Blog@GraceJunction

Imagine you were forced to parachute yourself on to the Alps with a bottle of water in your hand. As you touch ground, it starts snowing heavily and so you take cover inside a cave. Keeping down the bottle in your hand, you clean the snow off your attire and then go out to gather rest of your gear. When you return in a few minutes, you observe that the bottle of water has frozen. What was water in liquid form is now ice. You panic and frantically try to search for someone who did this act, but there’s nothing in the cave. Eureka ! you cry out, nothing can convert water in to ice, and you write a book on the theory of everything  and try to explain that God is now fully kicked out from the equation.

This is exactly what Stephen Hawking’s new book “The Grand Design” is trying to explain mankind, about how everything that is, has come in to being. Stephen’s book although has not ignited physics, as the theory proposed by him is just an old idea in a new garb. It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a skeptical public. The reason the book has sparked lot of discussion is the philosophical conclusions that he is drawing from his proposed theory. (more…)

In my wee-wonder days of childhood, the classic debate was “Will robots replace human beings?” The person who stood “for it”, always won the debate by justifying the fact about the improved quality of life, faster production & development, maximum utilization of natural resources etc. Hearing the debate I always wondered what type of a dumb and wobbly feeling would have measured-up in the heart of the person who stood against it! 

But today it would be foolish to, not admire and be thankful for the great achievements of modern technology over the last century: advance medicines, advance energy, advance weapons, high speed communication and navigation systems. (more…)

Religulous is a 2008 American comedy/documentary film written by and starring political comedian Bill Maher. According to Bill Maher, the title of the film is a portmanteau derived from the words “religion” and “ridiculous”; the documentary examines and satirizes organized religion and religious belief. (more…)

Finally Vodafone seems to have found the nemesis for the ‘Pug”. Hutch, the ex-name of Vodafone, was known for its pug, a dog that followed its owner everywhere, conveying the ‘where ever you go, our network follows’ punchline. The pug was such a hit that Hutch couldn’t keep the pug out of any of its strategies and ads! I mean literally, whatever Hutch did, the pug followed! The pug tried to enter the Vodafone camp after Hutch was bought by Vodafone. However, Ogilvy & Mather finally seem to have come to the rescue with a new mascot(s), thus paving the way for the last and final departure of the good old pug ‘Chika’. (more…)

When I was reading the newspaper the other day, it was carrying an article about the ‘the great down ageing syndrome’. It is all about how people in their middle age years are turning to youthful looks and they are doing everything possible to keep up with the changing times. (more…)

Ten thousand years ago the agricultural revolution launched a slow wave of change. The industrial revolution, starting roughly 350 years ago, triggered a second – faster – wave of change. In the mid-1950s the United States started on the path to a completely new kind of economy – one based on knowledge rather than muscle power. This is part of a gigantic wave of technological, social and cultural change. What we’re living through now is history’s third great wave of change – one that is arriving at hyper-speed and is global in extent.

This new way of life – it’s really a new civilization or, for that matter, a “super-civilization” – is spreading out from the United States and has cells in many other parts of the world, from Japan and Singapore and China to India and Brazil.

The first phase of this current upheaval is the digital revolution and its social and cultural effects. The next phase is the fusion of the digital revolution with the genetic and biological revolution. (more…)

Every morning I approach the news papers with the fear of getting de-sensitized. Today for instance, The Times of India, Ahmedabad Edition carried news about an act of unnatural proportions – Man having sex with a calf! The matter was brought in to light due to the animal protection activists you may read the entire article here.

Thank God, there are at least some people in the society (People for Animal) who think that there is something called as evil / wrong and the matter was brought to light. A voiceless animal found some one who could fight for its cause; unfortunately our big mouthed society has none! (more…)