles or too much fat­ty food. 

Cal­ci­fi­ca­tion, or tissue hard­ened by de­pos­ition of cal­cium, ap­pears as white in a scan of the mum­my of Prin­cess Ah­mose-Mer­yet-Amon.  Con­sid­ered in­dic­a­tive of cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease, cal­ci­fi­ca­tion is seen in the right and left cor­o­nary ar­ter­ies, marked RCA and LCA respectively. (Cour­te­sy ESC)

“Our find­ings cer­tainly call in­to ques­tion the per­cep­tion of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis as a mod­ern dis­ease,” added Thom­as, whose re­search helped iden­ti­fy ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis—the di­rect cause of cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease—in 20 Egyp­tian mum­mies.

The find­ings sug­gest that as a spe­cies we “are pre­dis­posed to ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis,” said co-in­ves­ti­ga­tor Ran­dall C. Thomp­son of the St Luke’s Mid-America Heart In­sti­tute in Kan­sas ­city. This should­n’t prompt peo­ple to give up on ward­ing it off, he stressed, as it re­mains as true as ev­er that prop­er di­et, ex­er­cise and avoid­ance of smok­ing can help do so.

Scanned im­ages of the Egyp­tian roy­al’s cor­o­nary ar­ter­ies are fea­tured in two pre­s­enta­t­ions at the In­terna­t­ional Con­fer­ence of Non-Invasive Car­di­o­vas­cu­lar Im­ag­ing this week in Am­ster­dam. The prin­cess, now the first per­son in his­to­ry with di­ag­nosed cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease, lived in Thebes (mod­ern-day Lux­or) in the mid-1500s B.C. Her di­et was rich in veg­eta­bles, fruit and a lim­it­ed amount of meat from do­mes­ti­cat­ed an­i­mals, sci­en­tists said. Bread and beer were the di­etary sta­ples of this pe­ri­od of an­cient Egypt, they added; to­bac­co and trans-fats were un­known, and lifestyles were usu­ally ac­tive.

Thom­as and col­leagues in­ves­ti­ga­ted 52 an­cient Egyp­tian mum­mies for signs of ar­te­ri­al ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis, a hard­en­ing of the ar­ter­ies that leads to cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease. They found recog­nis­able ar­ter­ies in 44 mum­mies and an iden­ti­fi­able heart in 16. A mark­er of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis was ev­i­dent at a va­ri­e­ty of sites in al­most half the mum­mies scanned, prompt­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tors to note that the con­di­tion was com­mon in this group of mid­dle aged or old­er an­cient Egyp­tians. The 20 mum­mies with def­i­nite ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis were aged 45 years on av­er­age, about 10 years old­er than those with in­tact vas­cu­lar tis­sue but no ap­par­ent ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis.

“Over­all, it was strik­ing how much ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis we found,” said Thom­as.

A CT scan indicated the prin­cess, who died in her 40s, had ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis in two of her three main cor­o­nary ar­ter­ies, lead­ing to a di­ag­no­sis of cor­o­nary ar­tery dis­ease. But how could this “dis­ease of mod­ern life” af­fect a wom­an who probably ate healthy food, and dur­ing a time when la­zy lifestyles were rare? 

Thom­as and co-principal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Adel Al­lam of Al Azhar Un­ivers­ity, Cai­ro, sug­gest three pos­si­bil­i­ties. First, there may­be still some un­known risk fac­tor for cardiovas­cu­lar dis­ease, per­haps an as-yet un­iden­ti­fied ge­net­ic link. Sec­ond, an in­flam­ma­to­ry re­sponse to the fre­quent par­a­sit­ic in­fec­tions com­mon to an­cient Egyp­tians might pre­dis­pose to cor­o­nary dis­ease, much as HIV pa­tients with com­pro­mised im­mune sys­tems seem al­so pre­dis­posed to early cor­o­nary dis­ease. 

Third, a di­etary cause can’t be ruled out. As an aris­to­crat and daugh­ter of Se­qe­nenre Ta­o II, the last phar­aoh of the 17th Dyn­as­ty, the prin­cess’s di­et was probably not that of the com­mon Egyp­tian. She would have ea­ten more lux­u­ry foods such as meat, but­ter and cheese. More­o­ver, foods were pre­served in salt, per­haps pos­ing ad­di­tion­al health risks.

The sci­en­tists are keen not to dis­count those heart dis­ease risk fac­tors we do know about. “Re­cent stud­ies have shown that by not smok­ing, hav­ing a low­er blood pres­sure and a low­er cho­les­ter­ol lev­el, cal­cif­ica­t­ion of our ar­ter­ies is de­layed,” said Thomp­son. “On the oth­er hand, from what we can tell from this stu­dy, hu­mans are pre­dis­posed to ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis, so it be­hooves us to take the prop­er meas­ures nec­es­sary to de­lay it as long as we can.”

Failed TecHnology Predictions

:) :)

Why didn’t I think of that???

Bottle Opener Remote
 

Sauce Dispensing Chopsticks!

 

Self-Locking Bendy Bike

 

Gum Packaging…With Built-In Garbage

 

Pillow With Arm Hole

 

Finger Guard

 

Pizza Scissors

 

Unicorn Holders

 

Retro vision Glasses

 

Car Swivel Chair

 

Tea Pot Frame

 

Keyboard Food Tray

Installing MS Office 2007 using Wine

OS : Ubuntu 10.10
Wine version : 1.2

# Install Wine

# Install MS Office 2007

# Alt-F2 winecfg

# Applications > Set the Windows version to Windows XP

# Libraries > Add two overrides: “riched20″ and “usp10″. Type the names into the dropdown textbox and click “Add”.

# Last step, check whether you can open Word and Powerpoint

How to auto-run Emerald???

Linux is dull, boring and alien in its default theme for most users like me who believe that an operating system is always blue and [useless] graphical like Windows. Believe me…..and this makes installing a comfortable/cool theme the first thing you do after installing a linux distro. Most of us are aware of emerald themes [I use Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat ]. It gives LIFE to Ubuntu. Again, I am not a developer… just an average user since 1997.

GTK theme used is Moomex
[Download here  - http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Moomex-Theme?content=57063]

Sadly, new users will have to do a lot of googling to get the themes working. So here is a small step by step guide on using the emerald themes.

Step 1 – Install Emerald from Ubuntu Software Center
Applications > Ubuntu Software Center

Step 2 – Download Emerald themes.
Here you may google for emerald themes or beryl themes. GNOME Look [http://gnome-look.org/] has a good collection.

Step 3 – Install the themes.
Double click on the theme for installing it.

Step 4 – Apply theme
Press Alt-F2. Type emerald — replace in the small window that appears, of course without the quotes
Now you can see that the window borders have changed

BUT, THIS WILL BE LOST ONCE YOU RESTART YOUR SYSTEM.

To run Emerald from start up you have to install CompizConfig Settings Manager

Step 5 – Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager
Search for compizconfig settings manager in the quick search box. Mark it for installation and click Apply
Wait till the download and installation is complete. [Ohh did I forget to mention that you need to be connected to internet]

Step 6 – Go to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager
Scroll down and click on Windows Decoration

Step 7 – Type emerald –replace in the box next to Command

!!!!!!!! DONE !!!!!!!!

Step 8 – Restart system [not necessary...its just to convince yourself ]

By the way, did you notice the Moomex theme I mentioned earlier. You can install similar GTK themes from GNOME Look or other similar sites…. Have fun….

Missing MS Office

It seems I’ve been missing MS Office 2010 for quite a long time. I love the graphics!!! and simplicity. Maybe installing WINE may solve my probs but I’m sure its going to be a big pain in my neck. Well, I guess I’m ready to go through this whole thing [again].