Established June 2004

July 27 2005

Vol 3. Issue #3

Rs: 5.00

Whats Inside A plea against child labour Internals !!! War of the Worlds crib crib crib Hippo Rage IQ The first sudoku puzzle

28th of July is a very special day for all those involved with the MGIT forums coz on that day the Forums enter their second year . It has truly enhanced relationships between people in college & helped on the occasions of Nirvana 05 & Surge 05. Three Cheers to all the admins. Congratulations !!!

COLLEGE MAMA !!!

Fellow MGITians Im really looking forward to see how the college will look once the all the renovations are done with. The D-block has been completed & is looking fabulous. The new fans in the canteen are a welcome addition & the kitchen has been redone keeping our hygiene in mind. Well we still have miles to go in the Hygiene department but That is another story altogether. But some of the things which people have found trying is that they are not being allowed to sit in the MGIT canteen even when they don have classes like on their half days or free hours. Another thing that people are cribbing about off late is that the watchman insists on parallel parking our vehicles. Cmon guys it does give us more space in THE RETREAT (Im talking about the parking lot) & gives the whole place a smart look. But one thing which really makes me gloomy is the lack of sports facilities in our college, after all we do have the best basketball team in JNTU dont we. Our cricket team can also give any team a run for their money. The ground behind the workshop is a great location for football/cricket ground, but a lot of work is needed to make it playable Im afraid. We have quite a few basketballs but they are without grip & below par stuff. Many are of the opinion that a highly rated college such as ours should give us room for all round personality development. Also many of us have to trudge all the way to CBIT to take our buses. A lot of students have expressed their discomfort at this since many of them have exclusive bus passes & wished MGIT had more RTC on hire buses( like KP which was stopped last year because there werent enough bus passes). I recommend that those wishing to avail such a facility must form a group & approach one of the members of the senior faculty & express this. Another common crib among the final year junta is that not enough companies come for the Campus Recruitment exercise to MGIT. Well I do have a solution for that also. Well some of the students who have their parents holding high posts in good companies could actually recommend them to come to our college. Well if the fans & lights in your classroom are not working take the initiative, do things yourself.

AFTER ALL IDHI MANA COLLEGE MAMA !!!

Monday Guaranteed Internal test

Well Its back to the grind. The commencement of the weekly quizzes means different things to different people. The toppers as expected would spend the whole of Sunday studying & not complain. The people who fall under my category would while away the weekend & get to their books late Sunday night or theres always Monday morning. The last category is of those guys who never care for their Internals & believe that All-in-ones are gods gift to students. Another topic for debate usually is whether our system of internals is better or whether the system that other colleges have adopted (that of having all their subjects over a span of 2 or 3 days for every cycle) is better. It is my personal opinion that this system is better because we have lesser portions & also get to have regular classes or leave college after the test. So all Id like to say is that atleast this semester lets all plan to study for the little portions that we have & crack the quizzes instead of running behind our lecturers & bugging them for the additional 2 or 3 marks. Happy Quizzing !!!

Wanna have youre article published on The Retreat. Well you can mail it to theretreat@gmail.com or hand it over to Aditya MCT 2/4, Som MCT 2/4 or Varsha EEE 3/4. This is your newsletter guys so feel free to get your opinion heard. Cheers - The Retreat Team
Solution in next issue

REHASH
The D-block has been completed. Though it is a mirror image of the Cblock it has an extra floor. All sorts of renovations are going on throughout college. Next issue well

let you know what exactly is goin on

Stop child labour- join the revolution.

How many of us have children much younger than us working at our homes? How many have ever given that child at home a second thought? Living under one roof, surprisingly, you leave for college and he, to do his daily chores. How many of you think you are but helping that boy make a living, instead of letting him suffer with his bed ridden mother and oh-so-many siblings? Then here are some facts you need to know.

Article 21A makes right to free and compulsory education of every child in the age group of 6-14 years a fundamental right against the State. This means that no child needs to spend money for his education.it is provided for by the government.

It is estimated that about 10 crores children below the age of fourteen years are not attending full time formal school and are engaged in one or the other type of work. These children are nothing but child labour. Reason.. child labour is not abolished, but has been regulated. Like the flyover on a busy roadwe have just found a different route. The state also has the responsibility to provide for homeless/orphaned children up to 15 years of age.So, the next time you think you are helping the child, think twice. Because, instead of helping, you are suppressing talent, crushing hopes, killing a spirit. Trying to take the law into your hands, you are but destroying its structure. What we can do to stop child labour.

MVF, a leading NGO in the city, along with many others across the country has started a campaign to abolish child labour. It is going to the parliament with a petition to amend the child labour act and to abolish child labour. Letters are being sent to ministers from people from all walks of life to amend the act. Also, letters are sent to the president of India explaining the urgency of the issue. What we, as students can do, is log on to www.mvfindia.org sign the petition. This petition will reach the president. The more the number of letters, the more the recognition for the issue. Come, join the revolution. Make every childs dream a reality.

Supported by MGIT.ORG

WAR OF THE WORLDS - crib crib crib !!!

First of all, you'd think someone with as much talent as Spielberg could capture the human emotion of complete chaos and panic better. A human being's primary instinct when his/her life is threatened is to survive at all costs (fight or flight). Yet time and time again, this movie lacked the sense of total panic one might feel if, oh say... ALIENS INVADED AND WERE VAPORIZING PEOPLE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!!!! In one scene, Aliens emerge over a hill vaporizing everyone in their path and approximately 400 people waiting in line to flee on a ferry are held back by 4-5 national guardsmen holding hands. If this weren't enough, when Tom Cruise has the only working car for miles and is finally dragged out of it by a mob, we are led to believe that in a mob of maybe 200 people, Cruise and one other guy are the only people that have a gun. This is set in New Jersey anna !! Let's get serious. Also, before I forget, Tom Cruise throws like a girl. If you throw a ball and your elbow touches your torso the whole time, you have never thrown anything in your whole life. And how come in the whole movie Tom is the only brilliant guy who realises that he should change the spark plug. Where are the mechanics yaar ??? Honestly Tim Robbins is wasted.The scene hiding out inside the house with Tim Robbins is way too drawn out. Not to mention it offers no explanation how Cruise and his daughter got there in the first place or why they were the only ones the crazy good samaritan character offered to help out. To conclude I would just like to say between the weak acting, tired, thin plot, and infrequent and underwhelming action and special effects, this is a film that exists only due to the talents of Cruise and Spielberg., That being said, I have to wonder how and why they could not have picked a better product than this stale offering.
Ray Ferrier (Cruise) wonders as to what the redweed covering the landscape is.

Tidbit -

Previous adaptations of this H G Wells classic include the famous Mercury Theater radio play directed by Orson Welles, a 1953 feature film by George Pal, a late 1980s TV series & a series of 70s comic book adventures based on a post War of the worlds character Killraven,

Sponsored by MGIT.ORG

Ancient Astronauts (courtesy skepdic.com)

The term 'ancient astronauts' designates the speculative notion that aliens are responsible for the most ancient civilizations on earth. The most notorious proponent of this idea is Erich von Dniken, author of several popular books on the subject. His Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, for example, isa sweeping attack on the memories and abilities of ancient peoples. Von Dniken claims that the myths, arts, social organizations, etc., of ancient cultures were introduced by astronauts from another world. He questions not just the capacity for memory, but the capacity for culture and civilization itself, in ancient peoples. Prehistoric humans did not develop their own arts and technologies, but rather were taught art and science by visitors from outer space. Where is the proof for von Dniken's claims? Some of it was fraudulent. For example, he produced photographs of pottery that he claimed hadbeen found in an archaeological dig. The pottery depicts flying saucersand was said to have been dated from Biblical times. However, investigators from Nova (the fine public-television science program) found the potter who had made the allegedly ancient pots. They confronted von Dniken with evidence of his fraud. His reply was that his deception was justified because some people would only believe if they saw proof ("The Case of the Ancient Astronauts," first aired 3/8/78, done in conjunction with BBC's Horizon and Peter Spry Leverton)! However, most of von Dniken's evidence is in the form of specious and fallacious arguments. His data consists mainly of archaeological sites and ancient myths. He begins with the ancient astronaut assumption and then forces all data to fit the idea. For example, in Nazca, Peru, he explains giant animal drawings in the desert as an ancient alien airport. The likelihood that these drawings related to the natives' religion or science is not considered. He also frequently reverts to false dilemma reasoning of the following type: "Either this data is to be explained by assuming these primitive idiots did this themselves or we must accept the more plausible notion that they got help from extremely advanced peoples who must have come from other planets where such technologies as anti-gravity devices had been invented." His devotion to this theory has not dwindled, despite contrary evidence, as is evidenced by still another book on the subject, Arrival of the Gods : Revealing the Alien Landing Sites at Nazca (1998). There have been many critics of von Dniken's notions, but Ronald Story stands out as the most thorough. Most critics of von Dniken's theory point out that prehistoric peoples were not the helpless, incompetent, forgetful savages he makes them out to be. (They must have at least been intelligent enough to understand the language and teachings of their celestial instructors--no small feat!) It is true that we still do not know how the ancients accomplished some of their more astounding physical and technological feats. We still wonder how the ancient Egyptians raised giant obelisks in the desert and how stone age men and women moved huge cut stones and placed them in position in dolmens and passage graves. We are amazed by the giant carved heads on Easter Island and wonder why they were done, who did them, and why they abandoned the place. We may someday have the answers to our questions, but they are most likely to come from scientific investigation not pseudoscientific speculation. For example, observing contemporary stone age peoples in Papua New Guinea, where huge stones are still found on top of tombs, has taught us how the ancients may have accomplished the same thing with little more than ropes of organic material, wooden levers and shovels, a little ingenuity and a good deal of human strength.

We have no reason to believe our ancient ancestors' memories were so much worse than our own that they could not remember these alien visitations well enough to preserve an accurate account of them. There is little evidence to support the notion that ancient myths and religious stories are the distorted and imperfect recollection of ancient astronauts recorded by ancient priests. The evidence to the contrary--that prehistoric or 'primitive' peoples were (and are) quite intelligent and resourceful--is overwhelming. Of course, it is possible that visitors from outer space did land on earth a few thousand years ago and communicate with our ancestors. But it seems more likely that prehistoric peoples themselves were responsible for their own art, technology and culture. Why concoct such an explanation as von Dniken's? To do so may increase the mystery and romance of one's theory, but it also makes it less reasonable, especially when one's theory seems inconsistent with what we already know about the world. And why restrict one's examples to Egypt, Mexico, and other non-European countries? What about the builders of Newgrange or Stonehenge? The ancient astronaut hypothesis is unnecessary. Occam's razor should be applied and the hypothesis rejected.

Hippo Rage
Has anybody here ever been stuck in traffic for a frustratingly long time? Put up your hand if you have. Oooh! Don't you just hate that? And some people don't mind showing us how much they hate it. We call it "road rage". Has anybody ever waited in a ticket lineup or a checkout lineup for a frustratingly long time? Let me see those hands. Believe it or not, some people don't like that either. We call it "lineup rage". Has anybody ever been stuck waiting in a doctor's office for a frustratingly long time? Let me see those hands. And then you see somebody suddenly jump up and tear his hair out and scream, "Let me out. I've been here three hours. Three days. Three months!" Well, I really should apologize. I didn't mean to scare your kids. I was just demonstrating "waiting room rage". Let me tell you a story about the Lwungwa River Valley - that's in Africa, you know. The dry season there gets very dry. My throat is getting dry just thinking about it. The Lwungwa River stops rushing. It slows to a trickle. Finally, it stops flowing. And all that are left are pools of water, here and there. One by one, the animals head to higher ground. To forest cover. To other water holes. Anywhere they can find food or drink. Just like we will all do later. Did I say all the animals? Not all. Not the hippos. The hippos stay in their river at it slows to a stream. They stay in the stream as it turns into pools. They stay in the pools as they shrink into puddles. As the puddles shrink, the hippos get more crowded. As the hippos get more crowded, they get surly. Cranky. Grumpy. They gnash their teeth. They poke at each other. They pick fights. It's river rage! Has anyone ever come face to face with a raging hippopotamus? Don't be shy. Go ahead, put up your hands. Sure, when we're young - I'm sure you all remember this as I do - we're taught that hippos are slow, cute, and cuddly. They might even be pink or purple and do those happy little dances in tutus like in Fantasia. But in the real world, hippos have teeth the size of your head. They can run faster than anyone in this room. And they weight upwards of 5,000 pounds. I mean, they are BIG! If you're ever at a cocktail party and a hippopotamus starts, you know, flirting with you, whatever you do, do not let him sit on your lap. Rage is all the rage these days. Road rage. Lineup rage. Waiting-room rage. Even river

rage. You may also have heard of parking lot rage, elevator rage and airplane rage. What gives? Is the world getting angrier or just more crowded? Both. It's a fact that as our space and time grow increasingly crowded, our stress levels rise. When it comes to space, we are cramming more people into more crowded cities, elevators, airplanes, and stores. Our patience diminishes. Our good will diminishes. Our tolerance diminishes. Has anyone noticed they place the chairs at conferences - you noticed! -- So close together that even skinny people get to know each other well. My theory is that the hotels are trying to develop their own niche rage market: conference-seating rage. Let's look at our schedules. What are we trying to do? We're trying to see how many items we can squeeze onto our "to do" list, and how many activities we can cram into a day. And the stress, where does it go? Right up there, exactly. I want to share this one little thought with you. We are in the process of moving, so we actually have two homes. Stress that builds in my stacked concrete box apartment they call a condo, I can't get rid of. It sticks. I can't shake it off. It won't go. It sticks. When I'm at my farmhouse just a few miles south of here, surrounded by grass and trees, it's amazing how quickly I can just excommunicate the stress. Can I say that? Excommunicate? Why not? OK. What have we learned today? Three lessons, so please take note. Number one, don't let your space get too crowded. Number two; don't let your schedule get too crowded. Number three, and this is the most important of all, don't ever, ever let a hippopotamus sit on your lap.

With citizens like this...

Well people mustve heard of Channel [V] IQlately the questions asked were totally faltoobut then answers our junta gives r amazinglike Q: Can a man marry his widows sister ? ..Check the answers out - Well, yeah why notin our society I know its not acceptablebut then if they like each otherthey should go ahead - Yeah..I sayhe shouldunless there are any legal hassles - Well I dont think people should make a big deal out of it...he can marry his widows sister. Whats wrong in that - Kyun nahin kar sakte??..arre uski biwi ki behan hai to kyauski marzi.. Q:And when a question such as this is asked Why is AMBULANCE written backwards on the ambulance?..check out the answers.. - I dunnomaybe they like it that way - I guess they find it amusing - Agar ulta likhe thosaamne wale ko pata chalta hai ki who ambulance hai.. - No no I dont think ambulance is backwardsservices are always best..they can never backwards I say.. -Ulta likhe tho caraan ek dum baaju hat jaayenge Q:And for questions like What is a MOON?.. - What do u mean what is a moon..a moon is a moon - Its a planet - A meteor maybeI dunno.. - Something that shines in the night in the sky - Moon is chaand..dont u watch movies???

- God knowshe created it Q:And for Who wrote our national anthem? - UmmmI dunnonot much into history - Is it that bankim chandra..dude?? - I think its jaaved akhtar.. - Hmmm..is it some tagore..aahhrabii..rabindranath tagore (this guy gets the prize obv) - How bout Laloo Prasad YadavI think its that guy - Arre yaar social studies padhke saal hue..ab kya pooch rahe ho..

www.mgit.org A common platform for all MGITians to share their views. Wet Wet Wet
I have been wondering why Hyderabad is going thru the when it rains, it pours phase. Be it summer or winterwe only get a feel of the extremes. Thanks to the changing climatesummer ends in mid Junerather that the end of May n we welcome the monsoon, or rather the cyclone effect a day or two of welcome rainfall dawned realization that the rains not doing much good. Now coming to think of itwhat has the rain brought to Hyderabad..? Well..the traffic jam at Somajiguda for sure is here 2 staythanks 2 the rains. You wouldnt believe it takes 3 hrs to drive the 2 km long stretch, unless you got stuck yourself !!!(I did thanks to War of the Worlds). But tell you what Gandipet is a wonderful place during this season. So people take a moment & enjoy the scenic beauty (applicable to all whether you are single or otherwise). As for the horrible water-logging & traffic jams in the city are con-

PICTURE OF THE WEEK