Scientific Explanations

Last week I watched a movie named The Reaping. It’s all about God and Satan and all. The movie is a typical Hollywood horror/thriller movie. The protagonist [hero/heroine] doesn’t believe in God due to the past events in his/her life and by the end of the movie, he/she end up being a believer due to the events of the movie. I can name any number of movies with similar themes. But some specific parts in the movie made me thinking. Most of you may be familiar about the ten plagues which fell up on Egypt, described in the Bible, Old Testament. The Pharaoh, enslaved God’s people, and God gave him the ten plagues. I am not going in to the details. This movie is about similar things happening in a small town. Here is a portion of the movie where we get a scientific explanation for what exactly happened back then. Watch the clip and let me know what you people think about it? The second clip explains what really happens these days which we ‘believe’ are miracles. Anyway, by the end of the movie, it is clearly stated that God exist [in a very pathetic manner].


For those who do not have access to YouTube, here is the dialogue.

Ben: This is getting little hard to ignore Katherine, we are four for four, chapter and the verse and I mean actual verse, blood, frogs, flies, dead life stock
Prof. Katherine Winter: These cows aren't dead.
Ben: No not yet but from where I'm standing, it looks pretty damn serious.
Prof. Katherine Winter: The Bible says that God sent the plagues as warnings to the Pharaoh to let his people go. What is he supposed to be saying here?
Ben: Well maybe it’s not from him. The Pharaohs sorcerers used their own magic to match God, plague for plague, evil against good.
Prof. Katherine Winter: Well who's responsible? Satan?
Ben: I didn't say that. I don't know. What I do know is that we are witnessing biblical events.
Prof. Katherine Winter: Alright, you wanna talk Plagues? Let's talk Plagues.
In 14OO B.C. a group of nervous Egyptians saw the Nile turn red, but what they thought was "blood" was actually an algae bloom, which killed the fish which prior to that had been living off the eggs of frogs; those uneaten eggs which turned into record numbers of baby frogs who subsequently fled to the land and died. Their little rotting frog bodies attracted lice and flies; the lice carried the Blue Tongue Virus which killed off 70% of Egypt's livestock. The flies carried glanders a bacterial infection which in humans causes boils. Soon after the Nile river valley was hit with a three day sandstorm otherwise known as The Plague of Darkness. During the sandstorm intense heat can combine with an approaching coldfront to create not only hail but also electrical storms which would have looked to the ancient Egyptians like fire from the sky; the subsequent wind would have blown the Ethiopian locust population off course and right into downtown Cairo. Hail is wet, locusts leave droppings spread both on your brain and you have michotoxins. Dinner time in ancient Egypt meant the first born child got the biggest portion which in this case meant he ate the most toxins so he died. Ten plagues, ten scientific explanations. Gotta wash up.


Prof. Katherine Winter: Deep well injection. That's what it's called when a factory drops hazardous waste down a dry oil well. This kind of illegal underground disposal has been common practice in Third World countries for years. In this case, ethanol and methanol mixed with the aromatic compound DMSO and benzene seeped out after an earthquake running off into the sewer system below the monastery, the fumes of which has the dual effect of preserving human tissue (showing the preserved body of a ‘saint’) and if inhaled, creating intense hallucinatory effects. Throw in a population economically deprived enough to believe in almost anything… and you've got yourself a miracle. A miracle created by a greedy, cost-cutting corporation. Instead of providing cures for the faithful it provided them with lungful of toxic waste. This puts me at 48 miraculous occurrences I've investigated with 48 scientific explanations. I'm sorry to say, the only miracle is that people keeps believing. Have a great weekend.
Go, Tigers.
They need a miracle.

My question: Do you really need miracles to prove God exists? Is it really hard to believe in something without proof?

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed - John 20:29

For more information about the movie, visit
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444682/

What the hell?

I tried to ‘love’ Bangalore. But here is something I would like to share with you. Can any one please explain these traffic signals?? Especially my ‘I love Bangalore’ friends. I am confused about all these. I took these photos from Madiwala, near the Hanuman temple.

1. All the signals are red and all the vehicles are moving. Why?

2. Ok, the previous one may have been the drivers’ error. May be they saw the road deserted and went ahead. But what about this one?? If you look at this picture, you can see all the green signals are there. They tell the drivers, it’s ok to go wherever you want to go, left, right or straight. The road is all yours. [In fact, you cannot take a left turn here].

3. Can somebody help me out here, please? Which one do I choose? The red one or the green one? [Yes the green light shows ‘go straight’ not ‘go right’, zoom it, you’ll see. And I don’t think there is a left turn there, if that’s what the red indicates]
Don’t think this is a faulty traffic light post, its like this every time. I checked it many times. Fortunately I don’t have to use my bike in this road so often.

4. This time its my fault, I didn’t see the sign post [No Parking] [This photo, I took from across the mall, Forum] I’m not blaming anyone here, just that I want you to know this is a ‘no parking’ space and if you park here, there is a chance that the police will impound your vehicle [Look close, you can see the ‘no parking’ sign, near the transformer, where 2 bikes are parked]. Last day, after a movie at Forum, when I came back, I couldn’t find my bike. I saw people stacking some bikes into a carriage truck. I enquired and they said, come to Madiwala Police Station. Finally I ‘released’ my bike for Rs 300/-.

5. What can you say about this? Ofcourse this is not a main road[Maruthinagar], but obviously one with really heavy traffic. And during a Saturday evening [hope you know the traffic rush of weekends], they have set up a stage right in the middle of the road.

These are a few things I came across over a period of 2 days, about Bangalore. If I start writing about all the things, I don't think this blog will be enough. So much for the great Bangalore.

Term Vs Endowment Insurance Policies

Another financial year end is nearing. Just like last year, I started thinking about saving some tax. [Not through any illegal means] Last year I was too late and I couldn’t save much of it. So I was determined about not to regret later. But to start with, I am really poor in financial management. All I know was only some type of investments/savings [Financial management gurus, please forgive me if I am misusing any technical terms] are eligible for tax savings under some section [80C I think] and a wise advice also “Diversify your investments/savings”.

But for that, I need to know what kind of investments are there. The main ones are mutual funds, life insurances, public provident fund. These will serve my purpose of saving tax very well I think, so I confined my research to these. Now, based on my research, here is something about the insurance policies I want to share with others.
A word of warning: I am completely new to this kind of stuff and what I am writing here is my opinion only. Many people argued against this approach with many other views and facts. So decide wisely. I am not that good with technical terms, I am explaining in ‘layman’s’ terms.
There are 3 main types of insurances
1. Endowment Policies [With money back ]
2. Term Policies [Without money back]
3. ULIP type
I don’t know much about the third type because almost all the articles I read or people I talked to [including a financial consultant] said linking your insurances with mutual funds is not a good idea.
Now, I will explain the other two with an example. Suppose you want to take insurance with a sum assured of 5 lakhs [You will get this amount in the case of your death during that period] and say, for a period of 20 years. [Assuming your age is 25]
In the first type, you give the insurance company, a premium of 25,000/- to 27000/- per year for 20 years. If something happens to you in that period, you will get the 5 lakhs for sure, plus bonus. These are endowment policies.
In the second type, what happens is, you pay the premium for the same 20 years, and in the end you won’t get anything back. You will get the sum assured, only if something ‘bad’ happens to you in that period. Ok, now why you need to take such a policy? Here come the point, the premium you will be giving, will be much less than the other one, only around 1200/- per year. These are known as the term policies.
Now let’s compare them. For that just have a look at the excel sheet [I too hate excel sheets, but just look at the first and last figures] here.
Assume you are putting 25500/- for 20 years in the first type of policy. With a bonus of 5% [it varies every year and the max is 4.5% (from LIC)], at the end of 20 years, what you will get is 885,340.92/-. Now consider you are going for a term policy and putting around 1200/- per year and remaining 24300/- [25500 - 1200] in PPF [which will give 8% interest]. Then look at your final earnings, 1,200,976.99/-. And the difference is, 315,636.07/-. And that is not a small difference. There are some more advantages too. Consider you want to go for insurance worth 20lakh. You will have to pay around 1lakh per year for 20 years which is nearly impossible [for guys like me]. But the other case, you only have to pay around 3800/-.
My argument is like this, it’s always better to have an insurance, we cannot say what will happen to us and when. So, insurance is insurance and savings is savings, never combine them together. 1200/- per year is not much. With 20 years you are spending 24000/-, but gaining much more from some other form of savings. [Here I took the example of PPF, and I assume you know that there are many schemes which will give you much more returns] And the agents don’t promote the term policies much because their commission is based on the premium you are paying. So next time when some one says “why do you want to pay for 20-25 years and not get back anything?”, think the other way or try to get a good look at the big picture.
Hope this will help some one who is worried about which insurance policy to take. And above all, next year by this time, I am sure that I will be reading this to know what a term policy is and what an endowment policy is.
footnote:
The individual policies differ in the details and all, but the basic concept is same. Also, for term policies, you won’t get much tax exemption since the premium you are paying is less. If anyone want the excel sheet, please feel free to ask me. The premium amount is taken from LIC/SBI premium calculator.
http://www.licindia.com/premium_calculator.htm
http://www.sbilife.com/sbilife/application?pageid=Services&ServicesId1=calculateprem

Also, I would like to thank all the people who helped me writing this blog, especially my colleague who gave me that excel sheet and explained it. ;)

Through the eyes of a Dragonfly!!!

I love photography. I love to copy and store the instances of our lives, which we want to remember forever, or a moment which is so lovely that you want to live in it forever or a scenery which will affect your mood so much. Digital photography has made it much simpler and cheaper for all of us I think.

The first task I wanted to complete after getting a broadband connection was to organize all my photos, upload them to web and share it with everyone. For that purpose, I have chosen yahoo’s Flickr. It’s really amazing. Once if you get to know it better, it’s simply the best I think. I have been using another web service. I chose it earlier because of its simplicity. But now I realized Flicker is better than any other photo sharing services. So I thought I will transfer and organize all those photos which are uploaded previously and those I have in my local machine. But the problem was, there was around 1GB of photos [after I sorted out the ones I wanted to upload] for me to sort and upload. 526 photos, to be precise. So I spent around 36hours almost straight [4hrs of sleep in b/w] to upload and organize the photos. But when it was finished, I felt immensely satisfied. So reader, when you get time, I mean a lot of time, visit this link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedragonflyzphotos/collections/

Steps to take a BSNL Broadband connection in Bangalore - Final Part - My Diwali Gift

...Assuming you have read the first and second part of this one which is available in my blog archive...

10 Oct 2007, Wednesday
After getting my phone activated, I called the JTO. He told me, the process for broadband will automatically be started after my landline gets activated. After that, it may take around 10-15 days to get the connection. I also asked whether there is any modem shortage or so, but he said, there is no shortage.

22 Oct 2007, Monday
It is exactly 2 weeks since I got my phone line and still no word of the broadband. I called the JTO. After trying till evening, I finally got the call connected. He checked with my phone number and told me, the broadband is now in the process of creating username. When I asked how much time it will take for that, he said may be 1 week or more, it is done in another section. [I wonder how complicated it is to make a username]. He also gave me the number of that ‘section’. I called, called and called. Nothing happened except the phone ringing, ringing and ringing.

23 Oct 2007, Tuesday
I went to the place where I gave the application. They directed me to the exchange. [They were very friendly to me] First they told me there is some software updates going on and it will take only 2-3 days. Then they checked with my landline number and said that I will get my connection with in November second week for sure. Once again I got assurance for another 2-3 weeks.

3 Nov 2007, Saturday
I was at this shopping mall and its then that I got this call. He introduced him as calling from BSNL and whether he can come on Monday to give me the connection. I couldn’t believe it at first. For me getting the BSNL connection was like attaining a long lost dream or something like that. I immediately agreed and told him to call me before he comes. He said he will come in the afternoon.

5 Nov 2007, Monday
I waited till 3pm. I thought again I missed it. Then I called the JTO in my area and asked about it. He gave me the number of another guy and told me that the one who called me was on leave that day. I called the new one and he said he will come soon. And by 4:30pm he called me saying he will come soon. I went home from office. And finally he came. He gave us the wireless router itself, the one we applied for. I asked him whether they had the stock and it seems like they’ve just got the new stock. He did all the configurations. But it was not yet the actual connection. He said it will take 2-3days more to activate it in the exchange. Atleast we got all the hardware and configured them and are fully ready for the net. He gave me the username, the password and the helpline number too.
I have to admit one thing. Even if the BSNL are slow, the people working there (from my experience) are all very friendly and are always there to help. I am talking about the people, a customer will come in contact with. On November 9th, I will celebrate 2nd month anniversary after giving the application.

8 Nov 2007, Wednesday [Diwali]
I got a Diwali gift, not from my friends or relatives, but from BSNL. Yeah! I got my broadband connection. I don’t know how they managed it, but they activated it precisely on the Diwali day and manage not to test my patience by extending it to a third month. They gave the connection precisely on the 2nd month itself. Even now, there are some more problems, but I hope they will be solved in due time. Nyway, thanks BSNL for the Diwali gift and for letting me complete this trilogy about the pursuit of me for the broadband connection.