A Thing called Television

People usually change after finishing school. Colleges are hot and happening, and the perfect catalyst for change, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the worse. Well fortunately the only change it influenced in me is related to my TV viewing habits - I don't watch TV anymore.

Ah! What a nice and relaxing change that really is. No TV. A luxury I don't want no more. In the past two years I must have watched no more 50 hours of TV. And that mostly includes the History Channel, VH1 , NDTV and a sprinkling of the sports channels. The reasons for such a radical change aren't too hard to find. I hate all the sick saas-bahu serials, I hate the sensationalized news by Aajtak, I hate the westernized degenerate nonsense of MTV, I hate all the silly stage-managed 'reality shows' and I hate all the stupid untalented 'celebrities' of TVdom. I can't pause or move forward or even rewind to watch my favourite scenes again. And damn I have to watch every one of those filthy advertisements. The end result - I can't stand TV anymore. I am finished with tolerating that box of mediocrity.

If I have to watch movies or listen to music, I have my laptop and ipod for that purpose. And of course reading, blogging, surfing, and hanging out with friends provide a much better alternative to watching that shitty TV. And yes, I love reading the newspaper.

Lightning? Get Wet!

I know its incredible, but that's the truth. And its not me who's saying, but some really knowledgeable people on Discovery.

Yesterday, at the usual dinner table fight over the remote with my mother (my father prefers to fix his attention on the food only), it was I who came out trumps (quite surprisingly). So instead of Virrudh, it was now Drama on Discovery. The subject of the show, as I understood, was lightning and its probable effect on a human being (unfortunately I had already missed the first 30 minutes of this incomparable show). Anyway, something is always better than nothing. The 'Drama' revolved around a person (Ah! forgot the guy's name) who was a victim of a thunder strike. And the thing of wonder was that this guy survived! But certainly with huge handicaps. He now walks with a limp, and lives with a severely affected nervous system. The magnitude of the devastation wrought on his nerves was so much that, as an experiment revealed, he could not feel electric shocks of 400 volts whereas a normal human being will jump out of his chair at 30!!

And so, the mission of the team was to find out how he survived, maybe with severe disabilities, but still the guy survived. How? The answer to this question proved to be quite elusive as several hypothesises failed to provide any satisfactory solution. At last, a professor of physics (a bald guy with a Russian name), provided the theory that would ultimately solve the mystery. He elucidated that when lightning falls on the body an extraordinary phenomenon takes place known as 'flashover'. Flashover is an unintended high voltage electric discharge over or around an insulator, or arcing or sparking between two or more adjacent conductors. In layman's language it means that most of the lightning falling on your head is disbursed around you by being conducted to the ground by the skin, leaving only 1%, which goes right through your body. Now even that 1% comes to be around 5 Amperes, which is more than enough to kill you right on the spot. Then how did the guy survive? Surely not just due to 'flashover'.

At the time when the cruel lightning struck it was raining cats & dogs, and he was literally dripping, soaked completely in water top to bottom. And this is what precisely saved him! As further experiments in the University of Manchester proved, 'flashover' is greatly facilitated by water, which makes the skin a better conductor. Thus most of the current flows outside the body and only the tiniest part actually enters the body (well, even that 'tiniest' part isn't that tiny after all). So friends, if it's lightning and you are in the open, make sure that you get wet first!

PS: These shows make TV something more than just an 'idiot box'.

Again PS: I found this link while surfing on the net. This is about a man, Roy Sullivan, who was struck by lightning an incredible 7 times, but managed to survive each time!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan

Soap Blues

Can you tolerate them? No, I can't. Never. No. They cause headaches, they cause me to hate my dinner (most of them come in the 8-10 slot), and cause almost daily fights between me and my mother. The Ekta Kapoor factory is spewing out loads of poison and millions of people (mostly housewives) are gulping it down as if it is 'amrit'.

Well don't think I just dislike them for the sake of disliking, 'cos I have got some extremely valid arguments. Now, tell me honestly, is there even an inkling of logic in the stories of soaps be it Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki or Kyunki Sas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi?? So now allow me to raise some of the points that irritate me highly :

1. These serials claim to project the common Indian household. Utter rubbish!! Each of these soap families are easily multi-millionaires. They talk of Rs. 50 lakh with as as much ease as the common man talks of Rs 500. And think of the average Indian household being millionaires.

2. In the highly irritating soap opera Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, main protagonist Parvati started off as a 32 something women (considering the fact that she had a daughter aged 10-12 years). After that the soap has undergone two 'leaps' of 20 years each. So that makes her age in the serial about 72 years!!!!! But does she look like a day over 30????!!!


3. Doubles or humshakals are as easy to find as trees in Sunderbans.

4. Whenever a man/women is shown driving a car an accident is imminent.

5. Even the dropping of a feather causes complete memory loss, but which comes magically back after the application of a well-timed slap.

6. The background score is enough to scare away even seasoned metal musicians.

7. Song and dance sequences that look worse than C grade movies.

And you can go on writing like this, it will never stop. And nor will the soaps. They will just go on....crazy kiya re (in the most derogatory manner possible) !!

PS: (on a more fantastic note) I am just waiting for the day when some true lover of the TV will shoot Ekta Kapoor down.