Thursday, 15 March 2012

Heart breaking Tsunami 2004

Tsunami the Aftermath is the hearth breaking story of those who survived December 26, 2004. The Tsunami thrashed the coast of Thailand (Phuket and Khao Lak in Thailand)and 12 other countries. It is estimated that over 227,000 people died and when the movie came out, 50,000 bodies were still unaccounted for. In 2006, the Tsunami was considered one of history's most cataclysmic disasters.. This film was directed by Bharat Nalluri, has shown me a natural landscape is wonderful, so majestic, so immense, and it also showed me the happiness, fun, relaxed that nature has given to human. And it took me to see the devastation, destruction damage, death ... as well
I feel that the tsunami that hit Khao Lak was a real catastrophe; it swept the whole village down with one big wave. Khao Lak is a beautiful place that attracts many tourists, so most of the victims of this ruinous disaster were the foreigners. In this movie, I saw the monks burned corpses of the victims of the tsunami, and they didn’t care whether the corpses were foreigners or locals. I know it that the burning was done to prevent the spread of diseases, but they had to respect the cultural differences. Maybe the Thais see the body as vessel, but the westerners need the bodies for burial for the closure. The monks in this movie just burned the corpses and ignored all complaints from others. Another thing that I feel about the burning is that it’s unfair for the family members of the corpses, because it made the family members didn’t even know whether the member of the family that they were searching were still alive or not, as they thought the other members of the family were still missing.
After watching this movie, I feel that the importance of education and the warning systems had a huge role in the number of victims during the tsunami in 2004.  People in this movie saw that the birds flew away, and the windows were shaking, but they ignored the warning signs. If they ran to the high ground directly, the number of victims wouldn’t be as much as it was.

Thursday, 8 March 2012

New Life-Forms Found in Blue Holes—Clues to Life in Alien Oceans?



We have found new forms of life that are totally unkown in underwater caves in the Bahamas called "blue holes." These caves can provide clues on how life evolved not only on Earth but possibly on alien worlds.
The researchers, led by Tom Iliffe, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University at Galveston, examined three inland blue holes in the Bahamas and discovered that layers of bacteria exist in all of them, although the microbes are significantly in one sinkhole are significantly different from the others.
The findings that each cave has different conditions from the others and thus a different forms of life will help scientists analyze the diverse routes life might have taken on Earth, according to researchers.
"These bacterial forms of life may be similar to microbes that existed on early Earth and thus provide a glimpse of how life evolved on this planet," Iliffe explained. "These caves are natural laboratories where we can study life existing under conditions analogous to what was present many millions of years ago."

Fire tornado in Brazil and Hawaii (Reflection)










A rare weather phenomenon called a fire tornado occurred in Brazil and Hawaii over the past week and both events were captured on video.
The brush fire in Brazil, that produced a rare fire tornado followed 3 months of very dry conditions. The whirlwind of flames burned through fields beside a road in the northwest city of Aracatuba in Sao Paulo state briefly before dissipating.
In Hawaii, a large brush fire that charred over 1400 acres and created a fire tornado also followed very dry conditions. The  fire tornado was captured near Saddle Road on the Big Island, where firefighters worked to contain the blaze.
Also known as “fire devils” or “fire whirls”, fire tornadoes occur when a brush fire or wildfire is whipped up by strong, dry air currents to form a vertical whirl, which can consist of a whirlwind or hot air around or within the flames or vortex itself.
Fire tornadoes are usually 30-200 ft and a few meters wide, and last only a few minutes, but can reach more than a half a mile into the air, contain winds over 100 mph, and persist for more than 20 minutes.
Most large fire tornadoes are formed when a wildfire converges with a warm updraft of air, and can contain a number of fire whirls of varying intensity, size and duration.
While these fire whirls did not cause major problems, there have been some extreme events involving fire tornadoes in the past.
Near San Luis Obispo, California on April 7, 1926, a rash of large fire whirls developed after lightning struck an oil storage facility, killing two. Thousands of whirlwinds were produced by the four-day-long firestorm, which contained larger fire whirls that carried debris 3 miles away.
In Japan, the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake ignited a large city-sized firestorm that produced a large fire whirl, which killed 38,000 in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of Tokyo.



Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Why do we study Geography?
Geography is the bridge between the sciences and the humanities and is most helpful in both major areas.

Geography is the most broad of all disciplines. There is a geographical component to everything else that can be studied. One definition of geography is "everything from the tip of your nose outward." I think it's important to be able to understand all of that.
Another way to think about it is that there are three important questions in geography:
What is where? Why is it there? Why do I care?

Geography is the study of location and place. Everything has a location, and there are patterns to places. Location and place dictate how we as humans interact with each other and with the environment that surrounds us. Politics, history, religion, society, medicine, economics, science, art, language, ideas... all are influenced by geography is ways that are obvious and ways that are subtle. Geography is the attempt to understand the "big picture" of it all.

That's why it's important to study geography.

Geography supplies information you need to function in your world. You can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your own area. Geography helps to explain cultural and population differences. Geography shows where the rest of the world is and how close or far it is from you. Search the origin of the meter to see what geography can be.