Some interesting news around the world

Heavy drinkers 'lie to doctors'
Almost two in five people who drink to excess are lying to their doctors about how much alcohol they really consume, suggests a survey.












Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply
Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.




The world in 2025: Superpower strife Wealth and power to shift from West to East
Last week the US government’s National Intelligence Council published its quadrennial forecast of the shape of the world in the next 20 years. It predicted that by 2025 America’s role as the sole superpower would be challenged in a more fragmented world and it would become more of a “first among equals” with countries such as China, India and Russia. The report also suggested that as wealth and power moved from West to East, so “the western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre - at least in the medium term”. Other significant challenges included conflict over scarce resources, “ramshackle” international institutions and increased danger of nuclear conflict.



Boy dies from heart failure after using too much deodorant
A 12-year-old boy's heart failed after he used too much deodorant, an inquest heard.

Daniel Hurley, from Sandiacre, Derbyshire, England was found collapsed in his bathroom by his father Robert Hurley after using the Lynx Vice deodorant, a coroner was told.

Derby Coroner's Court heard that use of the spray in a confined space led to Daniel suffering a cardiac arrhythmia.


Japanese man stabs bureaucrat over pet death
TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese man upset by the death of his pet turned himself in after fatally stabbing a bureaucrat and his wife, Japanese police and media said on Sunday.

Police were searching the house of a 46-year-old man who said he murdered a former vice minister for health and welfare, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department said.

National Geographic Best Photos

Overall Winner
Stalking India's Hemis National Park, a snow leopard lives up to its name in U.S. photographer Steve Winter's award-winning National Geographic magazine image.


Winner, "Underwater World" Category
Man and whale size each other up in the winner of the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition's underwater category, announced on October 30, 2008.

One Earth Award
A black colobus monkey has its fur singed in preparation for sale at an illegal bush-meat market in Gabon.


Winner, "Animal Behavior: All Other Animals" Category
An aptly named winner of the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest, "Deadlock" was captured in the dead of night in a Belizean rain forest.


Winner, "Animal Behavior: Mammals" Category
French photographer Cyril Ruoso pursued the screams of hunting chimpanzees through dense forests in Tanzania's Gombe National Park--and captured this winner of the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, announced October 30, 2008, in London.


Winner, "Animal Portraits" Category
"He would jump all over me, then run away," said Stefano Unterthiner of the black-crested macaque in this winning photo from the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. "He was always hanging around."


Winner, "Animal Behavior: Birds" Category
A snowy clash of white-tailed eagles during a Polish winter is among the winning images in the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, organized by BBC Wildlife Magazine and London's Natural History Museum.

Experiences of a 'Treater'

There is a new buzzword in my office these days “Treat” (and it is on me. No prizes, if you have guessed it right). Since I am the newbie in my office I been repeatedly hankered by my colleagues for a treat.

I had been hearing this word for sometime now. The reason for asking a treat grows larger than the wish list of Christmas presents. While some may be justified, others are way beyond my understanding. Treat for having seen a good looking girl, treat for having spent a whole day in the office without any major consequences (which includes not getting lashed out by your boss), treat for having gotten a treat from another friend, and the list goes on.


There were times when I couldn't escape these 'treats'. When I was in college in Mumbai, my friends somehow found out about my birthday (despite my precautions). Think about giving a treat to twenty plus teenagers. My parents will long throw me out of college before I could ask money from them. Fortunately, my mother came to my rescue. She invited my friends to our house and served them with dosas and idlis. Surprisingly it worked well, as Idlis and dosas are considered as snacks in north India, whereas it is a regular breakfast for us, south Indians.

When I was in my previous office, I have to give another treat to my colleagues (again for my birthday). And again this time luck was on my side as our company credited some of my unpaid arrears. Since I was giving the treat, I ordered a huge falooda. This restaurant, in which we were dining have a different seating arrangement, where a long sofa was laid beside the dining table and I was made to sit in the far corner. Once our main course was over I was waiting for my falooda. Instead, I got only the bowl and the spoon in which it was served; no thanks to my colleagues (remember I was in the far corner). So much for my thinking that the 'treater' can atleast enjoy his own food (what a sucker).

Despite all these shortcomings I am still considering, giving a 'treat' to my new colleagues as it works wonderfully in making new friends. So any one in for a treat???

Boo!!

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."
--- H.P. Lovecraft

It was an hour past midnight and I was playing Raveholme chapter in Half life 2. I was wearing my Sennheiser HD202 Headphones. The fast zombies and the poison crabs are appearing out of nowhere. Suddenly the main door of our house burst open and my heart almost came through my mouth (it turns out that my father as usual has forgotten to close the main door)

Welcome to the oldest trick and the selling point of latest games and movies – Horror.

I had been playing games for eight years now. While I cannot call myself a hardcore gamer, I am certainly not a novice. I have completed my share of games (around 84) and have some good collection of games (on the last count it was around 204).Yet, after playing all these games I still feel scared when playing horror games. I see games like F.E.A.R and call of cthulhu rated higher and get tempted to buy these games. But after playing for few hours I felt so scared that I dare not play it again. After some days I gain some courage and try to play it again. Though somewhat confident than the first time, I still will not be able to complete the game. Finally I will give up and uninstall it which will in another set of horror games piling up on my desk.

While games like F.E.A.R and Jericho can be called as scary, Far cry is no where near the horror genre. Yet I get the same sense of spookiness while playing it. Horror games have never really appealed to me because I'm not the sort of person who enjoys being scared. As I am already scared of many things in life (failures, being alone).

Am I the only person who is afraid of playing these games? Am I the only person who is scared of fighting the zombies and aliens and all the other severely disfigured monsters? Am I really that faint hearted?

Determined to find out, I googled the internet and found some interesting facts.

1) It seems many faint hearted gamers (aha!) find it very disturbing when playing horror games. Some of them are not afraid to watch horror movies but they are afraid to play horror games. The reason, when watching the movie the viewer have very little interaction with the T.V (except of course turning it on and off with the remote). But this is not the case with games. Player immersion has been the new mantra for latest games. Game companies try everything from realistic animation to inventive story telling. For example the Gears of War franchisee hired writer, Cliff Bleszinski for Gears of War 2.

While immersion will help in achieving success of the game, it may hinder the game occasionally (in my case frequently). When playing call of cthulhu there is a part where you have to escape from a group of murderers who will be chasing you throughout the town. I was never able to finish this stage even after playing it for 10 to 12 times. The fear of them catching me was greater than the reality that I was playing only a game.

It seems fear is subject to change from person to person, and this affects the gamers when playing games(While I was able to finish ravenholme chapter in HL2 with little problem, other gamers had the extreme difficulty with it).

2) Exposure therapy

"The effectiveness of the inexpensive hardware and software used in this study shows that VR technology is sufficiently advanced for VR exposure therapy to move into the clinical mainstream," they write in a paper published in the October edition of the journal Cyber Psychology and Behavior.

Popular computer games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament could provide a cheap and effective treatment for people with debilitating phobias, say Canadian computer scientists.

Specially made virtual reality (VR) equipment is already used to treat certain types of phobia. Exposing patients to the source of their pathological fear within this controlled and safe environment can be an effective therapy.

However interesting these facts are, it doesn’t seem to answer my question completely.

Everyone has fears, either we live with them or we pretend not be afraid of it. Has there, ever been anything that you have experienced within a game that has ever frightened you, but should not have? Has anything ever stopped you from finishing a sub-quest, level, or even an entire game? Have you ever developed a real-life fear because of something in a game, or vice-versa?

A visual tonic

Finally, I had the chance to overcome the severe headache, since my watching of the movie Karzzz. Oh yes, I’ve finally, seen wall-e, and what an innovative and mind boggling experience it was. Pixar has again come up with their own unique formula for success – Innovation + perfection. Though, I suspect Issac Asimov might've had a thing or two to say to the producers.

  How far can man’s creativity reach? See for yourself in wall-e.