Witty Scribble

As we close the year end and welcome the new year with all the joy and zeal, let us know a bit about the first thing that changes with the year: The Calendar . In this age of technology and gadgets, many people still use the traditional wall calendar or other printed forms. It is arguably the most efficient tool in Indian household to track the absence of milkman or the maid. As we near the year end, I thought it will be apt time to talk about our friend on the wall, the Calendar. Oh! don’t worry, I am not going tell you about leap years and century years and stuff, I know you know that already (although you may find one of our older posts about leap second a little interesting). So right before we change the calendars, let us talk about how calendar has changed over time. Based on whether the calendar represents the cycle for sun or moon, it can be a Solar Calendar or Lunar Calendar. However, most of the early calendars were lunisolar, considering both lunar and solar p

'Where words fail music speaks'. A famous quote, from a renowned author 'Hans Christian Andersen', is undoubtedly true. Music/Sound transcends the language-barrier to work as a common medium to elicit happy, melancholy, annoying, devotional, calm, energetic etc. feelings. Though oldest musical instrument is contested, the records definitely ascertain the fact that music is much old than we generally think it to be. The contested slice of history is w.r.t. two finds in recent times. One is called the " Divje Babe Flute ", discovered in Slovenia and estimated to be 43,000-67,000 years old. The other is the pair of flutes found in Germany and estimated to be around 40,000 years old. These flutes, made of Mammoth's ivory and Swan's bone, are generally accepted as the oldest musical instruments. Divje Babe Flute (Source: Wikimedia) So much on the musical instruments history. Let's come to the present, in the world where Hip hop/Rap &

I raised my hand as high as I could, sitting in the third row of benches in my class, hoping that our chemistry teacher will notice me and ask me for the answer which I believed I had calculated correctly before rest of the class. I strategically chose third row of benches throughout my student life as I believed that third row students got just the right attention from the teachers and were at lower risk of being asked to produce the homework and classwork assignments that teachers could show to the rest of the class as examples of good or bad work. “27.9”, I said, beaming with confidence when Pandey Sir nodded at me after seeing me raising my hand. Waiting for my appreciation from him, I never anticipated the kind of mockery I was going to become in next minute. Pandey Sir being one of the strictest teacher, yet a fun-loving person who would not miss any opportunity to crack a joke, asked me back, “27.9 Kilometers or 27.9 metre per second square?”. The whole class burst int