Mammootty, The Method Actor

This documentary show cases the concepts of Method Acting with examples from South Indian Movie star Mammootty, 3 time National Award Winner along with Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Hassan. 

There are 5 sections for this documentary.

1. Section 1 - Focuses on Vocal variations and body language
2. Section 2 - Ease at which Mammootty oscillates between Arts and Commercial Cinema
3. Section 3 - Handling a tragic scene in different ways for different characters (A Writer, A Fisherman, A Schizophrenic and a Village man). 
4. Section 4 - 1980s - The Beginning... 
5. Section 5 - National Award Winning performances.. 

Presentation in slideshare

Mammootty, The Method Actor from Araf Karsh Hamid

What's method acting?

Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances.

 Enjoy the show

Creationism Vs Evolution

I recently read the articles by creationist refuting Whale Evolution. I am really amazed at the clarity (in confusing the innocent readers) with which they could refute scientific facts. Its an awesome (con-grats) job. 

After spending a lot of time on creationist web site. I concluded the following from their understanding of the nature and the origin of species...

1. God has an amazing capability to create new species whenever there is a major or minor climate or geographical changes on Earth (1 planet out 160 billion Stars in Milky-way Galaxy from 400 billion Observable Galaxies in universe). 
2. God made sure that some transitional species extinct at a precise time, so that the stupid scientists who follow another stupid Darwin will get thoroughly confused, and still cant see Gods Grandeur design. 
3. God made sure that by the time God created (Humans) Homo Sapiens on Earth, 99% of the species where extinct (terminated by Gods design - natural disasters). 
4. God made sure that species were introduced into earth at specific times (Refer the Image below) so that Scientist will get this stupid idea that there is natural selection & common descent resulting in Evolution. How could all these scientists be so stupid and blind, they all should immediately find another job. They should all say sorry to God, ask priests from all religions to start teaching kids about Gods Grand design instead of Science. 

Nature : Whale Evolution 

Thats a terrific amount of awesome design pattern. God creates species and then destroys them by natural disasters (5 major Natural disasters in Earth History). If a man does 1 billionth of this type of species destruction (Gods creation and destruction as per creationist) we call him (that man) Hitler!

Recently I read a statistics by WHO that 7 million kids die every year before they turn 5 due to malnutrition, disease. Again another Design Evidence of a merciful God. There is definitely a reason why so many innocent kids should die every year. God definitely has a plan for why these kids should suffer and die a painful death.

I bow my humble head to a benevolent, merciful, generous, peace loving, omni potent and omni present God!!

Btw I got a new name for Creationists - RAT (Reckless Anti-evolutionist Theologian)

References

Technical References

1. Isotope Analysis

Articles on Whale Evolution

1. BBC Prehistoric Life
2. WHO Children mortality Rate
3. Bristol University - Whale Evolution
4. Berkeley University - Whale Evolution
5. Video Nature - Whale Evolution
6. BBC News - Whale Evolution
7. Discovery Science - Whale Time Line
8. National Geographic - Whale Evolution
9. Video National Geographic - Whale Evolution
10. Smithsonian - Whale Evolution
11. PBS - Whale Evolution
12. IIT Roorkee - Evolution of Whale - By Bajpai, Thewissen, Sahni
13. Talk Origins - Whale Evolution

Creationist Answers to Whale Evolution

1. Creation Ministries - Refuting Evolution
2. DarwinismRefuted.com - Myth of the Walking Whale

Google App Store

Google has launched Google App Store works ONLY with Chrome Browser

- Lot of Apps are Free (SaaS)

- Other Apps are available as SaaS with a price of less than $1 to $3 per month.

- Tons of Apps including Photo Editing tools

Beginning of a new Era. Cloud computing at its best.

So do you really a need a computer with Hard Disks now?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore

Death an end or a new beginning?

Death is an enlightening start (of course don't try to pinpoint start with a time point), instead of a frightening end. 

Here is the proof.

Death in medical term is brain dead. When your brain dies, your consciousness vanishes along with the "self". Self creates the illusion of "I" your identity which makes you think that you are not part of the universe. At sub-atomic level everything is built upon electrons, up and down quarks (matter = energy). So, when the mind shuts down, and the self is gone.. you are back to your roots, i.e., you are truly part of the universe - back home.. Getting back home is always exciting isn't it? So, how can it be frightening?

VS Ramachandran On Rare Brain Defect

Talk deeply and be Happy

Would you be happier if you spent more time discussing the state of the world and the meaning of life — and less time talking about the weather?

It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/talk-deeply-be-happy/

Global Warming - Climate Change

Avatar Movie

Avatar Movie : A visual treat





References
1. Technology behind Avatar
2. Avatar 3D - to new level
3. Official Avatar Movie

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech from Oslo, Norway

Self, the Origin - Identity

The Story of the ‘Self’  - Who am I?

Why do we all look different? What happens if we all look alike? Will the concept of you and me will be there? To elaborate that concept - how do you explain the concept of color to a person born blind? The answer is you cannot. So, if we all started to look same the identity of 'self' will be not be created which is required to understand the nature to even enjoy the beauty of the nature.

The state of Being

Being is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable – almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet its beyond or greater than you.  The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation from yourself and from the world around you.

Being is deep within you but you can’t grasp it with your logical mind. Logical mind is full of thoughts and restless. When the mind is free of thoughts you are in the present – In the Now.

Rene Descartes made his famous statement Cogito Ergo Sum – I think, therefore I am. The basic error in this philosophy is equating thinking with Being.  I feel the Descartes statement needs to be redefined as follows

 ‘I think, therefore I created my Self’

 Thinking creates the self which traps us in our mind’s prison. This makes us believe that we are nothing but our ‘Self’ which is in our mind.

Read more in the 2nd part of this series.. The Conscious Mind / Self, The Origin - Identity

Pazhassi Raja – The movie review

The movie Pazhassi Raja brought the old team of Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha back. National Award winners – Mammootty, Director Hariharan and Script Writer MT Vasudevan Nair and the expectations were sky high – and the end result – they didn’t disappoint us. They created a well crafted movie at par with Hollywood movies. Now let us get into the movie details.

Mammootty plays the role of Pazhassi Raja while Sarath Kumar plays Edachena Kangan and Manoj K Jayan plays the role of Thalakkal Chanthu. Mammootty does a controlled act and plays the role of Raja to the perfection while Sarath and Manoj, Padmapriya (Neeli) and Suresh Krishna (Kaitheri Ambu) brings in a different dimension to the movie with their excellent acting and action scenes. Director needs to be commended for the excellent star cast and using the stars in their right strength. The movie runs in for 3 ½ hours, however with MT (Vasudevan Nair) at the helm of the script it flows smoothly.

Read more The Land of the Vedas / Pazhassi Raja - The Movie Review

Malabar Days By Nick Balmer - Thomas Baber was Nick's great great great great uncle.

The new beginning - President Obama in Cairo

Self, the Origin

The Self, the conscious mind (the soul from a spiritual outlook) - How did we get this? or what are the fundamental prerequisites for the birth of 'self'? Before I get deep into that, let me share some of the questions, which bothered me since my high school days.

1.     Why is our vision tuned to the light spectrum (and not radio waves, x-rays, or infrareds) of the electro-magnetic wave?

2.     Why do we think in a rational way?

3.     Why do we (humans) all look different (except the identical twins)?

4.     Why do we have just 5 senses and not 3 or 7?

5.     Why do we have our own identity? Why cannot I see/know what others think?

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Conscious Mind / Self, The Origin

The hope

Today is a historic day not just for America but also for the whole world. Hope and the expectations from the new President elect Barack Obama will be enormous. We all hope he will make the CHANGE happen by rescuing the American economy (along with the Global economy) and change the global political landscape by bringing in peace and stability instead of blind aggression and wars.

Three years (in 2005) back I was sitting with one of my close friend in starbucks (Edison, NJ) sipping a hot  cappuccino and discussing about political landscape of two great democracies - USA the oldest democracy and India the largest democracy. India was ruled by Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh Prime Minister, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam a Muslim President, a Christian (Sonia Gandhi) ruling party leader and L K Advani a Hindu opposition leader. Where can you expect something like that? Will America ever elect a woman or an African American as president? And we thought its going to take another 50 years for something like that to happen. How wrong we were.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Land of Vedas / The Hope 

Virgin birth - Its a shark this time.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark. A blacktip shark in the wild patrols the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean. In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female blacktip shark in a Virginia aquarium contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Nebraska, zoo. "This first case was no fluke," Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion."

The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a possible solution to declining global shark populations. The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some species can produce litters of a dozen or more.
"It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth," Chapman said.     read more ....

Related news

1. National Geographic - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/09/0925_020925_virginshark.html
2. BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6681793.stm
3. CNN - http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/10/10/shark.virgin.birth.ap/index.html
4. Sunday Morning Herald, Australia - http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/scientific-jaws-drop-at-virgin-shark-birth/2008/10/10/1223145635961.html
5. New Scientist - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11908-shark-pup-result-of-virgin-birth.html
6. Nova - http://www.nova.edu/ocean/ghri/cnn_virginshark.html