Monday, November 19, 2007

In Sickness and In Health

Behind every unhealthy man there may be an overworked woman
A University of Chicago sociology professor showed that when a wife worked more than 40 hours a week, her husband's chances of staying healthy declined by 25 percent.

Conversely, when a husband worked more than 40 hours a week, his wife's health was not affected. In fact, it was only when a man worked less than 16 hours a week that the health of both husband and wife deteriorated.

"Wives arrange more social contact for their husbands than husbands arrange for themselves," Stolzenberg explains. But working women have less time to arrange social outings, and social contact reduces stresswhich is crucial to good health.

So how can husbands stay healthy when their wives work? "They can just spend more time with their friends," Stolzenberg says.

Melanie LeTourneau, Psychology Today



Saturday, November 17, 2007

When a mobile phone landed its owner in jail

 

Nokia Care penalised by consumer forum for deficiency in service

BANGALORE: When Abdul Hamid, a resident of R.T. Nagar bought a mobile phone handset for his wife, little did he imagine that the device would land her in a police station and him in the consumer court.

After a prolonged battle with the manufacturer of the handset, Mr. Hamid won the day with the Third Additional Bangalore Urban District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum asking Nokia Care, the Service Centre of Nokia mobile phones here, to refund Abdul Hamid Rs. 3,332, the cost of the handset, and pay a compensation of Rs. 50,000 on various counts, including excess billing and causing mental agony.

Mr. Hamid bought the mobile phone for exclusive use of his wife who lives with his family in New Delhi. When she got her first bill for April 2006 she found that some messages have been sent to numbers unknown to her. The Nokia Care Centre at Sector 5, New Delhi, said it was a software problem and said it had rectified it.

Matters took an alarming turn with Mr. Hamid receiving a phone call from the Delhi police saying it had arrested his wife and children. They were arrested on a complaint by one Manish stating that his wife was receiving vulgar messages from Mr. Hamid's wife's mobile phone. Mr. Hamid had to go to Delhi and explain to the police and Mr. Manish about the software problem related to the mobile phone. He managed to persuade Mr. Manish to withdraw the complaint.

The handset was taken to the same Nokia Care Centre, the software was again updated and Mr. Hamid was advised to change the SIM card, which he did at a cost of Rs. 1,200. But the problem continued with hundreds of SMSs being automatically sent to national and international numbers.

A call even went to the Connaught Place police station, New Delhi.

Mr. Hamid then gave the mobile phone for servicing to another authorised centre in Vasant Nagar in Bangalore. He switched over to a BSNL SIM card but the problem continued.

At the end of his tether, he gave the handset to the Nokia Care Centre on Infantry Road here and sought a replacement. When he did not get it even after two weeks, he filed a complaint with the forum.

The Nokia Care authorities did not appear before the forum.

Upholding Mr. Hamid's contention, forum president N. Srivathsa Kedilaya and member Subhashini observed in their order that the conduct of Nokia Care amounted to deficiency in service. They found that the servicing centre had also illegally retained the handset without providing or suggesting any remedy.

The forum then ordered Nokia Care to refund the cost of the handset and pay the compensation to Mr. Hamid.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

The Little Green e-Book

To protect the planet we all need to act together, today. So take a moment to page through the Little Green e-Book, 50 tips on how to make your life greener and help tackle climate change.
 
Click here for the Little Green e-Book! After you open the link, click or drag the corners of the book to flip the pages.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Mile Sur mera Tumhaara video

 
good video with subtitles and song information

Mile sur mera tumharaa lyrics

"Mile sur mera tumhaara" was a national integration video was created in 1988 by Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad promoted by Doordarshan and India's Ministry of Information. It quickly captivated millions in India, gaining near anthem status. It is also one of my favourite songs. Here are the lyrics to the same.
 
Mile sur mera tumharaa, Thoo sur bane hamaraa.... sur kee nadhiyaan
har disha se behkee saagar mein milee. Baadalon ka roop leiker
bharse halke halke... Mile sur mera tumharaa.. thoo... sur bane
hamaara.. Mile sur mera tumhara...

Chaain taraj tahin nyay taraj
ek but baniye saayen taraj

Tera sur mile mere sur de naal
milke bane ek nava surtaal

Mile sur mera tumharaa....tho sur bane hamaara..

Mohnja sur tohi desa pyara mile jadein geet ashaanjo madhur tarano
bane tadein
Sur ka dariya bahte saagar me mile badlaan da roop leike barasan
holle haule

Isaindhal namm iruvarin suramum namadhakum.. Dhisai veru aanalum
aazi ser aarugal Mugilai mazaiyai pozivadu pol isai ...Namm
isssaiiii.... Thik thakida thathikakidA....thaka thimi thaka junu

Nanna dhwanige ninna dhwani-ya, seridante namma dhwaniya..
Naa swaramu nee swaramu sangammamai, mana swaram ga avatarinchey

Ninde swaramum ningalude swaramum otthucheiyum Namudeya swaramai....


Tomaar shoor moder shoor srishti koroor koi ekshoor[2]...
Sriishti karoon woi katha

Toma mora swarer milan srishti kare chalbochatano

male sur jo taro maro, bane aapno sur niralo

majhya tumchya julta tara madhur suranchya barasti dhara


Sur ki nadiya har disha se behke saagar mein mile...
Baadlo ka roop leke barse halke halke..
Oh...Mile sur mera tumhara tho....sur bane hamara...

Mile Sur mera tumhara
tho sur bane hamara tho sur bane hamara
tho sur bane hamara

"Waada raha" from Khakee (Lyrics)

Movie Name: Khakee
Lyric Name: Waada Raha
Lyricists: Sameer
Music Director: Ram Sampat
Singer(s): Arnab Chakravorty and Shreya Ghoshal

--MALE--
Vaada raha
I've made a promise
(Vaada raha pyaar se pyaar ka
I've made a promise of love, with love
Ab hum na honge judaa) - 2
Now we will not part
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

--FEMALE--
Chaahe tumhe kis kadar mera dil
How much my heart desires you
Tumko nahin hai pata
You don't know
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

--MALE--
Vaada raha
I've made a promise

Dono jahaan ko bhula hoon main
I have forgotten both worlds (heaven and earth)
Aisi lagi hai tujhse lagan
That's how much I've fallen for you
Chaahe kaho ise aawaargi
If you want, call it waywardness
Chaahe kaho ise deewaanapan
If you want, call it madness

--FEMALE--
Dil ne kaha, dil ne suna
Your heart spoke, my heart listened
Maine tumhe dilbar chuna
I chose you as my sweetheart

--MALE--
Ab dooriyaan na rahi darmiyaan
Now there remains no distance between us
Kya rang laayi vafa
What color faithfulness has brought
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

--FEMALE--
Vaada raha pyaar se pyaar ka
I've made a promise of love, with love
Ab hum na honge judaa
Now we will not part
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

Dekha tumhe to aisa laga
When I saw you, it seemed like this
Mujhko mila manzil ka pata
As though I had discovered my destination
Chalna hai humko ab saath mein
Now we are to walk in togetherness
Tumse juda mera raasta
My path has been tied to you

--MALE--
Maine to li hai yeh kasam
I have taken this vow
Paaoon tumhe janm-o-janam
I will have you, life after life

--FEMALE--
Sajde kiye maine shaam-o-saher
I have prayed night and day
Maanga hai tumko sada
I have always asked for you
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

--MALE--
Haan, vaada raha pyaar se pyaar ka
Yes, I've made a promise of love, with love
Ab hum na honge judaa
Now we will not part
Yeh meri dhadkanein sun raha hai khuda
God is listening to this heartbeat of mine

--FEMALE--
Vaada raha, yeh vaada raha
I've made a promise, I've made this promise

--MALE--
Pyaar se pyaar ka, pyaar se pyaar ka
Of love, with love

--FEMALE--
Vaada raha yeh vaada raha
I've made a promise, I've made this promise

--MALE--
Pyaar se pyaar ka
Of love, with love

--FEMALE--
Vaada raha, yeh vaada raha
I've made a promise, I've made this promise

--MALE--
Pyaar se pyaar ka
Of love, with love

--FEMALE--
Vaada raha, yeh vaada raha
I've made a promise, I've made this promise

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Movie downloads

 
Donwload full length movies here. Go to the movie page right click on the windows media player icon and choose properties. Copy the link, and donload it using wget (search for "wget.exe" in google to download)
 
Downloads are pretty fast. I got around 88kbps download speed

Rape-murder of Wipro BPO employee shocks Pune

A shocking case of rape and murder of a BPO employee has thrown a question mark over safety for women working in call centres once again.

Two men were arrested in Pune on Saturday in connection with rape and murder of 22-year-old Jyoti Choudhry who was working for Wipro's call centre Spectramind in the city.

Jyoti’s body was found late on Friday evening at Wadgaon, off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The men are said to have been working for a logistics company which used to supply vehicles to the call centre.

Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Chandrashekhar Daithankar confirmed reports that Jyoti had left for office in the pick-up vehicle on November 1 at 2200 hrs (IST), but went missing after that.

Police came to know about the incident it at 1600 hrs (IST) the following day after her relatives lodged a complaint.

“Inquiry and investigation reveal she was picked up by the driver and his associate on November 1. They used the ploy of picking up another employee and took the girl to a nearby village and then murdered her,” said Daithankar.

Meanwhile, Wipro, in a press statement, expressed regret over the tragic incident .

"We deeply regret the demise of our employee Jyoti Kumari Choudhary. The police investigation is in progress. We are providing all possible assistance to the police and are not in a position to share further information at this point. We are extending support to Jyoti's family, and hope you will respect their need for privacy during their time of grief," the statement said.

In December 2005, a woman employee at Bangalore’s Hewlett Packard's call centre was allegedly raped and then murdered.

Her body was found on the outskirts of Bangalore three days after she went missing. Police eventually arrested a driver of the company, K Shivakumar. He is accused of kidnapping her after picking her up in the office car.

After Pratibha’s murder, BPOs and call centres across the country were asked to tighten their own security for women employees.

When President, Nasscom, Kiran Karnik was asked if Friday's incident was a failure on Nasscom's part to curb the menace that women call centre employees face, he said, "It's majorly due to increasing criminalisation. We need to get to zero crime. This incident has nothing to do with the fact that it's BPO. It's majorly to do with growing working culture for women.”

He, however, added that the BPO industry is aware of the threat and is taking acute steps to tighten security.

"There are various steps that can be taken. One is that women should not be the first or last ones to be picked or dropped. Second is to make use of technology and third to put a security guard in the cabs. In this case I don't know the details. All I can say is that it’s a terrible tragedy,” said Karnik.

In April 2007, Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) had suggested certain measures for the safety of women who work late and use public transport.

Assocham had recommended foolproof security arrangements using the Global Positioning System or GPS technology. The industry association had particularly mentioned cities like Delhi, Chandigarh, Chennai, Bangalore and Pune.

The Compulsive Confessor

Brazen from the beginning, the young Bombay-based blogger decided to call her internet journal "The Compulsive Confessor", issuing a titillating invitation to share even the most intimate details of her life.

In breezy postings, the 25-year-old girl-about-town – India's answer to Bridget Jones – told thousands of readers of her partying, smoking and binge drinking, along with candid musings about sexual techniques and escapades.

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan writes her Sex and the City-style blog under the pseudonym "EM", aware that although her material would not seem outrageous to a British audience, in India sex remains a taboo and anti-obscenity laws are strict.Earlier this year, the actor Richard Gere sparked angry street protests for kissing Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood star, during an anti-Aids event.

A senior Indian political leader recently denounced sex education as an evil that would "corrupt" children. Murli Manohar Joshi, the former minister for human resources development, said it would lead to an "immoral society".Although Madhaven's true identity is known among the chattering classes of Delhi and Bombay, on her blog she drops only tantalising clues: 5ft 3in tall, a Sagittarian "only child, from India's English-speaking/educated elite" who does "pretty much as I please, not hampered by my gender".even he has been called "slut" and "bitch" in comments posted on her blog, yet she cares little for traditional ideas about demure and submissive behaviour.

"There are people who love to hate you, just because you're a woman," she muses online. "Just because you write about going out and having fun because, 'God forbid an Indian woman should have any fun'.She chats boldly about trips to the gynecologist, swigging Bailey's from the bottle, and the phallic-shaped cake at a friend's hen night.Fittingly for a creature of the internet age, when EM recently found a boyfriend – whom she nicknamed "Volt" for his energy – she announced it first on Facebook, the social networking site."Volt" does not read her blog; nor would she want him to.

"He knows I've written about my past boyfriends, so I think it would be a bit awkward for him," she told The Sunday Telegraph. Does she worry that men might be put off by her explicit blog? "I suppose I'm aware of that, but if they're put off, that's their problem," she reflected. "It's who I am."Madhavan, a Delhi-born writer for a news magazine, Outlook, launched The Compulsive Confessor during a dull day at the office in 2004.While her critics grow daily more scandalised, her thousands of fans believe she is changing the face of modern Indian womanhood.

Her blog is among the most popular in India, receiving 400-500 hits a day, although only two per cent of India's 1.1?billion population have internet access.Unsurprisingly perhaps, the publisher Penguin India has commissioned Madhavan to write a semi-autobiographical novel, hoping she will rival the success of Candace Bushnell, the American author of Sex and the City, in giving voice to a new generation.

Her book, due out early next year, promises to be racier than previous Indian chick-lit novels, yet some Indians believe that will not help sales. A fellow blogger, who did not wish to be identified, said: "She has a dedicated following but I'm sure a lot are voyeuristic men seeking titillation. I find it a bit superficial myself."Meanwhile, Madhavan is apprehensive that news of her real identity will spread even further when the book is published, making it harder to be frank in her internet journal.

"It will be harder to write when you're no longer anonymous," she said.Will she carry on? "My blog is an integral part of my life but it's not my life," she said.

"I'd be upset if it vanished tomorrow, but I wouldn't be heartbroken." The Compulsive Confessor, it seems, is defiant to the last.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Inside Karen's Crowded Mind

By Anne Underwood | NEWSWEEK
Oct 29, 2007 Issue

http://www.newsweek.com/id/57343

Even for a psychiatric patient, Karen Overhill seemed unusually devoid of hope on the day in 1989 she walked into the Chicago office of Dr. Richard Baer. As weeks of therapy grew into months, antidepressants didn't help her, at least not consistently. She was suicidal—and the flat, emotionless way she stated her wish to die made Baer fear that she might actually follow through. Eventually, Karen began to volunteer stories of childhood abuse. And she mentioned odd memory lapses. She would find herself in strange places with no awareness of how she'd gotten there. She couldn't even remember having had sex with her husband, although she must have, since they had two children.

Baer suspected a much deeper problem than the depression and suicidal thoughts Karen admitted to. Still, he kept his speculation to himself during the first four years of therapy, for fear of planting ideas in Karen's mind. He waited for her to volunteer the information, and in a way, she finally did. In November 1993, an envelope with Karen's return address arrived in the mail. Inside was a single sheet of lined paper and a letter written in a child's penciled scrawl. "My name is Claire," it began. "I am 7 years old. I live inside Karen."

The remarkable medical journey that ensued is the subject of Baer's new book, "Switching Time." It recounts the 17-year course of Karen's therapy in all its painful detail and sheds new light on multiple personality disorder (MPD), the controversial illness that afflicted her. (Karen Overhill is a pseudonym Baer created to protect his patient and her family.) The book describes the challenges Baer faced as more and more of Karen's alter egos emerged—men, women and children—a total of 17, each with his or her own character traits, mental problems and agenda. Baer had to get to know them all, then persuade them to wipe out their individual identities by merging into one. It was the defining case of his career—and one that may have saved Karen's life.

But was Karen's disorder real? There have been allegations that some purported MPD sufferers were just publicity seekers. Yet Baer doesn't have the slightest doubt. As he points out, there are easier ways to gain notoriety than 17 years of therapy. And how could a poseur have maintained each alter's distinct memories, personality, voice and mannerisms for years, never mixing them up? "Meryl Streep couldn't have done it," he says. The alters even wrote him letters in different handwriting.

Still, it's easy to see why MPD remains controversial. Although the condition has been observed for 200 years—and is officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association under the formal name "dissociative identity disorder"—it is rare enough that most therapists never treat a case. Some psychiatrists doubt that it exists at all, claiming it is the product of suggestion. In some cases, they're probably right. The 1973 best seller "Sybil" led to a wave of diagnoses by therapists who didn't really understand the condition. One psychiatric hospital in Maryland "had a whole ward with patients—some male, some female, some mooing like cows or barking like dogs," says Dr. Paul McHugh, former chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and a leading skeptic. It didn't help that both the made-for-TV movie version of "Sybil," which starred Sally Field, and the 1957 film "The Three Faces of Eve" gave exaggerated portrayals of radical personality shifts, which made MPD seem more bizarre than believable—or that the disorder was later enmeshed in the controversy over false "recovered memories" of childhood abuse. MPD became an embarrassing diagnosis in the psychiatric community.

But it didn't go away. Dr. Frank Putnam—who has studied the condition extensively, first at the National Institute of Mental Health and now at Cincinnati Children's Hospital—continues to receive calls from psychiatrists around the country who are stunned when a patient of theirs turns out to have the disorder. "There's nothing like seeing a patient who has it to make you believe," he says. Today there are clearer diagnostic criteria and a better understanding of the causes. The condition, says Dr. Herbert Speigel, who occasionally treated Sybil during her therapist's absence, is "real, but rare."

That's a good thing, given the way it's believed to begin. According to psychiatrists, MPD arises primarily in children who are subjected to severe physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Having no other escape, they create different personalities to handle different parts of their troubled lives—then wall the personalities off from one another with mental barriers, so that no single persona has to handle too much. "As a child, if Daddy is about to do bad things to you, you say, 'I'll go to my secret place where it's not happening to me, but to some other little girl'," says Putnam.

To a lesser extent, the same thing happens routinely to trauma victims when they experience numbing, detachment and even out-of-body experiences. "Rape victims often say that during the rape, they saw themselves floating above the person, feeling sorry for her," says Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford and co-editor of a new textbook on traumatic dissociation. The difference is that adults who detach themselves in this way usually reintegrate later. Chronically abused children may not, because their sense of identity is still malleable—and because the trauma is so persistent.

The abuse Karen Overhill endured, as described in Baer's book, was almost inhuman. While she was still in grade school, her father and grandfather subjected her to late-night, quasi-religious rituals, in which they strapped her to tables and told her she was evil. Saying that "God wanted her to suffer," they stuck her with pins and violated her prepubescent body with electric cattle prods, screwdrivers, knives and even crucifixes. They shut her into coffins. They dunked her in cold water. Her mother, who seemed incapable of acknowledging the atrocities, maintained deniability by taking a night job. It is impossible to verify these accounts, but in 1993, Karen's father was convicted on 19 counts of sexually molesting his granddaughter, Karen's niece.

The creation of separate alters may seem a bizarre way to cope, but it's not as if patients imagine themselves as Cleopatra or Napoleon. Each persona handles a different aspect of the sufferer's life. As Baer explains in his book, an alter named Claire would emerge when Karen was dragged from bed at night, so that Karen had little memory of the abuse the next day. When the torture began, Miles would take over. As a boy, he couldn't be violated in the same way and therefore couldn't fully absorb it mentally. Elise was created so that Karen could go to school the next day and act normal, having donned long pants and sleeves to cover the bruises. Sidney was the ball-playing child who related to Karen's father as if nothing was amiss, allowing Karen to survive in a household where, as a young girl, she was dependent on her dad. Lacking decent parents of her own, Karen even created Katherine and Holdon to be the responsible adults in her life, modeling them on figures she saw in sitcoms like "Father Knows Best" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." The alters would come and go as needed, taking over Karen's conscious thoughts. When she regained awareness, all she knew was that she had "lost time."

This system protected Karen as a child, but in her late 20s, she descended into a deep depression that sent her to Dr. Baer. The key to treatment was reintegrating the alters into the single personality Karen has today. It was a painstaking process, convincing each alter to merge, but it worked. With each reintegration, says Baer, Karen acquired that alter's memories and character traits—strength, humor, compassion, anger. With each one, she became a more colorful, complete version of herself. Still, she was fragile. It took an additional eight years of therapy to build up her self- esteem. Today, meeting with a reporter in her midwestern apartment, she projects warmth, openness and a remarkable lack of rancor. Her alters would be proud.

© Newsweek, Inc.