Kodaikanal Hill station - Tamil Nadu - India
Kodaikanal Travel Guide
Nestling amidst the folds of the verdant Pali Hills, is the idyllic retreat of Kodaikanal, popularly known as Kodai. Apart from being a much sought after tourist resort, Kodai is also famous for its educational institutions, which are globally renown.
The resort is, virtually, a heaven for trekkers and avid nature lovers. Amongst its other natural attractions is a star - shaped lake, set in a dreamy locale. The Boat Club offers umpteen pleasure and racing trips. The splendid Bryant Park, famous for its rare collection of flowers, graftings and hybrids, is the venue of great horticultural shows, held every year in May. Another major attraction of this area, is the country's only Solar Physical Laboratory, founded in 1898.
The Coaker's Walk offers some fantastic views of the surrounding plains. Another superb vantage point, is the Kurinji Andavar temple, dedicated to Lord Murugan, which provides a panoramic view of the lofty hills, that embrace Kodaikanal. Some of the popular picnic spots in the resort, are the Green Valley View, Pillar Rocks, and Bear Shola Falls. Nature seems to have blessed Kodai in all her magnanimity, a fact evident from the immense profusion of exotic flora and fauna of the area. The amazing orchid collection at the Shenbaganur Museum, has granted Kodai international fame. Kodai is also blessed with the rare bloom of the highly elusive Kurinji flower, that makes a dramatic appearance, once in 12 years. The Kurinji last bloomed in 1992. The resort is also home to various species of birds, thus rendering it a bird - watcher's delight.
Kodaikanal promises to be an ideal getaway, for those craving for an invigorating yet soothing holiday, away from the madness of the city.
Climate : The temperatures in summer range from a maximum of 20°C to a minimum of 11°C, and in winter from 17°C to 8°C. Annual rainfall in the region is around 165 cms.
Places to See in Kodaikanal
Heaven (esotically speaking) can be glimpsed in some of the enchanting picnic spots that dot Kodai. Coaker's walk, running along a steep slope, offers a panaromic view of the plain. Green Valley View on the other hand provides a beautiful view of the Vaigai Dam. Bear Shola Falls a pretty little cataract, offers endless hours of cool relaxation.
But don't stop there. Go on. Go a little away from the township of Kodai and some of the most beautiful scenery will hit your senses. Silver Cascade (8kms) and Kumbakkarai (65 Kms) are waterfalls situated in some of the most wooded parts of the hill station.
Berijam lake, situated 21 kms from the township, lies in a beautiful valley, reflecting the glory of the specious in its clean waters. Dolphin's Nose (8 Kms), a projecting rock provides a view of the deep chasm below. Then go on get higher upon life. Climb the2400 meter high Perumal Peak. And you'll be rewarded with one of the most wonderful views in and around Kodaikkanal.
Cavemen in Kodai No, you won't meet any today, but their habitat at Kukkal Caves (40 Kms) and Dolmen's circle (22 Kms) are famous pre-historic, archaeological sites. For, those with orchids on their mind can visit the Shenbaganur Museum (5.6 Kms.). It is easily one of the best orchidoriums in the country offering the visitor, more than 300 species of orchids.
Shenbaganur Musem (5.6 Kms. ) is easily one of the best orchidoriums in the country offering the visitors, more than 300 species of orchids.
The Kurinji Andavar Temple ( 3.2 Kms ) is dedicated to lord Murugan. It also offers the worshipper a beautiful views of the northern plains and the Palaini Hills.
Places to Worship :
Fact is, almost every place in India has Places of worship- both ancient and beautiful. Kodaikkanal too offers the visitors two historic temples.
The Kurinji Andavar Temple (3.2 Kms) is dedicated to Lord Murugan. It also offers the worshipper a beautiful view of the northern plains and the Palani Hills.
Palani (64 Kms) is of course, a famous pilgrimage centre and is mythologically believed to be one of the six abodes of Lord Subramanya.
Other then these two, the Mariamman Temple, Vinayagar Temple, Murugan Temple, Two mosques at Ellis Villa and Munjikal, Francis Xavier Church, Gorapur, St.Mary's Church, Lassalette, St.Joseph's Church, Luthern mission Church, Lake end offer, the devout a relaxed and genteel place to pray.
So come to Kodaikkanal. And be a part of the vibrant elements at play.
How To Get There
The nearest airport is Madurai, 120 km away. The nearest railhead is Kodai Road Railway Station, 80 km away. Kodaikanal is linked by road to all major towns. Taxis are available for hire.
Kodaikanal Hill station - Tamil Nadu - India
on Friday, April 3, 2009
Hitchcock, Sir Alfred
Hitchcock, Sir Alfred, 1899–1980, English-American film director, writer, and producer, b. London. Hitchcock began his career as a director in 1925 and became prominent with The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). In 1940 he began working in the United States. In his suspense thrillers, Hitchcock unsettled audiences both through the use of intense set pieces and the suggestion that normality as usually defined masks humanity's true and much darker nature. Hitchcock's style is so distinctive that any filmmaker working in the suspense genre invariably risks comparison to him. His best films include Strangers on a Train (1951), in which a tennis player is invited by a fellow rail passenger to trade murders; Rear Window (1954), a thriller about voyeurism; Vertigo (1958), an obsessive necrophiliac romance; North by Northwest (1959), in which a mother-dominated advertising executive is chased across the United States by foreign agents; and Psycho (1960), in which a mother-obsessed transvestite murders a thief. Other films include Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), The Birds (1963), Frenzy (1972), and Family Plot (1977). Hitchcock had two successful television series (1955–62 and 1963–65) and was one of the best known directors of his time, often appearing in humorous cameo appearances in his own films. He was knighted in 1980.
Whitman, Walt (Walter Whitman), 1819–92, American poet, b. West Hills, N.Y. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man. His Leaves of Grass, unconventional in both content and technique, is probably the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature.
Whitman left school in 1830, worked as a printer's devil and later as a compositor. In 1838–39 he taught school on Long Island and edited the Long Islander newspaper. By 1841 he had become a full-time journalist, editing successively several papers and writing prose and verse for New York and Brooklyn journals. His active interest in politics during this period led to the editorship of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a Democratic party paper; he lost this job, however, because of his vehement advocacy of abolition and the “free-soil” movement. After a brief trip to New Orleans in 1848, Whitman returned to Brooklyn, continued as a journalist, and later worked as a carpenter.
In 1855 Whitman published at his own expense a volume of 12 poems, Leaves of Grass, which he had begun working on probably as early as 1847. Prefaced by a statement of his theories of poetry, the volume included the poem later known as “Song of Myself,” in which the author proclaims himself the symbolic representative of common people. Although the book was a commercial failure, critical reviewers recognized the appearance of a bold new voice in poetry. Two larger editions appeared in 1856 and 1860, and they had equally little public success.
Leaves of Grass was criticized because of Whitman's exaltation of the body and sexual love and also because of its innovation in verse form—that it, the use of free verse in long rhythmical lines with a natural, “organic” structure. Emerson was one of the few intellectuals to praise Whitman's work, writing him a famous congratulatory letter. Whitman continued to enlarge and revise further editions of Leaves of Grass; the last edition prepared under his supervision appeared in 1892.
From 1862 to 1865 Whitman worked as a volunteer hospital nurse in Washington. His poetry of the Civil War, Drum-Taps (1865), reissued with Sequel to Drum Taps (1865–66), included his two poems about Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” considered one of the finest elegies in the English language, and the much-recited “O Captain! My Captain!” For a while Whitman served as a clerk in the Dept. of the Interior, but he was discharged because Leaves of Grass was considered an immoral book.
In 1873 Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke and afterward lived in a semi-invalid state. His prose collection Democratic Vistas had appeared in 1871, and his last long poem, “Passage to India,” was published in the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass. From 1884 until his death he lived in Camden, N.J., where he continued to write and to revise his earlier work. His last book, November Boughs, appeared in 1888.
Whitman was a complex person. He saw himself as the full-blooded, rough-and-ready spokesman for a young democracy, and he cultivated a bearded, shaggy appearance. Indeed, Whitman's early biographers John Burroughs and R. M. Bucke were so affected by the robust “I” of Whitman's poems and by the poet himself that they depicted him as a rowdy, sensual man, a great lover of women, and the father of several illegitimate children. Most of this was false. In reality Whitman was a quiet, gentle, circumspect man, robust in youth but sickly in middle age, who sired no children and is generally acknowledged to have been homosexual. Whitman had an incalculable effect on later poets, inspiring them to experiment in prosody as well as in subject matter.
Huge Population Of Rare Dolphins Discovered
ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has just announced the discovery of a huge population of rare dolphins in South Asia—but warns that the population is threatened by climate change and fishing nets.
Using rigorous scientific techniques, WCS researchers estimate that nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins, which are related to orcas or killer whales, were found living in freshwater regions of Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forest and adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal—an area where little marine mammal research has taken place up to this point. Prior to this study, the largest known populations of Irrawaddy dolphins numbered in the low hundreds or less.
Each discovery of Irrawaddy dolphins is important because scientists do not know how many remain on the planet. In 2008, they were listed as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List based on population declines in known populations.
The results of the study were announced today at the First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas in Maui, Hawaii and published in the Winter issue of the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management. Authors of the study include Brian D. Smith, Rubaiyat Mansur Mowgli, and Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society, along with Benazir Ahmed of Chittagong University in Bangladesh.
“With all the news about freshwater environments and state of the Oceans, WCS’s discovery that a thriving population of Irrawaddy dolphins exists in Bangladesh gives us hope for protecting this and other endangered species and their important habitats,” said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “WCS is committed to conservation of these iconic marine species from dolphins, sea turtles, sharks to the largest whales.”
“This discovery gives us great hope that there is a future for Irrawaddy dolphins,” said Brian D. Smith, the study’s lead author. “Bangladesh clearly serves as an important sanctuary for Irrawaddy dolphins, and conservation in this region should be a top priority.”
Despite finding this extraordinarily large population, the study’s authors warn that the dolphins are becoming increasingly threatened by accidental entanglement in fishing nets. During the study, researchers encountered two dolphins that had become entangled and subsequently drowned in fishing nets—a common occurrence according to local fishermen.
In a second paper, published in the March/April issue of Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystem, Smith and his coauthors report the additional long-term threat to the dolphin population of declining freshwater supplies, caused by upstream water diversion in India, coupled with sea-level rise due to climate change. These circumstances also threaten Ganges River dolphins, an endangered species with a range that overlaps with that of the Irrawaddy dolphins’ in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. The recent likely extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, is a potent reminder of how vulnerable freshwater dolphins are to extinction via the impacts of humans.
The Irrawaddy dolphin grows to some 2 to 2.5 meters in length (6.5 to 8 feet) and frequents large rivers, estuaries, and freshwater lagoons in South and Southeast Asia. In Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady River, these dolphins are known for “cooperative fishing” with humans, where the animals voluntarily herd schools of fish toward fishing boats and awaiting nets. With the aid of dolphins, fishermen can increase the size of their catches up to threefold. The dolphins appear to benefit from this relationship by easily preying on the cornered fish and those that fall out of the net as the fishermen pull it from the water. In 2006, WCS helped establish a protected area along the Ayeyarwady River to conserve this critically endangered mammal population.
WCS is currently working closely with the Ministry of Environment and Forests in Bangladesh on plans for establishing a protected area network for both Irrawaddy and Ganges River dolphins in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Funding is critical to sustaining these activities along with WCS’s long-term efforts to study the effects of climate change on this habitat, support sustainable fishing practices, and develop local ecotourism projects.
Support for this study has been provided in part by the Kerzner Marine Foundation and Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong (OPCFHK). This study was also funded in part by the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission. The Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) has also supported WCS efforts as part of a regional program for cetacean conservation in the Bay of Bengal.
Being Isaac Newton: Computer Derives Natural Laws From Raw Data
ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — If Isaac Newton had access to a supercomputer, he'd have had it watch apples fall – and let it figure out the physical matters. But the computer would have needed to run an algorithm, just developed by Cornell researchers, which can derive natural laws from observed data.
The researchers have taught a computer to find regularities in the natural world that become established laws – yet without any prior scientific knowledge on the part of the computer. They have tested their method, or algorithm, on simple mechanical systems and believe it could be applied to more complex systems ranging from biology to cosmology and be useful in analyzing the mountains of data generated by modern experiments that use electronic data collection.
The research is published in the journal Science (April 3, 2009) by Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and graduate student Michael Schmidt, a specialist in computational biology.
Their process begins by taking the derivatives of every variable observed with respect to every other – a mathematical way of measuring how one quantity changes as another changes. Then the computer creates equations at random using various constants and variables from the data. It tests these against the known derivatives, keeps the equations that come closest to predicting correctly, modifies them at random and tests again, repeating until it literally evolves a set of equations that accurately describe the behavior of the real system.
Technically, the computer does not output equations, but finds "invariants" – mathematical expressions that remain true all the time.
"Even though it looks like it's changing erratically, there is always something deeper there that is always constant," Lipson explained. "That's the hint to the underlying physics. You want something that doesn't change, but the relationship between the variables in it changes in a way that's similar to [what we see in] the real system."
Once the invariants are found, potentially all equations describing the system are available: "All equations regarding a system must fit into and satisfy the invariants," Schmidt said. "But of course we still need a human interpreter to take this step."
The researchers tested the method with apparatus used in freshman physics courses: a spring-loaded linear oscillator, a single pendulum and a double pendulum. Given data on position and velocity over time, the computer found energy laws, and for the pendulum, the law of conservation of momentum. Given acceleration, it produced Newton's second law of motion.
The researchers point out that the computer evolves these laws without any prior knowledge of physics, kinematics or geometry. But evolution takes time. On a parallel computer with 32 processors, simple linear motion could be analyzed in a few minutes, but the complex double pendulum required 30 to 40 hours of computation. The researchers found that seeding the complex pendulum problem with terms from equations for the simple pendulum cut processing time to seven or eight hours.
This "bootstrapping," they said, is similar to the way human scientists build on previous work.
Computers will not make scientists obsolete, the researchers conclude. Rather, they said, the computer can take over the grunt work, helping scientists focus quickly on the interesting phenomena and interpret their meaning.
Ice-free Arctic Ocean Possible In 30 Years, Not 90 As Previously Estimated
ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer may happen three times sooner than scientists have estimated. New research says the Arctic might lose most of its ice cover in summer in as few as 30 years instead of the end of the century.
The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles. That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles. So much more open water could be a boon for shipping and for extracting minerals and oil from the seabed, but it raises the question of ecosystem upheaval.
While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 assessed what might happen in the Arctic in the future based on results from more than a dozen global climate models, two researchers reasoned that dramatic declines in the extent of ice at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008 called for a different approach.
Out of the 23 models now available, the new projections are based on the six most suited for assessing sea ice, according to Muyin Wang, a University of Washington climate scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean based at the UW, and James Overland, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. Wang is lead author and Overland is co-author of a paper being published April 3 by the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters.
Wang and Overland sought models that best matched what has actually happened in recent years, because, "if a model can't do today's conditions well, how can you trust its future predictions?" Wang says. Among the models eliminated were those showing too little ice or too much compared to conditions that have occurred.
Models also were chosen that are able to reflect the difference between summer and winter ice packs, which demonstrates a model's ability to take into account changing amounts of solar radiation from summer to winter, Wang says.
Among the six fitting the researchers' criteria, three have sophisticated sea-ice physics and dynamics capabilities.
Once the extent of ice at the end of summer drops to 4.6 million square kilometers -- it was actually 4.3 million square kilometers in 2007 and 4.7 million in 2008 -- all six models show rapid sea-ice declines. Averaged together the models point to a nearly ice-free Arctic in 32 years, with some of the models putting the event as early as 11 years from now.
"In recent years the combination of unusual warm temperatures from natural causes and the global warming signal have worked together to provide an earlier summer sea-ice loss than was predicted when scientists considered the effects from human-caused carbon dioxide alone," says Overland, who is also an affiliate UW professor of atmospheric sciences.
"The uncertainty in future timing for a September sea-ice free Arctic is strongly influenced by the chaotic nature of natural variability," the authors write in the paper. Still, "the one climate realization that we are living through appears to be a fast track for September sea ice loss," they write.
Scientists don't expect the Arctic to be totally ice free, figuring that ice still will be found along northern Canada and Greenland where powerful winds sweeping across the Arctic Ocean force ice layers to slide on top of each other, making for a very thick ice cover.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the work.
Oru aalu oru kaakka valarthan
Atha touch panna, romba smooth'aa soft'aa irukkum
Avan adukku yenna peyar vaippan
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"MI-CRO-SOFT"
What would you call a girl driving a car
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A... Pen... Drive.
அயன் : விமர்சனம்
Cast : Surya , Tamanna , Prabhu, Karunas
Director : K.V Anand
Music : Harris Jeyaraj
Ayan movie is must see with your Family, when it is telecasted in Sun TV.
Horrible Movie.
Surya is doing smuggling with Prabhu who is a Smuggler. As usual , they have their enemy in their business. friendship , love , revenge makes the rest of the story.
Cinematography is excellent. Visualization of Songs are good. And the Action Sequences (Stunt in Africa ) is Nice. Background Score of Harris Jeyaraj is as usual great.
Director K V Anand fails this time with interesting Story. Screenplay is good at some places like KV Anand's previous films.
Surya started to follow Vijay(especially the movie Kuruvi). This movie reminds Blood Diamond, Bourne Ultimatum and Maria Full of Grace .
Chemistry between Surya and Tamanna is not bad.
Movie has lot of Masala Masala Masala.
Better make some good dish in your home and spend time with your family. Dont waste your precious Time.
* out of *****
தினந்தோறும் எனது பிராத்தனை ...
எனக்கு எதுவும் வேண்டாம் கடவுளே !
என் அம்மாவுக்கு மட்டும் ஒரு சூப்பர் மருமகளா வரணும்..!#!
அது போதும் எனக்கு
