Caledonia: Land of Ben, Glen. Loch and Whiskey

Romans named Caledonia to what is today Scotland....Scots always kept a little independent attitude from England. That's why there is England team(Cricket, Football, Rugby) and then there is another for Scotland..even the tour guide while showing the Edinburgh Rugby ground proudly claimed that they defeated English for last two years.
Ben is mountain and Ben Nevis is highest in Scotland, with hardly ca 1344 m to its credit. Fort William is close by and the whole area is still used for Military training especially for SAS: British Commandos.
The short height of Scottish highland is attributed to massive wear and tear in ice-age. It is said till 10000 years ago it was lying under 1000m of ice layer. Pity that there is hardly any place of good ski with very short ski-duration wheresoever left today. So not the height but the curved peaks and the marks of glacier, not to mention astounding flora and fauna are reasons of must go here. This is an ideal place of long walk but beware of midges.
High-land speciality food is Haggis, which was not bad and they have Yak like hairy cow Hamish.
Scotland stands on matrix of fault lines and eartquakes are relatively frequent. The Atlantic pierces the land quite deep and sometimes it is hard to identify whether it is a sea or a Loch(Lake).
Now Loch Ness is one of the most beautiful lakes. Another reason of its fame is Nessie, a monster said to be living here and sighted by a few. Discovery has even put Sonar equipments on the tourist boats regularly plying here.
There is high-land, there is low-land. William Wallace was a high-lander. Unlike Mel Gibson (under 6'), Mr. Wallace was around 6'7'' tall. The Wallace monument at Castle of Sterling has statue of Mel Gibson at the bottom. And word 'brave-heart' is not associated with William Wallace, but with his successor Robert the Bruce(a low-lander, who are considered more suave and hence often at English bestowed high positions), who participated in crusades and wanted his heart to be buried in Holy Land. But since Holy Land was under capture of opponents, his followers could reach only till little distance away and then threw his heart saying 'there goes the Brave Heart'. However one dialog in the movie is quite genuine; 'How can I be traitor to king, whereas I had no King'.
Glen is valley, Glen Coe being one of the most famous ones. It is perfectly U shape with Loch Leven adding to its beauty. Now this beautiful valley has seen massacres of McDonalds by their guests Campbells. It is more disgusting that this clan fighting was at the insistence of common enemy- the king of England. Divide and Rule was English policy not just for India. Another famous dialogue from Braveheart: 'the problem with Scotland is that there are so many scots. Some hotels in Glen Coe area have put signs: 'No Campbell allowed.'
There is lot of peat, water is black (and same coming out of tab is not necessarily bad) and the local whiskey is acidic: Strong, Smokey etc. Common complaints of local distillery are MNCs, big gobbling up small. For connoisseurs, it is loss of subtle variations of many local varieties (water and produce of barley) because big industries produce at mass-scale. Drink whiskey the Scottish way. Only single malt not the blended. Drop water to 1/10th of whiskey. It breaks the oil and induces the right flavour. Contrary to popular belief (at least popular where I grew up), whiskey is taken at room temperature. Whiskey on rocks is the dialog of a stylish moron. Sacrilegious to ask Soda and asking coke along with would be sheer blasphemy.

Vereinigte Koennigreich

So there are 3 conutries in the Island: England, Wales and Scotland (with offshore British Isles)...together making Britain...add Northern Ireland and this makes United Kingdom. Also Ireland is separate nation too and people quite resent their northern territory occupied by UK. Scots and Welsh don't like themselves being called English. Welsh have their own language too, however Scots have been more freedom-minded. A case exemplified by recent Lockerbie bomber's release. Nevertheless quite famous English personalities are from these regions: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes and Sean Connery of James Bond fame were Scots. The Prince of Wales is only a customary designation given to eldest son of King of England, certainly the fact not pleasing to Welsh.
It took me 6 months of stay in London to understand all this. Hardly 3 weeks left and I have never gone beyond London...next is long weekend and I should go either Lake District (of William Wordsworth fame) or Wales or Scotland or stay back here do pub scrawling.

End of World: 2012

Lots of prophecies for world ending in 2012 and today my co-passenger in the bus said about this, London will not see 2012 Olympics...I promised her I will call her ($$&&^&&£!^(*) in beginning of Olympics.

Now now Maya calendar has concrete dates (21-24th December, 2012) and rest all seem to be fictitious. A movie too is getting released sometimes late this year, probaly the hero will be moses of 2012.

For my point of view, if it really happens and a few survive then none of them will be atheist or agnostic any more. Can this become self fulilling prophecy. Not likely.....rather such threats will create less chaos and more peace(subsiding little of existing ones). Who will want to do misdeeds before facing His judgement.The religious people will becme more religious. Non religious ones will be anxious, a few of them will re-convert, most of them will ignore(also many religious people).

Likely scenario:
1) Environment is worsening year after year with unheard type of calamities frequently coming. Any large scale calamity at near about said duration will be treated as such. But to justify the prediction, it has to be atleast as big as to kill a large proportion of humans. Even 10% of world's population makes 8 billions and no calamity has ever touched 1 billion record.
Now environment changes might create new varieties of virus. It is said they evolve in 25 years so much so what it took humans to evolve from monkeys till date. Will there be new black death, H1N1 flu, or some other virus will make zombie out of us......

2) Nuclear wars: they can kill in billions. One or many of India-Pakistan-China-America-Russia etc. But precisely in that year. Actually it can happen any year. All the indians and chinese dead will still leave world with 5 billion out of ca 8 billions today, certainly not all of them worth living. Though nuclear war might precipitate global effects which can certainly make above prediction true. So this is worth the thought. Rekindle the India-China-Pakistan bhai-bhai thoughts. But what to do about terrorists with atom bomb, will they take command of Russian (America, China less likely) core system and shoot in all direction. Naah...but what to do if God has already decided.

The any or all of above can be true any time. Hopefully this rumour make people spiritual and peaceful. But then naysayerswill be active after 2012 bringing us back to square one. Better still would be to know if we will be alive even till then....

14/11: On the positive note, found this today: http://www.idiva.com/bin/idiva/At-worlds-end-maybe-not

What is troubling...

Liked the theme of the book, what is trouble with Physics (lee samolin), that the knowledge is what:
1) can explain any event(past or existing)
2) can predict an event in future, in terms of guiding new experiment or explaining undiscovered/unexplained phenomenon.

So string theory (if there is one, out of theoretically 10**500 possible solutions) which has preoccupied physicists for last 25 years, so far hasn't succeeded on 2nd account. Mathematics is considered elementary of all of basic sciences: Physics, Chemistry, now Biology too. But nature even at cosmic level doesn't seem to follow exact mathematics. For example, expansion of universe has no symmetric geometry, it is apparently skewed at one end. What is another end which is it running from? Another universe/s!!!
With recent financial crisis, the same questions are raised for Economists too. Other branches of study, sociology, Psychology etc; anyways struggle to justify themselves as the true sciences.

Is this the end of ever expansive human knowledge? Certainly not. Is there a bigger problem, Americanism? I just pointed out to one friend that late 19th century to 1st half of 20th century, most of the nuclear physicsts and sociologists hailed from Germany. He quipped, today most of them are from America. Is current American way of doing science (institutionalizing them with businesses and universities), is detrimental to new inventions, free thinking etc.....

Now this is venturing into one of the most active political debate.....

Lady power

World may or may not be ruled by geeks but surely the end rulers will be queens.......If I meet a woman, I am disadvantaged in terms of spending.....then they demand things and will have priority say on conflicting options. I am deeply affected because next one year for me is economically tight (going back to school) with lots of uncertainty these days.

Do they influence on account of their sex, prostitution being just an overt form of this. But influence they do and sometimes in an unimaginative way. Consider who rule more absolutely than queen bee does. Heard of that female spider eating male after mating (link).

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn.

On positive side, do they make effective rulers.... Arguably the credit of bringing stability to UK after dark middle ages goes to Elizabeth 1. Victorian period in 19th is considered the golden period for the same country. Angela Merkel is sometimes revered as much as Mutti Merkel. Who can forget Indira Gandhi in India who brought one of the most glorious victories for India, detonated nation's first Atom Bomb, single handedly took on whole of opposition and had the temerity to take Sikh separaists head on at their most sacred religious place.