Monday, January 24, 2011

REPUBLIC DAY


The poet has sung-
“breathes there the man with a soul so dead,
who hath not to himself hath said:
this is my own my native land.




M

y firm belief says, this very essence of patriotism bloomed in every Indian heart the desire to breathe free. The heroic struggle waged by the people of India to liberate themselves from the bristly shackles of foreign rule, lead to the country’s independence.

 






And on 15 Aug 1947 India got Independent.
But Independence was not enough, India was Independent as a dominion, with the British monarch as head of state… and hence the task of framing the constitution was given to Constituent Assembly formed under the Cabinet Mission Plan of1946. On 26th January the “Constitution of India” came into force. And India became a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic and REPUBLIC and assured Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity to all its citizens. Henceforth this day is marked as ‘REPUBLIC DAY’ in the annals of Indian History.






Since then India has sprouted to give the best to its citizens, but with the development in every sphere we are still entangled with a section of society which is devoid of the gleam of this harvest. In the encoded social norms corruption has become the rule of the day. Along with Politicians and Bureaucrats it has also entered the veins of maestros from the world of Corporate, Media and the most reliable and honored Defense. The Commonwealth games scam, Adarsh Society scam and 2G Spectrum scam aver the entire story. Social Inequality and Poverty still prevails. The farmers of the nation commit suicides because of poverty and debt and we have several crores of black money stored in Swiss Bank. In spite of this pitiable condition the Politicians are busy to struggle for ‘Vote Bank’.






 Although India has shown enough maturity in the case of ‘Ayodhya Verdict’, still we know and are aware that the “Intolerance of Secularism” exists. We cannot have a better example than Kashmir violence. Social Inequality prevails, Illiteracy ranks high, Population is on the threshold of explosion. We are not denying the development that took place but what’s the use of such a development which is only for a section of society. Making Rich more Richer and Poor more Poorer and making India a RICH COUNTRY OF POOR PEOPLE.






Its time for the educated youth to initiate a new revolution, need to be optimistic and rise together to a higher level of  thought and see a vision of an India which has relevance of its being “ REPUBLIC & INDEPENDENT”.






On 26th January we will celebrate our REPUBLIC DAY with great fervor and felicity with President of Indonesia Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as Guest of Honour. We should look forward for the success of the celebration and should be optimistic to see the sunshine of a dawn which brings prosperity and glory to our nation.





RICHA TIWARI
Student
B.A in Media Studies
University of Allahabad.


Thursday, January 20, 2011

Prime Minister’s Musical Chairs



F
rom the shuffle prepared by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the only thing which has come out is that he has put new wine in old bottles. From couple of months Prime Minister was saying that he will reshuffle the cabinet and wants some new-fangled and youthful blood to drive the country. But now it seems that he forgotten all his desires for enhancing the position of Congress party in states where elections are on the course.




The only thing we can do from this reshuffle is bang our heads. After day by day reports of corruption in in-effect ness of numerous ministers it was believed by not only political-pandits but also populaces that Prime Minister will do rectification not only to run his government for full tenure but also to lower the burden of the opposition.






Not only issues like Commonwealth Games and 3G spectrums Government is giving the inkling of being in peril because of current big trouble price rise. Not only commoners of rural area but price rise have affected the populace of urban areas to. And these problems have emerged because of awful ministers so all of us have assumed that Prime Minister will not only clean the cabinet from corrupt and terrible ministers but also bring faces which can help the Prime Minister managing the government circumspectly.







No minister has been dropped from the last dispensation. Only three new faces have been brought in others have been mingled. Most of them have been questioned on corruption and in-effectness for administrating the branch have been rewarded and given promotion or their ministry has been changed so that they can make the outcome of other section also 0.







In the press conference it was said that it is a minor shuffle and the big one will take place after the budget session of the parliament. From this shuffle one thing which can happen in that rearranging is bringing back A Raja.






This reshuffle shows that Congress has only thought of state elections not at all about the country. Since in Uttar Pradesh elections are on head so two ministers were given promotion and one new was brought in.Same is with Kerala. The only thing I liked in this reshuffle is giving Sports Portfolio to Ajay Maken who is young face of this cabinet and looks very confident to make our country a sporting power.







After his promotion Praful Patel commented that he is happy since he can see many of his juniors going up in the cabinet. His performance was also not gratifying since in his term as a Civil-Aviation Minister Air India condition has became worst. Deshmukh was also not removed in spite of so many allegations nor did Kamalnath who was articulate as unsuccessful minister.





      The game of Musical Chair which Prime Minister has played will not only give opposition more strength but I am afraid that UPA-2 will complete its term or not. If anyone can understand the full logic of this reshuffle, please do explain it to me.







Prateek Pathak
Student
B.A in Media Studies
University of Allahabad  

Sunday, January 16, 2011

E-books and Audiobooks: The commodities of the modern age !

“Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity.”

We arrived upon Mother Earth with no knowledge about absolutely anything but little by little we began to learn. First it was through pictures on cave or simply called cave drawings then through more modifications alphabets or letter came to be used.

We learn something new every day. Be it school books or via travelling, unintentionally we learn a lot of things that we don’t even think about. This is where books those shiny whit pages filled with printed letter and pictures (sometimes colorful and sometimes devoid of any color). Even the books that we see today went through a lot of modification through time. They began with immobile drawings and writing in primitive times, very hard to practically move it from one spot to another. That developed into writings on leafs, bamboo sticks woven together with string (Chinese way of writing in ancient ear), writing on rock tablets.

When writing developed and began on leaf and other materials and people began to store records of things in writing they had to write everything with hand, not an easy job even with the invention of ink but still employed by our ancestors. Then in 1844, both Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and German inventor F.G. Keller had invented the machine and process for pulping wood for the use in paper making. This would end the nearly 2000-year use of pulped rags and start a new era for the production of newsprint and eventually all paper out of pulped wood. It definitely did. Book began to be written on these papers. With more modifications the present state of textbooks or books in the general sense was before us.

But all this did a giant flip when computer were invented. These machines changed the face of the human civilization to such an extent that people rarely have any time to pick up book (now don’t go about screaming your heads off here, I mean it in the general sense). Apart from the textbooks and the occasional reference academics material or something that is related to that particular persons work, the general public doesn’t seem to want to pick up a book anymore in this technological age when computers, video games, televisions, movies can easily distract us.

Now a lot of people love to read book and I can effectively say that they feel at a loss whenever they travel for they usually can’t decide on what books they want to take with them and what not and would result in a hazardous (I know I’m probable exaggerating) situation with a lot more load than they previously would have planned. Take it from me I am an avid book lover and I experience the same dilemma whenever a travelling is on the cards. To ease us in these situations technology presents us with a new version of reading books, i.e., your one and only E-books.

At first these e-book or electronic books were only meant for technical or official matters but through time were available for the general public. It was in 1993 Zahur Klemath Zapata develops the first software to read digital books. Physical books can now be availed by the general public via the internet.

One just needs an e-book reader (I prefer Adobe Reader) to read these electronic books. Although there are a variety of formats of these e-books available like .pdf, .lit, .epub, .rtf and many more. A writer or publisher has many options when it comes to choosing a format for production. Every format has its proponents and champions, and debates over which format is best can become intense.  

As of 2009, new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have yet to achieve global distribution. In the United States, as of September 2009, the Amazon Kindle model and Sony's PRS-500 were the dominant e-reading devices. By March 2010, some reported that the Barnes & Noble Nook may be selling more units than the Kindle. On January 27, 2010 Apple, Inc. launched a multi-function device called the iPad and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers that would allow Apple to distribute e-books. However, many publishers and authors have not endorsed the concept of electronic publishing, citing issues with demand, piracy and proprietary devices.

In July 2010, online bookseller Amazon.com reported sales of ebooks for its proprietary Kindle outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010, saying it sold 140 e-books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there was no digital edition. In July this number had increased to 180 Kindle ebooks per 100 hardcovers. Paperback book sales are still much larger than either hardcover or e-book; the American Publishing Association estimated e-books represented 8.5% of sales as of mid-2010. In Canada, the option of ebook publishing took a higher profile when the novel, The Sentamentalists, won the prestigious national Giller Prize. Owing to the small scale of the novel's independent publisher, the book was initially not widely available in printed form, but the ebook edition had no such problems with it becoming the top-selling title for Kobo devices.

These e-books aside another format of book availability, i.e., Audiobooks. An audiobook or audio book is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine. Spoken audio has been available in school and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops for a long time. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.

Audiobooks are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), and Advanced Audio Coding (.aac)). In 2005 cassette-tape sales were 16% of the audiobook market, with CD sales accounting for 74% of the market and downloadable audio books accounting for approximately 9%. In the United States, a sales survey (performed by the Audio Publishers' Association in the summer of 2006 for the year 2005) estimated the industry to be worth 871 million US dollars. Current industry estimates are around two billion US dollars at retail value per year. In recent years, the Internet has introduced another powerful means of delivery for audiobooks and many titles are now available on-line, as downloads and as audio streams.

Sometimes audiobook format is available simultaneously with book publication. There are 50,000 titles on cassette, CD or digital format. Unabridged audiobooks are word for word readings of a book, while abridged audiobooks have text removed by the abridger. Abridgements may be wanted to reduce the cost or for other reasons, but are also criticized for being incomplete versions of the original work. The increasing use of digital formats for audiobook recording has led to much less abridgment of texts, the most common reason cited for abridgment was the cost of production and with digital recordings being stored as data rather than on discs or tapes, the differential in cost of producing the full text was minimised. Audiobooks may come as fully dramatized versions of the printed book, sometimes calling upon a complete cast, music, and sound effects. Each spring, the Audie Awards are given to the top nominees for performance and production in several genre categories. Relatedly, a dramatized audio adaptation of a book is one form of an audio drama.


Audiobooks have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. Not only that but it also helps to improve that said language pronunciation. Audio books are considered a valuable learning tool because of their format. Unlike traditional books or a video program, one can learn from an audiobook while doing other tasks, although it should be noted that this can detract from the primary task, assuming the learning is not the main activity. Such multitasking is feasible when doing mechanical tasks that do not require much thought and have only little or no chance of an emergency arising. Such tasks include doing the laundry and exercising indoors, among others. The most popular general use of audiobooks by adults is when driving an automobile or traveling with public transport, as an alternative to radio. Many people listen as well just to relax or as they drift off into sleep.    






Thus people come and go in life even the technology that is the latest at time would become old and be discarded when newer versions are produced but books stay. Time after time they may change their shape, size and format but they are a constant entity of life.  

Aparajita basu
Student
B.A in Media Studies
University of Allahabad

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Indian Paisa League!!!



T
hrough his statement that without Dada KKR is
not possible Shahrukh Khan watered the burning issue. Kolkata Knight Riders will have an all new team. No Dada and perhaps no Brendon McCullum or Chris Gayle. The only common link would be Shah Rukh Khan dancing in the stands and Juhi Chawla making a rare appearance.  I can undoubtedly state that will the three seasons of the IPL till now it has not only mixed entertainment and game but also gave an origin to exceptional players like Saurabh Tiwari.


 






Some days ago I was cynical for the reason that of Lalit Modi, clash between the two team owners and exorcise of two teams that because of so called corruption the IPL would continue or not. But seeing the progress it looks bigger and better. There is no doubt about that with the involvement of Sahara Group who is now owner of an I.P.L team, this contest would be preeminent.




These days every news channel is debating on the subject is it right to bid a player. Discussing the same issue with my friend she said that this so called bidding is not right as it demoralize the moral of the players who doesn’t got big cash like gambhir. This reason seems to be right when R.C.B bid for Md. Kaif who has been a excellent fielder and performer each and every team owner was laughing which was insult to a player.Undoubdatly this bid is not bad for players like Gambhir and Yusuf Pathan who got very even 15-16 times more sum from their base price.











If professionalism is key to IPL's success, it is very important that professional morals are conserved. It is therefore a matter of grave apprehension that franchisee owners have raised the issue of inconsistency of interest vis-a-vis BCCI secretary and president-elect N Srinivasan. The latter's position as an owner of the Chennai Super Kings franchisee and a member of the IPL governing council is unfair.
 





 Conflict of interest was the reason Lalit Modi was removed from the board of IPL, but the matter doesn't seem to have ended there. Concerns about conflict of interest need to be immediately addressed to build a sound foundation for the future of T20 cricket. A transparent and fair system will reduce the scope for manipulations and secure IPL's future. After the bid when this question was asked to the new Chairperson of the league he civilly answered this accusation is unsubstantiated and every owner is known with full information and dispensation of the league. As one and all know that is is not justified that an official of the board be in ownership of a team.
 




Lastly I hope this season is as its best. And produce players which can not only replace players like Sachin when he retires but also gives an astounding platform to the new talents. Till now the three seasons have been very flourishing and has got high-quality annotations apart from some distortion.  
 





Prateek Pathak
Student
B.A in Media Studies
University of Allahabad  

Thursday, January 6, 2011

"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence." ~Robert Fripp

Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony),rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses."

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts," music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art.

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.     ~Berthold Auerbach"

Whether you admit it or not, music imbeds our daily life, weaving its beauty and emotion through our thoughts, activities and memories. Be it any kind of music around the world, Indian or Western, Classical or Modern, music has its own place in the hearts and souls of the population.

Be it Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, English, French, Hebrew or any other dialect spoken upon this almighty Earth through time music or most precisely the streams of music has changed a lot undergoing various changes and modification that may appeal to a lot of people as enticing or to some it may not appeal at all as they would find the older forms of music much more pleasing to the ears than the youth of today.
 
Indian classical music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. The Indus Valley civilization has sculptures that show dance and old musical instruments, like the seven holed flute. Various types of stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from Harrappa and Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. The Rigveda has elements of present Indian music, with a musical notation to denote the metre and the mode of chanting. Indian classical music (marga) is monophonic, and based on a single melody line or raga rhythmically organized through talas. Hindustani music was influenced by the Persian performance practices of the Afghan Mughals. Carnatic music popular in the southern states, is largely devotional; the majority of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. There are a lot of songs emphasizing love and other social issues.

Here I have state my own personal experience, well I have finished till Vth year of classical music (Indian Classical) by the time I completed my Vth standard in academics. So, it always made me feel like 'Oh! God I have to study for music tests (both theory & practical) apart from my subjects at school'. So was like 'Ok I have to pass this, anyways I won't be able to do the higher degree after this not being of the right age (you have to pass high school to proceed to the higher course in music here)'. So, anyhow I did it and passed with flying colors but now I see that what music has done for me, not only has it made me "vocally verbal" but I can now study with concentration even with disturbance all round(a perk of coming in touch with music). 

"Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.  ~Henry Ward Beecher"

That was about my experiences with Indian Classical music, now i'll tell you all of my encounter with western classical music, it’s quite comical actually. Till High School I never really knew anything about the music of the west. Coincidently i'm have always been a great fan of Japanese Animation and it just so happened I came across a show titled "La Corda doro" an animation series purely based on western music. The show worked its magic on me and somehow or the other I instantly fell in love with the western music and coincidently now I have a fair amount of knowledge about it. 

Even when the class was over, I could not stop learning about the history of music. It had whetted my appetite, and I wanted more. I got all the music history books that I could find. I even began to research forms of music that had not interested me before in the hopes of enhancing my musical knowledge further.

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.  ~Ludwig van Beethoven"
With 20th century music, there was a vast increase in music listening as the radio gained popularity and phonographs were used to replay and distribute music. The focus of art music was characterized by exploration of new rhythms, styles, and sounds. Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage were all influential composers in 20th century art music.

In many cultures, there is less distinction between performing and listening to music, since virtually everyone is involved in some sort of musical activity, often communal. In industrialized countries, listening to music through a recorded form, such as sound recording or watching a music video, became more common than experiencing live performance, roughly in the middle of the 20th century.

BUT WHY DOES MUSIC MOVE US SO?
Some scientists conclude that music’s influence over us may be a chance event, arising from its ability to hijack brain systems built for other purposes such as language, emotion and movement.

Music seems to offer a novel method of communication rooted in emotions rather than in meaning. Research shows that what we feel when we hear a piece of music is remarkably similar to what everybody else in the room is experiencing.

Songs facilitate emotional bonding and even physical interactions such as marching or dancing together and thus may help cement ties that underlie the formation of human societies. In addition, tunes may work to our benefit on an individual level, manipulating mood and even human physiology more effectively than words can.

I have often wondered what it is about music that elicits such emotions. Philosophers and biologists have asked the question for centuries, noting that humans are universally drawn to music. It consoles us when we are sad, pumps us up in happier times and bonds us to others, even though listening to an iPod or singing “Happy Birthday” does not seem necessary for survival or reproduction.


Aparajita Basu
Student
B.A. in Media Studies
University of Allahabad