I'm making yet another attempt to climb back on to the social bandwagon, and this time it's by rejuvenating my technology oriented blog. So if you are interested in geeky stuff, you might want to head to Geek Whorled. I intend to write there about programming (Java, OpenGL, GTK, Python, etc), gadgets that interest me or that I own (including doing product reviews), Linux, and anything that I feel is too geeky for this blog.

If I can keep the tempo up, I also hope to post more on this blog as a side-effect.

At 6:22am Indian Standard Time today, India's first unmanned mission to the moon successfully took off from India's satellite launch centre in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, 80km from Chennai.

The success of this mission, which will attain lunar orbit 15 days from now, will bring no little pride to our country. And yet there are people who question the very basis of the mission. "Do we really need it?" they ask. And the reasons they give for why this mission is a waste of time and money?

The money (386 crore) could have been better spent feeding the country's poor.

and

Other countries have already gone to the moon. What new can we learn?

D-uh.

First of all, this is an advancement of the country's technological prowess. As Dr K. Kasturirangan, chairperson of ISRO said when the Chandrayaan-I project was announced

It is not a question of whether we can afford it, it's whether we can afford to ignore it.

In dollar terms, the mission has cost India only US$80 Million. That's pocket-change when compared to NASA's Billion dollar space-probe budgets. And the returns will be great.

Antrix, the Indian Department of Space's commercial arm, earns valuable foreign exchange every year, by launching satellites for other countries, selling data captured by its satellites, and also selling hardware and software. This lunar mission will not only strengthen India's position in the commercial satellite launch sector, but will also give India more experience in the various aspects of space travel.

A mission to the moon - accomplished by only five other countries till date - will put India in the elite group of space-faring countries. So when humans do start visiting or living in space, India will not be waiting in line to be piggy-backed there. We'll be able to get to space on our own. And we'll probably be giving other countries a ride just like we did this time.

And as far as the question "What is there to learn?" goes, there's always something to learn. This particular mission hopes to capture the following information:

• Map a 3-d atlas of the moon with a spatial and altitude resolution of 5-10 metres.
• Get information about the distribution of various minerals on the moon

Apart from this, we also hope to get information on Helium-3 deposits, which will be useful for nuclear fusion research, and may be one of the answers to our energy problems.
Additionally, today's successful launch seems to have already cleared the hurdles towards government funding of our man person on the moon plans. There were earlier reports that the government was rethinking that mission because of the high cost.

All the attention that ISRO get out of all these missions might also help some of the brain-drain of scientists from India. I mean as of today, how many people you know actually want to become scientists working for the government? The idea of possibly working for something as glorious as your country's space program, can pretty motivating.

Of course, today's only been Stage 1, the easiest of all stages. India has been sending satellites into space for a long time now, and is so good at it makes money out of the exercise. The next couple of weeks will be really interesting, and will be the true test of Indian capability.

I'm not much of a believer but I think I'll have a chat with my friend just in case.

Update: DesiCritics.org has two good posts on the benefit of the mission - here and here.

Is it acceptable to take animal life or cause harm or pain to an animal, in the interests of science?

This isn't a new question, and it's not one that both sides are going to agree on in the near future, if ever. Me, I'm all for science. But I'm not happy with animal rights being violated either. (For the record, I eat meat but don't think I'm a hypocrite for being against fur.)

Still, how can you make a decision?

Take for example this story. Scientists are apparently trying to figure out how some animals grow back body parts, so that the same technique can be used with humans. If they figure this out, there's no end to the benefits for medicine. 50,000 people lose a body part to amputation every year in the US alone. If scientists can make the technology work, all these people could have their fingers, hands, arms, and legs back in a matter of weeks or months.

So that's a good thing, right?

Not for the animals that have the regenerative abilities.

Take for example Salamanders. These animals can apparently grow back an arm if it gets severed. How often must scientists make cuts in a salamander's body to find out what chemicals, enzymes or glands are involved in the regrowth? How often does someone cut off a Salamander's body part to observe what happens?

Scientists have got far enough to grow extra arms on salamanders. Does the salamander feel any pain when it is cut, or when it has an extra arm coming out of where there should only be a simple rib? Unless the researchers are extremely careful with anesthetics, there's probably a lot of pain involved for the poor creature. Does the salamander know about the value of the sacrifice it is making? Surely not.

A hundred years from now, the number of people who will have benefited from regenerative technologies will probably be close to one billion. There will still be those who demand that researchers stop testing revolutionary medicine on animals. They will still be right. But so will the scientists.

Until a few days ago, if you'd Googled for "failure" or "miserable failure", the first result you got would have been the US president's page on the White House website. This was accomplished by a technique called Googlebombing, and was acknowledged by Google as being a vulnerability in their search system. They also did not manually filter these results out in the interest of maintaining the objectivity of their search service.

A few days ago though, Google put in place a change that gets around Googlebombing.

By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs

Searching for a Googlebombed term now gets you information about Googlebombing instead. Read this post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog for more details.

Cellphone Ringtones can now get your attention in more ways than one. Apparently, a Japanese man named Hideto Tomabechi, has come up with a new ringtone that is supposed to, get this, enhance the breasts of those who listen to it!

I mean, really! The guy claims that it's based on scientific principles. And as if that wasn't enough, some women who've tried it, say it works!

Today, it's ringtones. Tomorrow, some Smart-Alec musician is going to write a song that does the same for his girlfriend. Soon, all the musicians will be doing it. Classical musicians will come out and say how they've been producing music for centuries that has the same effect. We'll even have Breast-Enhancement Concerts!

Can't say that you'll find more women than men at such concerts, though. Men tend to be scientifically inclined, if you know what I mean, and will probably want to watch the effects of the music, live.

Whatever the effects, keep the damned ringtone away from me. I have enough complications in life, and the problem of choosing the right bra, is one I'm not interested in.

The original news article.

Thanks to Abhishek and Gizmodo for the info.

This post has been moved to Geek Whorled.

Finally decided to go public with a techy blog. This one's more of a leisure area for me. :)