END OF PSEUDO DEMOCRACY

The title may bring to one's mind several instances of the end of pseudo democracy in the world,but this article restricts itself to the context of  ending of such a pseudo democracy in one of the most conflicting countries of South East Asia,SRILANKA.I try to give a brief article on the reasons for the defeat of Mahind Rajapaksa who was so sure of his victory that he called in an election 2 years before its scheduled happening!!!

I quote from the Guardian on the day of the result
"If seven weeks anyone had said Mahinda Rajapaksa would be conceding defeat and vacating presidential office in quite such an apparently docile fashion it would have seemed a very brave prediction indeed. No one expected a challenge, let alone a defeat."

This was the true state of politics of the island nation up until last week. Though people have been wanting to change the authoritarian rule of Mahinda Rajapaksa, they did not.In my view it is partly  because  Rajapaksa finally ended several decades old ethnic conflict,by killing Prabhakaran,the long feared Tiger supremo,this gave the sinhalese people a thought of saviour about Mahinda Rajapaksa.Though this thought gradually diminished due to his ruling and him modifying the Srilankan constitution to give uncontrolled executive powers to him,and deprived of the Judiciary its Independency. The Acts of the Rajapaksa Government enacted in this regard at the Parliament were passed keeping one thing in mind,To allow Rajapaksa or the President to have unduly powers not guaranteed by the present Constitution.The popular result of several amendments of the constitution was the removal on the limit of presidential terms of the President.A striking similarity is observed with the United States is the limit on the Presidential terms is still there in United States because,the legislators perfectly know that they will lose popularity with the people so openly with such a rule and will explicitly show their thirst for power,which normally never goes well in a country with a certain mood of Democracy.These amendments has resulted in calling Rajapaksa regime as authoritarian, a word that is apt and has reversed the entire system of democracy in Srilanka paving way for a monarch or autocratic Government in this 21st Century,wherein the masses have been duly educated about the merits of Democracy and when the rights of Citizens were fought much in every spectrum of the country,this authoritarian Editing of a subject that too the Constitution Of A country has proved to be gravely unpopular 

One other reason people struck with Rajapaksa was that  they were not given a convincing choice about who could lead the nation if not for Rajapaksa. This feeling too was partly fueled by the winning of the Ethnic War by Rajapaksa  and partly because of the crippling policies of Rajapaksa even from the beginning which slowly wiped out an effective opposition to his rule.Rajapaksa was calculative even from the beginning of his rule not to go easy on free media and a free opposition.

The winning of the ethnic war and his projection about it has garnered Far-Right nationalist support to Rajapaksa even which he slowly lost due to Authoritarian laws in the Constitution that threatened the Basic rights of the people in a long term,

The growing discontent among the ethnic tamil population and Rajapaksa's partial implementation of the provisions of the Government as guaranteed in the Constitution of srilanka have resulted in no support from the ethnic tamil groups,the appointing of the Governor of Northern Provincial Council and again giving him unduly powers openly has undermined the tamil support to the Central Government as has been the case for the previous Central Governments of Sri Lanka,who have systematically denied the rights for tamils for the fear of being ousted though such fearsome rights were never demanded by any of the people who led the Tamil Diaspora starting from S.J.V.Chelvanayakam to Velupillai Prabhakaran,this discontent and the absence of support from the tamil people was expected but Rajapaksa could have mobilized a support for the tamil people after the ethnic conflict was finally over by properly designing rehabilitation camps and displacement camps and then properly giving rights and placing them in proper place would have ensured the support of tamils at least at the end.The Governor appointee of the Northern province was also not due to the popular opinion of the people of the Northern Provincial Council but due to the whims and fancies of the President has ensured that a puppet Governor with Unduly powers than an elected Chief minister.Though this move may seem to appease the nationalist population,the percentage of such a population has constantly dwindled over the years and now people want to live peacefully,so they also want to give the liberal rights demanded by the tamil people so that further ehtnic conflict may be avoided.On the whole like previous Presidents of Sri Lanka,Rajapaksa was a huge failure in garnering the support of tamils,even after the clear mandate given by the people Rajapaksa failed to devolve the powers to the Northern Provincial Council properly and this led to his added unpopularity with the Tamil people who constitute 11% of the population

Lastly to say Rajapaksa did one of the grave mistakes,he has taken the route of dynastic politics wherein one family controls the monopoly of several spheres of economy so that the laws and legislations can be enacted to ensure the profitability of their chosen sphere,even when such a legislation is crippling to that field.The Defence seceretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa,Brother of the President took most decisions that benefited him in the Defence matters which is a grave threat to national security.Directly or indirectly his family controlled of over 70% of the national economy which is definitely a huge percentage in a participative democracy wherein equal representation of every body is required and the able minded administrators administer the legislations to that region where they are given their powers.The family members effectively eliminated competition in their respective fields denying others a chance even when they were better equipped than the Rajapaksas.This also led to the downside of his victory

In a way and Rajapaksa and his brother even after being accused of war crimes continue to deny the allegation and also continue to deny a neutral free and fair  investigation by a statutory body like the U.N.The relief works are also carried out by a very minimal people from International Statutory bodies like red cross on a promise that the Government itself will give the best care to people affected of the War,but which the Government never does.This also raised the eyebrows of international strategic analysts as a move that will definitely have an impact on the vote bank specially that of Tamil diaspora due to the varied Diaspora of tamils from sri lanka being settled in other nations.

Finally to conclude this article Rajapaksa fought lost a cause even after fighting and winning it but he did not learn to mobilize the surging support he got by winning the war,to end this I finally quote again from The Guardian

"A prolonged period of political chaos would open the way for a Rajapaksa comeback in the mid, if not the short, term."

Looking for DSLR??Here's something Better

LYTRO

This word has made buzz with the tech guys quite some time back.Most Guys know it like its a different camera (or) a light field camera that costs a bit more than a medium DSLR(Priced at 41000 in INR).So what's this light field technology(or) a plenoptic camera???This article tries to explore a bit of all this from a common man's point of view

The Normal DSLR camera:

Basically a DSLR(Digital Single-Lens Reflex) Camera consists of an interchangeable lens (or) a lens mount that supports a variety of types of lenses.A pentaprism technology that precisely takes up an image through a 5 sided prism.The transmitting faces of the prism i.e the faces through which the image enters and leaves are coated with a non reflective coating while the reflecting faces are like mirrors and transmits the image without any change in its orientation(technically it does not tamper with the chirality of the image).A simple variation of this pentaprism called as roof pentaprism that utilises a rooflike structure or two prism sides inclined such that angle between them is 90 degrees.and when the light is reflected at such a joint the handedness changes and hence convenient for us to view through the eyepiece of a digital camera.This roof prism technology is used in almost most of the DSLRs.This pentaprism(or sometimes a pentamirror is used) is the main element.It also consists of a mirror that is slotted at an angle of 45 degrees when taking a picture so that the image is exactly reflected through a matte focusing screen, the function of a matte screen is to merge a foreground image into a background and it is photo friendly.Its exactly the photo printing paper kind of thing.Light then passes through a condenser lens and a pentaprism described above.and the transmitted image is seen through the viewer of the camera.The image processing is done by a focal plane shutter and an image sensor at the back of the mirror.When picture has to be taken after focusing the mirror moves completely upwards allowing the entire light and image to fall on a focal-plane shutter that controls the amount of light entering(the entire process is called exposure) and then the image falls on a photo sensor,that  converts all the light signals to electrical signals and is saved in a memory card or any other electrical storage medium.
So to sum up a traditional DSLR cam goes on to focus an object  as it is with the required quality which changes according to price range,the focused object however cannot be altered to focus a different object on the scene.

The LYTRO Camera

The first handheld consumer camera of the plenoptic camera type.A technology envisioned  in 1908 by Gabriel Lipman has been made true in the form of a common man's camera by Ren.Ng's dissertation  at Stanford University.
The difference in the technology would be the DSLR as explained above captures the individual light rays from the focused object and does not capture the parallel rays from a far away object on the same scene hence refocusing after taking the image is not possible,or atleast if refocused digitally on a computer screen which is popularly known as zooming will result in considerable loss of quality.The light field technology in particular the thesis of Ren Ng tries to address this problem of  refocusing and gets success in it by exploiting the light field technology.
To be technical from a lay man's view we can say that a conventional camera records the sum of all light rays that strikes the image plane of the camera or the image sensor part as described above ,Whereas the new Digital light field photographic technology(as referred in RenNg's Dissertation) tries to capture the light field inside the camera which is essentially recording both the light ray and its direction.So let us see how does LYTRO do it

The Marvel named Microlens

The major part of LYTRO camera,that consists of many small lens which are usually size of mm and ranges to as small as micrometer.In LYTRO an array of microlens are  used to capture the  light field inside the camera.Theses lens cover the photosensor, essentially are placed before the photosensor. Each microlens covers a small area of photosensor array pixels that is, it essentially covers the array of photosensors and separates the light and microlens array and allows small amount of incident lighting proportional to size of the microlens onto the photosensor.

The Microlens array is basically used so that it has a better directional resolution of light rays which is totally absent in DSLRs.
Thus the powerhouse of a LYTRO camera is its microlens array and a powerful photosensor that captures the light from the microlens and reproduces it as it is.This arrangement is named as light field engine.
To simply put in the LYTRO is actually a camera that records not just the amount of light from a picture but the entire light field,the difference being a DSLR  just records intensity but the LYTRO goes a step ahead and captures the directional orientation which potrays the spatial orientation of the entire image in a new perspective

LYTRO ILLUM

The major reason for writing this article is this new buzz created by the next version of the LYTRO camera named LYTRO ILLUM.Basically it has a bigger sensor than LYTRO of magnitude 40 mega ray,i.e it captures 40 megarays of light at a time,we will update on this on a later blog post.It basically resembles a Modern DSLR camera which is advantageous.

The official website states that it "is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in the United States to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy." As of December 2010, 57 billionaires in the US have joined this campaign and pledged to give 50% or more of their wealth to charity.A minimum total of at least $125 billion has been promised from the first 40 donors based on their aggregate wealth as of August 2010.

According to the ________ the donation can happen either during the lifetime or after the death of the donor. The pledge is a moral commitment to give, not a legal contract.

Just Put Funda Behind this

Id the blanked out.

All of these is a sensation

Id this famous building or should I say that it's a worship place

What is blanked out

Xing is a term describing the age-related spots and browning seen on vintage paper documents such as books, postage stamps, certificates, and so forth. The name may derive from the Y-like reddish-brown color of the stains, or the rust chemical ferric oxide which may be involved. Paper so affected is said to be "Xed."

Id X as well as Y No copy pasting in google