Thursday 26 April 2012

Planet Earth


Earth (or the Earth) is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets. It is sometimes referred to as the world, the Blue Planet,or by its Latin name, Terra.
Earth formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, and life appeared on its surface within one billion years. The planet is home to millions of species, including humans. Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful solar radiation, permitting life on land. The physical properties of the Earth, as well as its geological history and orbit, have allowed life to persist. The planet is expected to continue supporting life for another 500 million to 2.3 billion years.


Earth's crust is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered by salt water oceans, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Earth's poles are mostly covered with solid ice (Antarctic ice sheet) or sea ice (Arctic ice cap). The planet's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.Earth interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once every 366.26 times it rotates about its own axis, which is equal to 365.26 solar days, or one sidereal year. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt, and gradually slows the planet's rotation. Between approximately 3.8 billion and 4.1 billion years ago, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment.

Both the mineral resources of the planet and the products of the biosphere contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. These inhabitants are grouped into about 200 independent sovereign states (193 United Nations recognized sovereign states), which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade, and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including personification as a deity, a belief in a flat Earth or in the Earth as the center of the universe, and a modern perspective of the world as an integrated environment that requires stewardship.


Tuesday 24 April 2012

The BIG Bloom


In the summer of 1973 sunflowers appeared in my father's vegetable garden. They seemed to sprout overnight in a few rows he had lent that year to new neighbors from California. Only six years old at the time, I was at first put off by these garish plants. Such strange and vibrant flowers seemed out of place among the respectable beans, peppers, spinach, and other vegetables we had always grown. Gradually, however, the brilliance of the sunflowers won me over. Their fiery halos relieved the green monotone that by late summer ruled the garden. I marveled at birds that clung upside down to the shaggy, gold disks, wings fluttering, looting the seeds. Sunflowers defined flowers for me that summer and changed my view of the world.
Flowers have a way of doing that. They began changing the way the world looked almost as soon as they appeared on Earth about 130 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. That's relatively recent in geologic time: If all Earth's history were compressed into an hour, flowering plants would exist for only the last 90 seconds. But once they took firm root about 100 million years ago, they swiftly diversified in an explosion of varieties that established most of the flowering plant families of the modern world.
Today flowering plant species outnumber by twenty to one those of ferns and cone-bearing trees, or conifers, which had thrived for 200 million years before the first bloom appeared. As a food source flowering plants provide us and the rest of the animal world with the nourishment that is fundamental to our existence. In the words of Walter Judd, a botanist at the University of Florida, "If it weren't for flowering plants, we humans wouldn't be here." 
From oaks and palms to wildflowers and water lilies, across the miles of cornfields and citrus orchards to my father's garden, flowering plants have come to rule the worlds of botany and agriculture. They also reign over an ethereal realm sought by artists, poets, and everyday people in search of inspiration, solace, or the simple pleasure of beholding a blossom.
"Before flowering plants appeared," says Dale Russell, a paleontologist with North Carolina State University and the State Museum of Natural Sciences, "the world was like a Japanese garden: peaceful, somber, green; inhabited by fish, turtles, and dragonflies. After flowering plants, the world became like an English garden, full of bright color and variety, visited by butterflies and honeybees. Flowers of all shapes and colors bloomed among the greenery."
That dramatic change represents one of the great moments in the history of life on the planet. What allowed flowering plants to dominate the world's flora so quickly? What was their great innovation?
Botanists call flowering plants angiosperms, from the Greek words for "vessel" and "seed." Unlike conifers, which produce seeds in open cones, angiosperms enclose their seeds in fruit. Each fruit contains one or more carpels, hollow chambers that protect and nourish the seeds. Slice a tomato in half, for instance, and you'll find carpels. These structures are the defining trait of all angiosperms and one key to the success of this huge plant group, which numbers some 235,000 species.
Just when and how did the first flowering plants emerge? Charles Darwin pondered that question, and Paleobotanists are still searching for an answer. Throughout the 1990s discoveries of fossilized flowers in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America offered important clues. At the same time the field of genetics brought a whole new set of tools to the search. As a result, modern Paleobotany has undergone a boom not unlike the Cretaceous flower explosion itself. 

Thursday 19 April 2012

Belief , Culture , Tradition , Festival

   

   Cultures have been meeting and mixing in Malaysia since the very beginning of its history. Malaysia has a multi racial and multicultural population. Though there are many ethic groups in Malaysia, most of the population is classified into 3 major ethnic grouping: Malays, Chinese and Indians.


   Malaysia's cultural mosaic is marked by many different cultures, but several in particular have had especially lasting influence on the country. Chief among these is the ancient Malay culture, and the cultures of Malaysia's two most prominent trading partners throughout history--the Chinese, and the Indians. These three groups are joined by a dizzying array of indigenous tribes, many of which live in the forests and coastal areas of Borneo. Although each of these cultures has vigorously maintained its traditions and community structures, they have also blended together to create contemporary Malaysia's uniquely diverse heritage. 


   One example of the complexity with which Malaysia's immigrant populations have contributed to the nation's culture as a whole is the history of Chinese immigrants. The first Chinese to settle in the straits, primarily in and around Malacca, gradually adopted elements of Malaysian culture and intermarried with the Malaysian community. Known as babas and nonyas, they eventually produced a synthetic set of practices, beliefs, and arts, combining Malay and Chinese traditions in such a way as to create a new culture. Later Chinese, coming to exploit the tin and rubber booms, have preserved their culture much more meticulously. A city like Penang, for example, can often give one the impression of being in China rather than in Malaysia. 


   Another example of Malaysia's extraordinary cultural exchange the Malay wedding ceremony, which incorporates elements of the Hindu traditions of southern India; the bride and groom dress in gorgeous brocades, sit in state, and feed each other yellow rice with hands painted with henna. Muslims have adapted the Chinese custom of giving little red packets of money (ang pau) at festivals to their own needs; the packets given on Muslim holidays are green and have Arab writing on them. 


   You can go from a Malaysian kampung to a rubber plantation worked by Indians to Penang's Chinese kongsi and feel you've traveled through three nations. But in cities like Kuala Lumpur, you'll find everyone in a grand melange. In one house, a Chinese opera will be playing on the radio; in another they're preparing for Muslim prayers; in the next, the daughter of the household readies herself for classical Indian dance lessons. 


   Perhaps the easiest way to begin to understand the highly complex cultural interaction which is Malaysia is to look at the open door policy maintained during religious festivals. Although Malaysia's different cultural traditions are frequently maintained by seemingly self-contained ethnic communities, all of Malaysia's communities open their doors to members of other cultures during a religious festival--to tourists as well as neighbors. Such inclusiveness is more than just a way to break down cultural barriers and foster understanding. It is a positive celebration of a tradition of tolerance that has for millennia formed the basis of Malaysia's progress. 




Malay culture



Chinese Culture





Indian Culture




These is what we are.

Wednesday 18 April 2012

We Run The Night Lyrics

We Run The Night


Pitbull featuring Havana Brown

Havana Brown
Red One
Mr. Worldwide
From Miami, Morocco, to Australia
To the world.
Run em like run em run em, whoop!
Run em like run em run em, whoop!

When the sun goes down down down down
Boy are you afraid of dark dark
And when the lights go out out out out
Tell me do you know where to start start
And when the bass gets loud loud loud
That is when i feel a part, apart
And when the world sleeps sound sound sound
well the sound is the key of my heart

Chorus:
We run, yes we run the night.
we run, yes we run the night
we-we-we run, we-we-we run
we run, yes we run the night
Run em like run em run em whoop!
Run em like run em run em whoop!
Run em like run em run em whoop!

From the bottom of the map, Miami
To the land down under, Australia
You feel my draft, see my vision and hear my hunger
As my money gets older, their's get younger
They sell their soul
But the devil knows I have no number
I'm global baby hey!
Official baby hey!
Go go baby hey!
Oh oh baby hey!
No no baby hey!
Yeah yeah baby hey!
Now jiggle it baby
Let me tickle it baby
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com
I know I'm lost
It's gonna be hard to save me
I'm sorry that's how Dade County raised me
Ya heard me right
We run the night
Now f*** you pay me

Chorus:
We run, yes we run the night.
We run, yes we run the night
We-we-we run, we-we-we run
We run, yes we run the night
Run em like run em run em whoop!
Run em like run em run em whoop!
Run em like run em run em whoop!

Feel it like a rush rush rush
Brushing past me all over my skin skin
I can't get enough 'nough 'nough
Cause the beat keep pulling me in
Taking me so high up up up
A place that i’ve never been
Party party all night night night
Sleep all day ..then do it again

[Chorus:]
We run, yes we run the night.
Run em like run em run em whoop!
we run, yes we run the night
we-we-we run, we-we-we run
we run, yes we run the night, the night
Run em like run em run em whoop!



Lock Out Movie Review

LOCK OUT 

Genre: Sci-fi,Fiction,Action

Cast and Crew : Maggie Grace and Guy Pearce

Director: Stephen St. Leger

Language: English

Release Date: 19th April 2012

Running Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Rated: PG13

Trailer




Storyline

MS One is an experimental prison orbiting Earth with the most dangerous criminals kept in stasis: a deep sleep that may include side effects such as dementia and rage, sure to be good treatment for the criminally insane. Emilie Warnock (Grace), the president's daughter has visited the colony to insure that the prisoners are treated humanely. But then—wouldn't you know it—all manners of chaos ensue.
Enter Agent Snow (Pearce), tasked with not only saving Emilie but also retrieving an inmate who can prove Snow's own innocence for that murder thing.




If you've ever seen a film by Luc Besson (Taken) you'll recognize his signature elements: hyper Euro-style action, charcoal-toned visuals and a heroine who chops her hair off and starts to look like Milla Joovich from The Fifth Element.

To say this script by Stephen St. Leger, James Mather and Besson is generic is being generous. There's a time limit to destruction MS One's permanent orbit might not be so permanent, the required ground crew to aid Snow, and, of course, an overcrowded group of deranged prisoners at every turn.
But all is not lost. One of the best developments is Snow teaming up with Emilie rather quickly. Once they do meet up it's of the will-they-or-won't-they variety. The two have gone for a neat trick, acting like they're in a silly rom-com instead of a silly prison flick. It works. Pearce gets most of the good one-liners while Grace is more than able to kick butt when needed. The tone of the whole endeavor shouldn't work as well as it does (who does one liners anymore?) but as they say casting is everything.

Of course, that "casting is everything" mantra has a downside. While the main villain is a grizzly career criminal (Vincent Regan) unfortunately, the brotherhood of convicts also has psycho named Hydell (Joseph Gilgun). Gilgun plays it too over the top, like some bad impression of Robert Carlyle's character from Trainspotting.

A Second Opinion: If you're a fan of sci-fi this is still a decent enough ride, especially with Guy Pearce as the leading man. At ninety minutes, the pacing never falters.

In the future, the U.S. has built the ultimate maximum-security prison in space. But the inmates (shocker!) have taken over. After being wrongly accused of murder, a rascally federal agent is tasked with venturing to the penal colony to save…the president's daughter!
Despite the numerous genre-trappings, this Escape From New York meets sci-fi flick succeeds somewhat with two leads who charm: Guy Pearce (Mildred Pierce) has a ball doing his best Kurt Russell while Maggie Grace (Lost) shows she can still play privileged but this time it's way less annoying.
Still, this is a pretty by-the-numbers story.

Famous Quotes:

'Snow: I was trampolining your wife!'"'

 'Langral: What's his name?
 Snow: F*** you. He's asian.'

'Snow: I am bringing you back from the dead.'

 'Snow: I'm thrilled you would think of me.'





Bloopers


My ratings out of 10: 8/10