Moon and the Lunar Eclipse January 5, 2009
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in science.add a comment
I was confused about how different was a lunar eclipse from a new moon night. I started digging in on the internet to find the answer and some more questions emerged from the research, leaving me puzzled at the end of it all. I post here some of the questions and the link to a fairly explanatory (and geeky) article that has a lot more details if you are interested.
Q: How is a lunar eclipse different from a new moon night?
A: To put it simply, lunar eclipse is caused by the shadow of earth falling on moon (it happens when the earth comes in line between the sun and the moon) and eclipsing it while a new moon is caused by moon’s own shadow on itself (the surface that is visible from earth does not receive any sunlight).
Q: Why doesn’t lunar eclipse occur every month?
A: To quote:
The Moon’s orbit is tilted by 5 degrees with respect to the Earth’s orbital plane (the ecliptic). In order for an eclipse to occur, the Moon must be in the ecliptic plane AND exactly at the new or full phase. Usually, the Moon crosses the ecliptic plane at another phase instead of exactly at new or full phase during its approximately month-long orbit around the Earth.
Q: Does a full moon night occur on all places on the globe on the same day?
A: Yes.
For practical purposes, phases of the Moon and the percent of the Moon illuminated are independent of the location on the Earth from where the Moon is observed. That is, all the phases occur at the same time regardless of the observer’s position
Bollywood’s obsession with Punjab December 19, 2008
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in India, Movies.Tags: Bollywood, Movies, Punjab
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What do Jab We Met, Singh is Kinng, Namastey London, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Veer Zaara, Rang De Basanti have in common? In one word – Punjab. There are many more movies in Bollywood that have released in the past decade with Punjab in the background and actors portraying Punjabi characters in the foreground. Bollywood’s obsession with Punjab only seems to get stronger with time.
Why is it so?
I could only think of two reasons:
1. There is no other community in India thats as widely regarded as Punjabis at being jovial, good hearted and strong at the same time (something that epitomizes the lead characters of Bollywood movies). The origin or propagation of this perception may, in part, be a result of Bollywood itself. But, that doesn’t really matter, does it? The perception is not totally without reason as well – Indians perceive Punjab as a land of fertility, of good harvests, of happy farmers. It is a natural choice for being the breeding ground of big hearts and even bigger bodies (remember Dara Singh, Sunny Deol).
2. It might not be the most populous state in India, but in terms of how many people from this state inhabit other parts of this world, it certainly leads the way. It might not be an exaggeration to say that every Punjabi in India has at least one relative in Canada or the United Kingdom. With overseas collections playing an increasingly important role in the success of Bollywood movies these days, it makes business sense for movie producers and directors to keep Punjab in limelight.
I have a liking for Punjab myself, but I’d love to see more variety of characters on screen.
Wanted in my email service December 18, 2008
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in Internet.Tags: email, gmail, Internet
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I have been largely happy with the services of Gmail and have not felt the need to look any further for a better email service. However, there are a couple of additional features I still wish were available to me.
- Adding notes to emails – I would love to have a feature to add my notes to certain emails, something similar to the stickies for paper documents. There are times when I feel the need to jot down something along with an email, and while the organization of emails in the form of conversations in Gmail allows me to do this by replying to myself with the note on the email, I think the ability to save notes is a cleaner (and prettier) way to go about it.
- Snooze a message - At times, there are unread emails in my mail box which don’t need to be attended to immediately, but are not to be ignored. I don’t like to keep unread emails in my mail box and I fear that I’ll forget about the email if I archive it or just mark it as read. Ability to snooze a message for a day and making it pop up again as an unread email the next day would be a nice to have for me.
Got any demands of your own?
