People and Places
~Chetan Bhagat-Highest Selling Indian Author~
Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker who was distinguished from the suited phalanx of his colleagues in this city’s crowded financial district only by his secret hobby.
While others planned weekend excursions on the golf course, Bhagat, then employed by Goldman Sachs, indulged a passion for writing, laboring in his private time on a racy and comedic little novel about life on the campus of an elite college in his native India.
In the early morning before going to the office he would work on draft after draft of the book, trying to get it right. He did 15 drafts in all. He almost gave up when publishers kept turning him down.
Today, Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist ever in India.
The Terrific Two
His first book, Five Point Someone – What not to do at IIT (May 2004) is a novel about three boys who join IIT Delhi and try to cope
with the notoriously heavy workload of the institute.Rajkumar Hirani in his new film is taking script of Five Point Someone with Aamir Khan in the lead role.
Click here to know more about novel-1
His second book, One Night @ the Call Center, was released in India in October 2005 and continues to be a bestseller as of January 2008. The book is about six people who work at a Call Center and one night which changes it all for them.The book is being made into a big budget Bollywood film called [http://www.hellothefilm.com ‘Hello’] starring Salman Khan, Katrnia Kaif, Sharman Joshi, Gul Panag and others.
Click here to know more about novel-2
His third book “The Three Mistakes of My Life” is releasing in July 2008.
Some Interesting Excerpts about Bhagat
His story of campus life, “Five Point Someone,” published in 2004, and a later novel about a call center, sold a combined one million copies. Only the autobiography of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has sold more.
Less than three days after the release in 2005 of “One Night @ the Call Center,” another slim comedy about love and life in India’s ubiquitous call centers, the entire print-run of 50,000 copies was sold, setting a record for the country’s fastest-selling book.
Bhagat, who wrote his novels while living in Hong Kong, has difficulty explaining why a 35-year-old investment banker writing in his spare time has had such phenomenal success in reaching an audience of mainly middle-class Indians in their 20s. The books, which are deliberately sentimental in the tradition of Bollywood filmmaking, are priced like an Indian movie ticket – just 100 rupees, or $2.46 – and have won little praise as literature.
One reviewer in The Times of India concluded a review of “One Night @ the Call Center” with the suggestion: “Time to hang up, Mr. Bhagat?”
“The book critics, they all hate me,” said Bhagat in an interview.
But Bhagat has touched a nerve with young Indian readers and acquired almost cult status, and this undoubtedly says a great deal about their tastes, attitudes and hopes. Bhagat might not be another Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, but he has authentic claims to being one of the voices of a generation of middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that come with the prospect of growing wealth.
“I think people really took to the books mainly because there is a lot of social comment in there,” said Bhagat. “It’s garbed as comedy. The plot structure is like Bollywood, because that is what my audience has been used to.”
Bhagat’s choice of subjects for his first two books – life at a highly competitive Indian
Institute of Technology and at a call center – allowed him to explore some perennial themes: the pressures, many of them parental, to get into a top school, earn high grades, get a good job and find the right partner, while still taking time to enjoy one’s youth. His argument is that for the current generation of young Indians those pressures are greater than ever before.
He described the country’s current young generation as a “more gutsy” than their parents, and as interesting as the generation that led India to independence in 1947.
But the competition among them is severe. Bhagat said only 1 out of 700 applicants now gets into the Indian Institute of Management that he attended in Ahmedabad, compared with 1 in 200 when he applied in 1995. That experience and his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi are the inspiration for “Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT,” the title an allusion to the struggle his three main characters have with low grades.
The pressures to succeed are part of what is making India a vibrant, fast-changing economy and society, Bhagat said. But he added: “Competition has its limits. Some of it is good and some of it is harmful.” A message of “Five Point Someone” is that poor grades and happiness are not mutually exclusive.
This month, after more than 10 years in Hong Kong, Bhagat moved with his wife, also a banker, and their 3-year-old twin sons back to India, where he is a director in Deutsche Bank’s distressed-assets team in Mumbai. When he left India with an MBA to start a banking career in Hong Kong, just before the 1997 Asian economic crisis, there were fewer opportunities at home even for graduates of the best schools.
More info:
Click here for Chetan Bhagat’s Most Candid Interview Ever.
Click here for Official Website
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Who is The Dalai Lama?
The Dalai Lamas, each a Buddhist monk, have been traditionally the spiritual and temporal leaders of Tibet, at least since the fifth Dalai Lama in the 17th century CE and until 1959, when the Chinese efforts to take over Tibet reached completion. The Dalai Lama is also the head 
of the Dge-Lugs-Pa (Yellow Hat) order or Tibetan Buddhists.
The first Dalai Lama was Dge-‘dun-grub-pa (1391-1475), a monk who founded the Tashilhunpo monastery in central Tibet and who was the third successor of the founder of the Geluk school. The title “Dalai” is a transcription of the Tibetan “Ta le”, which means “Ocean [of Wisdom]” and was given to the third Lama by Altan Khan. Each Dalai Lama believes that he is the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama and all are incarnations of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion. Avalokitesvara is believed to reincarnate in order to help people who are still caught in the cycle of samsara.
The current Dalai Lama was born on June 6, 1935, and is the 14th
person to hold this position. His original name was Tenzin Gyatso and his birthday is traditionally commemorated with things like dances, picnics and singing. In accordance with Tibetan tradition, he was recognized at the age of two as being the reincarnation of his pred
ecessor.
He lives in exile outside of Tibet due to the repression from Chinese rulers who have invaded Tibet and repressed local culture and religion. He was born on June 6, 1935. This is not, however, the first time that Chinese influence and interference have forced a Dalai Lama into exile. The same happened with the seventh, Jampal Gyatso (1758-1804). Others, although living in Tibet, were not politically inclined and so allowed Chinese-backed regents to run the state. Today, Tibetans are a minority in their own homeland due to massive Chinese colonization and various social programs designed to keep Tibetan births as low as possible.
In recognition of his persistent efforts to end Chinese control of his homeland through nonviolent means, the current Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He accepted it on behalf of oppressed people around the world and, according to the Noble commitee
The Committee wants to emphasize the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the culture and history of his people.
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YARO STARAK~~The Most Successful blogger!!
Blogging–can be a hobby,pastime or a full time profession.A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.
But if you are serious about blogging and making it bigger and better then here is my post which best describes about blogging and the people who have made it great at blogging.
So who is Yaro Starak??
Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. Yaro has created, managed and sold several
different Internet businesses since 1998 and currently teaches people how to make a full time income from blogging part time through his Blog Mastermind mentoring program.
Yaro operates from a home office or a laptop while traveling. He draws on his experience and passion for web business to teach others how to build and manage successful Internet enterprises.
Ironically his first site doesnt happen to be a blog as u can expect. So moving on he manages Enterpreneurs-Journey which is a blog (weblog) website aimed at those interested in Internet business and Blogging.
The articles are aimed to help you with all aspects of starting and running your own Internet business and making money online.
Fresh content is added regularly including podcast interviews with other entrepreneurs and experts, how-to instructional articles and audio dealing with current hot topics like blogging and website marketing, as well as news and information from the Internet business world.
His articles are among the top rated ones which concentrate on internet marketing n blogging tips,traffic attraction and with some of the best live examples probably.
Some of his famous articles include “7 ways to promote ur blog”, “10 tips to increase blog traffic”
etc etc.
Since i cannot put up all his articles , so what is all i can do for u people is that I hav placed a widget which is refreshed with the latest articles from blogtraffic.com,Yaro’s articles etc etc.
Further info:
official webblog of YARO –>www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
blogmastermind
Blogtrafficking
Blogtraffic School
technorati
The face behind Facebook–Youngest self made billionare!!
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer coordinator. As a Harvard student he founded the online social networking website Facebook with the help of fellow Harvard student and computer science major Andrew McCollum as well as roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He now serves as Facebook’s CEO. Forbes Magazine has ranked him as theoretically, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire with a net worth of $1.5 billion “on paper”.
College years
Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and was enrolled in the class of 2006. He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. At Harvard, Zuckerberg continued creating his projects. An early project, Coursematch, allowed students to view lists of other students enrolled in the same classes. A later project, Facemash.com, was a Harvard-specific image rating site similar to Hot or Not. A version of the site was online for four hours before Zuckerberg’s Internet access was revoked by administration officials. The computer services department brought Zuckerberg before the Harvard University Administrative Board, where he was charged with breaching computer security and violating rules on Internet privacy and intellectual property.
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking website that was launched on February 4, 2004. The website is owned and operated by Facebook, Inc., the parent company of the website and a privately held company. The free-access website allows users to join one or more networks, such as a school, place of employment, or geographic region to easily connect with other people in the same network. The name of the website refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some American colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.
Website membership was initially limited to only Harvard students, but was later expanded to include any university student, then high school students, and finally to anyone aged 13 and over.
The website has more than 64 million active users worldwide. From September 2006 to September 2007, the website’s ranking among all websites, in terms of traffic, increased from 60th to 7th, according to Alexa. It is also the most popular website for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily. Due to the website’s popularity, Facebook has met with some criticism and controversy in its short lifespan because of privacy concerns, the political views of its founders, and censorship issues.
Website
Facebook users can choose to join one or more networks on the website, such as a school, place of employment, geographic region, or social group. These networks help users to connect with other members of the same network. Users can also add friends to their profile, which allows them to see the profiles of their friends.
The website is free to users and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads Users create profiles that often contain photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends. In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based limited liability company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named as the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and sex and only being ranked lower than the iPod.
Microsoft is Facebook’s exclusive partner for serving banner advertising. This means that Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft’s advertisement inventory, which only contains advertisements that have been pre-approved by Microsoft and have an existing agreement established between Microsoft and the advertiser. When compared to other web companies, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft, but considerably less than Yahoo!. The data collected is useful to show more relevant advertisements to website visitors.
Official site: Facebook
Further info:
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Which is the longest Suspension Bridge??
The Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge , also known as Pearl Bridge in Japan was completed in 1998 and is the world’s longest suspension bridge (measure by the length of the centre span of 1,991 metres or 6,532 ft). It links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshū to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries the part of the Honshū-Shikoku Highway.
The bridge is one of the key links of the Honshū-Shikoku Bridge Project, which created three routes across the Inland Sea.
Architecture
The bridge has three spans. The central span is 1,991 meters (6,532 ft), with the two other sections each 960 meters (3,150 ft). The bridge is 3,911 meters (12,831 ft) long overall. The central span was originally only 1,990 meters (6,529 ft), but the Kobe earthquake on January 17, 1995 moved the two towers sufficiently so that it had to be increased by 1 meter (only the towers had been erected at the time).
The bridge was designed with a two-hinged stiffening girder system, allowing the structure to withstand winds of 286 kilometers per hour (178 mph), earthquakes measuring to 8.5 on the Richter scale, and harsh sea currents. The bridge also contains pendulums which are designed to operate at the resonance frequency of the bridge to damp forces. The two main supporting towers are 298 meters (978 ft) above sea level, and the bridge can expand up to two meters in one day.
Use:
The total cost is estimated at ¥ 500 billion (~US$5 billion), and is expected to be defrayed by charging commuters a toll to cross the bridge. The toll is ¥2,300 yen (US$20.00) and is used by approximately 23,000 cars/day.
Further Info:
Get the list of over 100 suspension bridges ranked from their length starting from 1 –>click
Akashi –>wiki link
My choice “Golden Gate-SanFrancisco“
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )~9 Youngest in Their Fields~yeh hai youngistan meri jaan
The people on this list made a name for themselves early in life and probably don’t intend to fade away any time soon. The good news — maybe your kid will be on the list one day! 
The bad news — if you’re over 20 and you’re not on a list like this, we recommend shooting for the “Oldest” list.
1. Youngest Person to Climb Mount Everest
Temba Tsheri, a Nepalese boy traveling with a French hiking group, reached the summit of Mount Everest in 2001 at age 16. It’s no easy task — Everest is approximately 29,035 feet high and claims more 
than a few lives each year.
2. Youngest Person to Sail Solo Across the Atlantic Ocean
Michael Perham, a 14-year-old chap from Hertfordshire, England, completed the 3,500-mile trek across the Atlantic Ocean in his yacht, the Cheeky Monkey, in January 2007, after six weeks at sea.
3. Youngest Bill Gates Employee
Arfa Karim Randhawa of Pakistan has become a good pal of Bill Gates since she passed her Microsoft Certified Professional examinations at age ten. She asked for a job, but Gates told her she ought to stay in school a while longer, offering her an internship instead.
4. Youngest College Student at Oxford 
At 11 years old, child prodigy Ruth Elke Lawrence passed the Oxford
entrance exam in mathematics and, in 1981, became the youngest
person ever to attend the prestigious university. Her father accompanied her to classes, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in two years instead of the usual three. Now in her thirties, Lawrence teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
5. Youngest Tibetan Buddhist Monarch
In southern Asia, there’s a tiny, mountainous country called Bhutan.
In 1972, Jigme Singye Wangchuck became the “Druk Gyalpo,” or
“Dragon King,” of the tiny country at age 17, making him the
youngest monarch in the world. He remained in power until
December 2006, when he handed the throne to his eldest son.
6. Youngest Person with a Stethoscope
Born in 1977, Balamurali Ambati was the youngest person to become a
doctor, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. After graduating from NYU at age 13 and Mount Sinai’s School of Medicine at 17, Ambati became the youngest doctor in the world in 1995. His list of awards and honors is lengthy, and he currently teaches and does research in ophthalmology.
7. Youngest Golf Champ
American Michelle Wie is a professional golfer known for long drives 
and USGA wins. In 2003, Wie won the Women’s Amateur Public
Links tournament at the tender age of 14, making her the world’s youngest golf champion.
8. Youngest Person to Win an Oscar
In 1974, at age ten, actor Tatum O’Neal became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for her role in Paper Moon, costarring her father Ryan O’Neal. Her career didn’t exactly take off after that, but
she has recently returned to acting with several TV roles.
9. Youngest Billionaire
The Thurn und Taxis family of Germany created Europe’s first mail service back in the 16th century and has scads of profitable business ventures to this day. When Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis turned 18 in 2001, he inherited a fortune. According to a 2007 report by Forbes magazine, he’s worth a cool $2 billion, making him the world’s youngest billionaire.
~7 Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle~
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is an infamous stretch of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico that has been the location of strange disappearances throughout history. The Coast Guard does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle or the supernatural explanations for the mysterious disappearances in its midst. There are some probable explanations for the missing vessels, including hurricanes, undersea earthquakes, and magnetic fields that interfere with compasses and other positioning devices. But it’s much more interesting to think the following vessels got sucked into another dimension, abducted by aliens, or simply vanished into thin air.
1. Flight 19
On the afternoon of December 5, 1945, five Avenger torpedo bombers left the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with Lt. Charles Taylor in command of a crew of 13 student pilots. About an hour and a half into the flight, Taylor radioed the base to say that his compasses weren’t working, but he figured he was somewhere over the Florida Keys. The lieutenant who received the signal told Taylor to fly north toward Miami, as long as he was sure he was actually over the Keys. Although he was an experienced pilot, Taylor got horribly turned around, and the more he tried to get out of the Keys, the further out to sea he and his crew traveled.
As night fell, radio signals worsened, until, finally, there was nothing at all from Flight 19. A U.S. Navy investigation reported that Taylor’s confusion caused the disaster, but his mother convinced them to change the official report to read that the planes went down for “causes unknown.” The planes have never been recovered.
2. Flight 201
This Cessna left Fort Lauderdale on March 31, 1984, en route for Bimini Island in the Bahamas, but it never made it. Not quite midway to its destination, the plane slowed its airspeed significantly, but no radio signals were made from the plane to indicate distress. Suddenly, the plane dropped from the air into the water, completely vanishing from the radar. A woman on Bimini Island swore she saw a plane plunge into the sea about a mile offshore, but no wreckage has ever been found.
Airplanes flying from the US, Great Britain and Bermuda have all fallen somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Read on to find out more about these fateful flights.
3. USS Cyclops
As World War I heated up, America went to battle. The Cyclops, commanded by Lt. G. W. Worley, stayed mostly on the East Coast of the United States until 1918 when it was sent to Brazil to refuel Allied ships. With 309 people onboard, the ship left Rio de Janeiro in February and reached Barbados in March. After that, the Cyclops was never heard from again. The Navy
says in its official statement, “The disappearance of this ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy, all attempts to locate her having proved unsuccessful. There were no enemy submarines in the western Atlantic at that time, and in December 1918 every effort was made to obtain from German sources information regarding the disappearance of the vessel.”
4. Star Tiger
The Star Tiger, commanded by Capt. B. W. McMillan, was flying from England to Bermuda in January 1948. On January 30, McMillan said he expected to arrive in Bermuda at 5:00 a.m., but neither he nor any of the 31 people onboard the Star Tiger were ever heard from again. When the Civil Air Ministry launched a search and investigation, they learned that the S.S. Troubadour had reported seeing a low-flying aircraft halfway between Bermuda and the entrance to Delaware Bay. If that aircraft was the Star Tiger, it was drastically off course. According to the Civil Air Ministry, the fate of the Star Tiger remains an unsolved mystery.
5. Star Ariel
A Tudor IV aircraft like the Star Tiger left Bermuda on January 17, 1949, with 7 crew members and 13 passengers en route to Jamaica. That morning, Capt. J. C. McPhee reported that the flight was going smoothly. Shortly afterward, another more cryptic message came from the captain, when he reported that he was changing his frequency, and then nothing more was heard, ever. More than 60 aircraft and 13,000 men were deployed to look for the Star Ariel, but not even a hint of debris or wreckage was ever found. After the Ariel disappeared, Tudor IVs were no longer produced.
6. The Spray
Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail solo around the world, never should have been lost at sea, but it appears that’s exactly what happened. In 1909, the Spray left the East Coast of the United States for Venezuela via the Caribbean Sea. Slocum was never heard from or seen again and was declared dead in 1924. The ship was solid and Slocum was a pro, so nobody knows what happened. Perhaps he was felled by a larger ship or maybe he was taken down by pirates. No one knows for sure that Slocum disappeared within Triangle waters, but Bermuda buffs claim Slocum’s story as part of the legacy of the Devil’s Triangle.
7. Teignmouth Electron
Who said that the Bermuda Triangle only swallows up ships and planes? Who’s to say it can’t make a man go mad, too? Perhaps that’s what happened on the Teignmouth Electron in 1969. The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968 left England on October 31 and required each contestant to sail his ship solo. Donald Crowhurst was one of the entrants, but he never made it to the finish line. The Electron was found abandoned in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle in July 1969. Logbooks recovered from the ship reveal that Crowhurst was deceiving organizers about his position in the race and going a little nutty out there in the big blue ocean. The last entry of his log was dated June 29 — it is believed that Crowhurst jumped overboard and drowned himself in the Triangle.
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )~~The New Seven Wonders~~
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The Pyramid at Chichén Itzá (before 800 A.D.) Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Chichén Itzá, the most famous Mayan temple city, served as the political and economic center of the Mayan civilization. Its various structures – the pyramid of Kukulkan, the Temple of Chac Mool, the Hall of the Thousand Pillars, and the Playing Field of the Prisoners – can still be seen today and are demonstrative of an extraordinary commitment to architectural space and composition. The pyramid itself was the last, and arguably the greatest, of all Mayan temples.
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Christ Redeemer (1931) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
This statue of Jesus stands some 38 meters tall, atop the Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Designed by Brazilian Heitor da Silva Costa and created by French sculptor Paul Landowski, it is one of the world’s best-known monuments. The statue took five years to construct and was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. It has become a symbol of the city and of the warmth of the Brazilian people, who receive visitors with open arms.
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The Roman Colosseum (70 – 82 A.D.) Rome, Italy
This great amphitheater in the centre of Rome was built to give favors to successful legionnaires and to celebrate the glory of the Roman Empire. Its design concept still stands to this very day, and virtually every modern sports stadium some 2,000 years later still bears the irresistible imprint of the Colosseum’s original design. Today, through films and history books, we are even more aware of the cruel fights and games that took place in this arena, all for the joy of the spectators.
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The Great Wall of China (220 B.C and 1368 – 1644 A.D.) China
The Great Wall of China was built to link existing fortifications into a united defense system and better keep invading Mongol tribes out of China. It is the largest man-made monument ever to have been built and it is disputed that it is the only one visible from space. Many thousands of people must have given their lives to build this colossal construction.
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Machu Picchu (1460-1470), Peru
In the 15th century, the Incan Emperor Pachacútec built a city in the clouds on the mountain known as Machu Picchu (“old mountain”). This extraordinary settlement lies halfway up the Andes Plateau, deep in the Amazon jungle and above the Urubamba River. It was probably abandoned by the Incas because of a smallpox outbreak and, after the Spanish defeated the Incan Empire, the city remained ‘lost’ for over three centuries. It was rediscovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911.
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Petra (9 B.C. – 40 A.D.), Jordan
On the edge of the Arabian Desert, Petra was the glittering capital of the Nabataean empire of King Aretas IV (9 B.C. to 40 A.D.). Masters of water technology, the Nabataeans provided their city with great tunnel constructions and water chambers. A theater, modelled on Greek-Roman prototypes, had space for an audience of 4,000. Today, the Palace Tombs of Petra, with the 42-meter-high Hellenistic temple facade on the El-Deir Monastery, are impressive examples of Middle Eastern culture.
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The Taj Mahal (1630 A.D.) Agra, India
This immense mausoleum was built on the orders of Shah Jahan, the fifth Muslim Mogul emperor, to honor the memory of his beloved late wife. Built out of white marble and standing in formally laid-out walled gardens, the Taj Mahal is regarded as the most perfect jewel of Muslim art in India. The emperor was consequently jailed and, it is said, could then only see the Taj Mahal out of his small cell window.
Additional info:
sevenwonders
wiki link
panoramas
seven natural wonders
seven modern wonders
The story behind $^THE BOND 007^$
James Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1952 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in 12 novels and two anthologies. The character has also been used in the longest running and 2nd most successful film franchise to date, starting in 1962 with Dr. No. There have been 21 films in the EON Productions series to date, with the 22nd, Quantum of Solace’, due for release in November 2008.In addition there have been two independent feature productions (a 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale starring David Niven in the title role, and 1983’s Never Say Never Again) and one Fleming-licenced American television adaptation of the first novel, aired in 1954. In 1956, Moonraker was also adapted into a South African radio play starring Bob Holness as Bond. By the year 1990 You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond
After Fleming’s death in 1964, subsequent James Bond novels were written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Pearson, John Gardner and Raymond Benson. In addition Charlie Higson has begun to write a series of books detailing the “Young James Bond“. In July 2007, it was announced that Sebastian Faulks has been commissioned to write a Bond novel for publication in 2008. Moreover, Christopher Wood novelised two screenplays, while other writers have authored unofficial versions of the character.
In 2008, BBC Radio 4 was granted the rights for a one-shot broadcast of a radio adaptation of another 007 novel: Dr. No, with Toby Stephens (who portrayed the villain in Die Another Day) as James Bond. The EON Productions films are generally termed as “official” films originating with the purchase of the James Bond film rights by producer Harry Saltzman in the late 1950s.
Away from movies, TV and radio, Bond has also been adapted for many other media, including comic strips and video games.
Creation n inspiration:
Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (more commonly, MI6). He was created in January 1952 by British journalist Ian Fleming while on holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye. The hero, James Bond, was named after an American ornithologist, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide book Birds of the West Indies. Fleming, a keen birdwatcher, had a copy of Bond’s field guide at Goldeneye. Of the name, Fleming once said in a Reader’s Digest interview, “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, ‘James Bond’ was much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers.’ Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”
Nevertheless, news sources speculated about real spies or other covert agents after whom James Bond might have been modeled or named. Although they are similar to Bond, Fleming confirmed none as the source figure, nor did Ian Fleming Publications nor any of Fleming’s biographers, such as John Pearson or Andrew Lycett.
James Bond’s parents are Andrew Bond, a Scotsman, and Monique Delacroix, from Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. Their nationalities were established in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Fleming emphasized Bond’s Scottish heritage in admiration of Sean Connery’s cinematic portrayal, whereas Bond’s mother is named after a Swiss fiancée of Fleming’s. A planned, but unwritten, novel would have portrayed Bond’s mother as a Scot. Ian Fleming was a member of a prominent Scottish banking family, his fictional biography of secret agent 007, John Pearson gave Bond’s birth date as 11 November (Armistice Day) 1920 (The beginning of the film “For Your Eyes Only” gives his wife’s birthdate as 1943. This seemingly assumes Bond to be younger than Pearson claimed); however, there is no evidence of it in Fleming’s novels. In the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond’s family motto is found to be “Orbis non sufficit” (“The world is not enough”). The novel also states that the family that used this motto may not necessarily be the same Bond family James Bond came from.
Original 007-Bond Books
Ian Fleming
- 1953 Casino Royale
- 1954 Live and Let Die
- 1955 Moonraker
- 1956 Diamonds Are Forever
- 1957 From Russia with Love
- 1958 Dr. No
- 1959 Goldfinger
- 1960 For Your Eyes Only (short-stories)
- 1961 Thunderball
- 1962 The Spy Who Loved Me
- 1963 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
- 1964 You Only Live Twice
- 1965 The Man with the Golden Gun
- 1966 Octopussy and The Living Daylights
Further info:
james bond official website
ian fleming
bondopedia
mi6
007
bond gadgets
Youngest Nobel Prize winner–William Bragg @ 25!!
Sir William Lawrence Bragg CH , FRS, (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australianphysicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 with his father Sir William Henry Bragg. He was the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge when the epochal discovery of the structure of DNA was made by James Watson and Francis Crick in February 1953.
Bragg was born in North Adelaide, South Australia. He was an impressionable boy and showed an early interest in science and mathematics. His father, William Henry Bragg, was Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Adelaide. Shortly after starting school aged 5, William Lawrence Bragg fell from his tricycle and broke his arm. His father had recently read about Röntgen‘s experiments in Europe and used the newly discovered X-rays to examine the broken arm. This is the first recorded surgical use of X-rays in Australia.
Bragg was a very able student. After beginning his studies at St Peter’s College, in 1904 he went to the University of Adelaide at age 14 to study mathematics, chemistry and physics, graduating in 1908. In the same year his father accepted a job at the University of Leeds, and brought the family back to England. Bragg entered Trinity College, Cambridge in the autumn of 1909 and received a major scholarship in mathematics, despite taking the exam while in bed with pneumonia. After initially excelling in mathematics, he transferred to the physics course in the later years of his studies, and graduated in 1911.
Bragg is most famous for his law on the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. Bragg’s law makes it possible to calculate the positions of the atoms within a crystal from the way in which an X-ray beam is diffracted by the crystal lattice. He made this discovery in 1912, during his first year as a research student in Cambridge. He discussed his ideas with his father, who developed the X-ray spectrometer in Leeds. This tool allowed many different types of crystals to be analysed. The collaboration between father and son led many people to believe that the father had initiated the research, a fact that upset the son.
Bragg’s research work was interrupted by both World War I and World War II. During both wars he worked on sound ranging methods for locating enemy guns, in this work he was aided by William Sansome Tucker. In autumn 1915 his brother was killed at Gallipoli. At about the same time, William Lawrence Bragg received the news that he had become the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, aged 25. Between the wars, from 1919 to 1937, he worked at the Victoria University of Manchester as Langworthy Professor of Physics. He married Alice Hopkinson in 1921. He was knighted in 1941.
After World War II, he returned to Cambridge, splitting the Cavendish Laboratory into research groups. He believed that ‘the ideal research unit is one of six to twelve scientists and a few assistants’. In 1948 Bragg became interested in the structure of proteins and was partly responsible for creating a group that used physics to solve biological problems. He played a major part in the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, in that he provided support to Francis Crick and James D. Watson who worked under his aegis at the Cavendish. Bragg was gratified to see that the X-ray method that he developed forty years before was at the heart of this profound insight into the nature of life itself. At the same time at the Cavendish Max Perutz was also doing his Nobel Prize winning work on the structure of haemoglobin. Bragg subsequently successfully lobbied for and nominated Crick, Watson and Maurice Wilkins for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Wilkins’ share recognised the contribution made by researchers at King’s College London to the determination of the structure of DNA.
In April 1953 Bragg accepted the job of Resident Professor (Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) at the Royal Institution in London. He proposed that the Royal Institution should perform some form of public service, and suggested a series of lectures to show experiments to schoolchildren. This idea was met with an enthusiastic response, and by 1965 20,000 schoolchildren were attending these lectures each year. He worked at the Royal Institution until his retirement in September 1966.
William Lawrence Bragg’s hobbies included painting, literature and a life-long interest in gardening. When he moved to London, he missed having a garden and so worked as a part-time gardener, unrecognised by his employer, until a guest at the house expressed surprise at seeing him there.
Bragg received both the Copley Medal and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, and in 1967 was made a Companion of Honour by the Queen. He died at a hospital near his home at Waldringfield on 1 July 1971.
Since 1992 the Australian Institute of Physics has awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics to commemorate Sir Lawrence Bragg (in front on the medal) and his father Sir William Bragg for the best PhD thesis by a student at an Australian university.
Prizes won:
- Nobel Prize (1915)
- Matteucci Medal (1915)
- Hughes Medal (1931)
- Royal Medal (1946)
- Copley Medal (1966)
For further reference :
nobelprize.org
www.infoplease.com
www.answerbag.com
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