Vivacious India defeats Australia by 15 runs

Nobody dared move an inch from the edge of their seats at the Kingsmead Cricket Ground lest they miss any action and man, wasn't that some action in the ICC World Twenty20 semi-final! India held its nerve against a brave charge by Australia to win the spectacle by a handsome margin of 15 runs to set up a marketing man's dream – a final against Pakistan.

And on Saturday, the Indian cricketers showed that they were brave hearts. First it was Yuvraj Singh and company with the bat as they powered India to 188 for five with 128 runs in the final 10 overs. Then Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh who led the bowling attack with their calm demeanour to help India extend its stupendous showing and give itself the chance to win the top prize on Monday.

The Australians, as is their wont, were game for the challenge. Skipper Adam Gilchrist set the tone with his big hitting against Rudra Pratap Singh. And it was when Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds came together for a stand of 66 runs that the thousands of tricolour-waving fans fell quiet but Sreesanth delivered them from their agony.

Sreesanth was focussed on the task at hand and unmindful of the mayhem unleashed at the other end. He produced 140 kmph corkers to send back Gilchrist, and when he came back to bowl the crucial 15th over, Hayden. His spell of 4-1-12-2 will be etched in the minds of all those who watched it for its intensity and 16 dot balls!

Harbahajan Singh was control and variation personified as he brought in Test match quality bowling to the crease under pressure. The others like RP Singh, Irfan Pathan and even Joginder Sharma showcased an ability to take a beating and bounce back strongly. Each of them accounted for at least one over each.

You could reach out and touch the electricity in the air as a charged up Yuvraj Singh led an India resurgence to a comfortable 188 for five in 20 overs. For the second time in five nights, he creamed the opposition attack to make a breezy half-century. His knock of 70 off 30 deliveries (five fours and five sixes), coupled with spirited efforts by Robin Uthappa (34, 28 balls, one four, three sixes) and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (36, 18 balls, four fours and a six) strengthened the dreams of thousands in the stadium and millions in the sub-continent – a juicy India-Pakistan final.

Before the start of the match, the question on top of everyone's mind was whether Yuvraj would be fit to play the game. The explosive left-hander had sat out of the match against South Africa with a sore elbow but he ruled himself fit to take on the Australians. And he engineered so much electricity in the atmosphere that the stadium lights could have been powered by that.

Yuvraj Singh walked in at the fall of Gautam Gambhir's wicket at 41 after the opener had made 24 but eight overs had already been played and Australia was on top of its game. He pulled the second ball he faced over square-leg and announced his intentions of leading an India fightback in a knock that reminded many of his innings against Australia in Nairobi back in 2000.

His clinical aggression negated the many dot balls that Uthappa was forced to play in his quest to ensure that India would not lose more wickets and come under additional pressure. India raced from 60 in the 10th over to finish with 188 – a whopping 128 runs in the second half of the innings. Yuvraj can take credit for giving direction to the 84-run stand with Uthappa.

Gilchrist, leading the side in Ricky Ponting's absence, and Stuart Clark – man of the match in the team's sensational win over Sri Lanka a couple of days ago challenged Yuvraj with a strong leg-side. The Indian vice-captain picked up the gauntlet and creamed the pace bowler for 20 runs, including a pulled six over mid-wicket and two fours over the cover fielder.

One thing became sure. T20 cricket is not for the weak-hearted. Not it if packs in so much excitement in one evening.

Mercedes' AMG tuning house coming with factory tour

For many BMW fans, visiting the automaker's M performance division in Munich is akin to finding the Holy Grail, which is why the workshop's factory tour program has been a runaway success. Strangely, rival tuner AMG has been very slow to open its doors to the public.

All that could change, as new European delivery arrangements may give AMG customers a chance to visit the factory and see their cars being built. Management at the Affalterbach-based tuner is considering opening the doors to the factory to satisfy a growing desire from many of its customers to visit the premises. "We have been working on a factory tour in Affalterbach for awhile," revealed AMG's director of marketing and sales Mario Spitzner. "We are starting slowly because the demand would be more than we could handle."

Unlike BMW's M range, which is limited to a handful of cars, AMG offers a substantial number of cars, meaning getting a chance to go behind the scenes will likely entail dealing with long waiting lists. or could be limited to customers ordering only the most expensive models.

[Source: Edmunds]

Want To Make Your BlackBerry Pearl Look Like An iPhone?

Do you desire to make your BlackBerry Pearl look like an iPhone? Well, your’re in luck… RogersMJ.com has released a free BlackBerry theme named bPhone that should do the trick.

Inspired by the iPhone, bPhone for BlackBerry features icons straight from the iPhone in addition to custom-made icons that fit into the iPhone theme. The top banner is dark glass, the signal and battery indicators were created from scratch to mimic the iPhone’s, the “busy” indicator is the Mac OS X beachball, and there is liberal use of gray and blue (Mac and iPhone’s primary interface colors) throughout the theme.

You can download a copy of bPhone here…

From Portable Housing to Temporary Hotel Rooms

The world’s interest physical mobility has, to the surprise of many urban theorists, not decreased with the rise of global digital communication. In fact, people are more mobile than ever, changing jobs, cities, or even countries with increased frequency. This trend has played out in a variety of interesting ways when it comes to architecture and urbanism. More and more designers are developing nomadic alternatives to traditional models of static urban living.

The GMC PAD was designed as an alternative to the financial problems of fixed living, particularly in areas with high land prices such as Southern California. Others have proposed it would be useful as an alternative FEMA-type emergency residence. Sustainability is, of course, of great concern in something that is in effect a souped-up kind of advanced mobile home. This portable living unit was therefore designed a diesel-electric hybrid. It also comes equipped with photovalic cells that charge onboard batteries, increasing the necessary time between refuels to weeks or even months

As the global number of available shipping containers grows, more and more designers are considering creative ways to adapt underused or discarded containers to architectural purposes. Such shipping container architecture has exists in a surprising variety of settings. Cargo containers have been used for institutional, commercial and residential projects including museums, stores and single- or multi-family housing. Their use as emergency medical units has also been advocated.

The world’s first mobile hotel room, though still in a test phase, is designed to be placed virtually anywhere. These portable rooms can be taken or delivered to remote or urban locations, from campgrounds and festivals to driveways and parking spaces. They contain virtually all of the standard amenities - from the basics, such as running water, to air conditioning and television, though, of course, no forseeable room service! The sustainability of these is, however, questionable. Are they the next wave of urban mobility or a sign of decadent times?

Painting of Tagore to be auctioned in NY

A rare painting by the great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, is being auctioned in New York by the Sotheby's on September 19.

Drawn on a handmade paper, the painting depicts a duck. It is signed and dated by Tagore in Bengali.

Robin Dean from Sotheby's told NDTV.com that the painting is the property of a private Swedish collector. It was acquired in Calcutta by the present owners' parents sometime between 1930 and 1938.

Sotheby's has priced it between $15,000-20,000. Sized 10 by 14 and half inch, the rare painting would go under hammer along with 117 other miniatures and modern Indian paintings.

The paintings include those of eminent Indian painters M F Hussain, Akbar Padamsee, V S Gaitonde, F N Souza, Ram Kumar, S H Raza and R Broota.

The first Indian to get Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore took up painting at a very later stage of his life. His first exhibition was in Paris in 1930 followed by the one in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1931.

His early paintings were rendered in monochromatic schemes, followed by two-toned and three-toned drawings.

The style of the present painting - scheduled to be auctioned - suggests that it was painted in the mid-30s, which coincides with the period when the current owner's parents lived in India.

Though at the face of it, the painting is a duck, which appears to be swimming in a pond, Tagore normally did not describe/explain his pictures.

''People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain,'' Tagore wrote.

Sotheby's said the entire auction of about 118 Indian paintings on September 19 is expected to fetch between $6.4 to $9.4 million.

Two days later on September 21, Sotheby's would again put to hammer some paintings from Indian under the banner of Contemporary Art South Asia: India and Pakistan.

This includes some 84 lots of paintings, sculpture, photographs, video art and installations by artists Subodh Gupta, Ashim Purkayastha, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Jyothi Basu and Atul Dodiya. It is expected to bring $1.9-2.6 million.

As late as June this year, the Indian government had stepped in to stop the auctioning of a rare letter written by Mahatma Gandhi some 19 days before his assassination. The letter was to be auctioned by Christie's in London.


Source: NDTV

Indian King Cobra....

The Irula Co-operative society is a self-help project recognised by the State government of Tamil Nadu.� The project taps the skills of the Irula tribe in venom production, rodent control and termite control.� The Irulas are expert snake catchers and this skill was earlier being exploited by smuggling cartels to procure snakeskins for the international market.� But following the ban of this trade for ecological reasons, the Irulas were deprived their means of living.� The Irula Snake Catcher’s Society now buys venomous snakes from the Irula members, extracts the venom and then the snakes are released back to the wild.� The venom is then sold to laboratories.

The antidote is prepared by injecting a small and non lethal dose of venom ‘milked’ from the fangs of a live King Cobra, into a healthy horse.� Once the horse’s body has developed antibodies to the venom, blood is removed from the jugular vein of the horse.� The blood is then mixed with an anticoagulant and a preservative, and the antibodies are separated and stored as antivenin.

The snakes from which venom is extracted are known as the ‘Big Four’.� They are the most dangerous snakes in India - the Cobra, Krait, Russells Viper and Saw scaled Viper.� The venom is extracted at the Snake Venom Extraction Centre located in the precincts of the Madras Crocodile Bank (MCB) on East Coast Road.�

Uses of Snake Venom

Snake venom is used to make anti-venom serum – the only real cure for snakebites.� Another use of snake venom is in medicine, as it contains many useful enzymes, proteins and toxins.� Russells Viper Venom is a coagulant and is used to control bleeding, while Cobra venom is used to control Cancer and also relieve pain.�

Captive breeding of King Cobra at Madras Crocodile Bank

The Madras Crocodile Bank or Centre for Herpetology successfully bred King Cobras in 1996.� 29 hatchlings resulted from the eggs of three females.� Although King Cobras are primarily snake-eaters in nature, the hatchlings and the adults that produced them have become accustomed to feeding on rats.� The largest of the hatchlings is now 2.45 meters and the others average 1.2 – 1.4 meters.

Golden Temple of Tamil Nadu

‘Golden’ temple: A view of the Sri Lakshmi Narayani Temple near Vellore.

VELLORE: The Sri Lakshmi Narayani Temple located in ‘Sripuram’ (spiritual town) in Thirumalaikkodi, about seven km from here, was consecrated by Sri Sakthi Amma, head of the Sri Narayani Peedam, Thirumalaikkodi, on Friday.

A large number of devotees gathered for the occasion.

Unique structure :

It is a unique temple whose ‘Vimanam’ and ‘Ardha Mandapam’ have been coated with gold both in the interior and exterior.

Twelve layers of gold foils have been pasted on copper sheets embossed with the designs of Gods and fixed on the walls.

One-and-a-half tonnes of gold has gone into the design of the Sri Lakshmi Narayani Temple, which has been built at a cost of Rs.300 crore.

100-acre site :

According to Sri Sakthi Amma, the decision to have the temple coated with gold is only to attract visitors and enable them to get wisdom through the messages of the Vedas, which they will have to read before reaching the temple located on sprawling a 100 acre-site.

The temple has been designed in such a way that visitors can reach the golden temple only after going through a star-shaped pathway, which has the messages from the Vedas on both sides.

Tamil Nadu can boast of its own Golden Temple now

Vellore: If you see the temple, you might even think that the temple is made of gold. And your guessing will be correct.

The Golden Temple is about 140 km from Chennai at Tirumalaikodi in Vellore district.

Sri Narayani Peedam, a private religious charitable organisation, built the temple. And the glittering monument also boasts of some glittering figures.

"The actual estimate is about 300 crores. The amount of gold that went into it's making is 1,500 kilos," says head, Sri Narayani Peedam, Sri Sakthi Amma.

A breathtaking wonder of intricate designs, the temple dedicated to Goddess Narayani is in the midst of lush greenery spread over 100 acres.

Except the pathways, even the roofs and the pillars of the temple are made of gold as about 1.5 tonnes of the metal went into its making.

The Peedom says the funds for building the temple were collected from NRIs.

But is this an attempt to match up to the other golden temple?

"Well! We need to see the people's reaction-how the world is accepting it," says Shakti Amma.

The temple will be formally consecrated on Friday and will be thrown open to the public from the next day.

Now even Tamil Nadu can boast of a wonder of its own- the Golden Temple created with about 1.5 tonnes of gold and which is already on its way to making history.