Why buying a house is not a good investment plan?

Most people I know have already taken or plan to take a 20 year loan with EMIs that is half their salary but in which  the interest component is more than 85% for the first few years, to purchase something that is not liquid, not diversified, not tax efficient, liable to fraud from builders and land Mafia and can't be bought in small pieces. 

This is one of the biggest expenses most people make in their lifetime. Unfortunately, a lot of them do this wrong.

Beware of the bad arguments you hear:

• It's a good investment: Have you done the math? Have you accounted for interest, registration, capital gains tax, parking and interiors cost, time to complete,  and opportunity cost? What about the real estate bubble, which is now losing air? Are you buying cheap in an area that is soon to be developed or are you buying expensive in an already developed and appreciated area. Will you be staying in it or are you renting out. Have you accounted for the tax you have to pay if you rent out?

• The money I pay for rent is wasted: No it's not. It gives you a shelter to live under. Also it frees up cash flow for you to invest (EMI-Rent) without having to take a loan. Properly invested, it can give you better returns, that too tax-free and with better liquidity. Lets say buying a house cost an opportunity loss.

• But we need our "own" house. What's the difference between an "own" house and a "rented" one? It doesn't feel like mine? Seriously? That's your reason? Rents will increase every year? Of course it will, doesn't inflation raise the price of grocery? Don't you get raises every year? Just agree on the yearly % increase before you move in so that you don't have to renegotiate every year. I'll have to shift frequently? Find a house whose owner doesn't have any short term plans of moving back in. Worse case, packers and movers make shifting very easy.

Most people will need to take a house loan to buy a house, but you should repay it within 5 years so that you don't waste too much money on interest. If you can't do that, either save for a few more years or buy a house at a cheaper location.

Well, let’s see now (pulling out our lined yellow pad), let’s make a list. To be really terrible investment:

• It should be not just an initial, but if we do it right, a relentlessly ongoing drain on the cash reserves of the owner.

• It should be illiquid. We’ll make it something that takes weeks, no – wait – even better, months of time and effort to buy or sell.

• It should be expensive to buy and sell. We’ll add very high transaction costs. Let’s say 5% commissions on the deal, coming and going.

• It should be complex to buy or sell. That way we can ladle on lots of extra fees and reports and documents we can charge for.

• It should generate low returns. Certainly no more than the inflation rate. Maybe a bit less.

• It should be leveraged! Oh, oh this one is great! This is how we’ll get people to swallow those low returns! If the price goes up a little bit, leverage will magnify this and people will convince themselves it’s actually a good investment! Nah, don’t worry about it. Most will never even consider that leverage is also very high risk and could just as easily wipe them out.

• It should be mortgaged! Another beauty of leverage. We can charge interest on the loans. Yep, and with just a little more effort we should easily be able to persuade people who buy this thing to borrow money against it more than once.

• It should be unproductive. While we’re talking about interest, let’s be sure this investment we are creating never pays any. No dividends either, of course.

• It should be immobile. If we can fix it to one geographical spot we can be sure at any given time only a tiny group of potential buyers for it will exist. Sometimes and in some places, none at all!

• It should be subject to the fortunes of one country, one state, one city, one town…No! One neighborhood! Imagine if our investment could somehow tie its owner to the fate of one narrow location. The risk could be enormous! A plant closes. A street gang moves in. A government goes crazy with taxes. An environmental disaster happens nearby. We could have an investment that not only crushes it’s owner’s net worth, but does so even as they are losing their job and income!

• It should be something that locks its owner in one geographical area. That’ll limit their options and keep ’em docile for their employers!

• It should be expensive. Ideally we’ll make it so expensive that it will represent a disproportionate percentage of a person’s net worth. Nothing like squeezing out diversification to increase risk!

• It should be expensive to own, too! Let’s make sure this investment requires an endless parade of repairs and maintenance without which it will crumble into dust.

• It should be fragile and easily damaged by weather, fire, vandalism and the like! Now we can add-on expensive insurance to cover these risks.  Making sure, of course, that the bad things that are most likely to happen aren't actually covered. Don’t worry, we’ll bury that in the fine print or maybe just charge extra for it.

• It should be heavily taxed, too! Let’s get the Feds in on this. If it should go up in value, we’ll go ahead and tax that gain. If it goes down in value should we offer a balancing tax deduction on the loss like with other investments? Nah.

• It should be taxed even more! Let’s not forget our state and local governments. Why wait till this investment is sold? Unlike other investments, let’s tax it each and every year. Oh, and let’s raise those taxes any time it goes up in value. Lower them when it goes down? Don’t be silly.

• It should be something you can never really own. Since we are going to give the government the power to tax this investment every year, “owning” it will be just like share cropping. We’ll let them work it, maintain it, pay all the cost associated with it and, as long as they pay their annual rent (oops, I mean taxes) we’ll let ’em stay in it. Unless we decide we want it.

• For that, we’ll make it subject to eminent domain. You know, in case we decide that instead of getting our rent (damn! I mean taxes) we’d rather just take it away from them.

Deadly dry Beauty.

What is a Deseret? 

Deserts, also known as arid lands, are regions that receive less than 10 inches of precipitation a year and have little vegetation. Deserts occupy about one-fifth of the land on Earth and appear on every continent.

Why Deserts are bad and deadly?

Deserts are some peoples nightmares because they fear being lost in desert where absolute loneliness rules along with life threatening dryness. Deserts flows along with wind so it also increases in size  every year. This process is called desert encroachment. Desert encroachment is the spread of desert-like conditions to the semi-arid or sub-humid regions that border the deserts. Desert plays tricks on people not as you see in the cartoons. It is called mirage.

Why deserts are beautiful?

Beauty is subjective so it is in the eye of the observer who sees the beauty.But even though deserts are wasteland they have mesmerizing deadly beauty in them along with mysterious life forms adapted to suit this very harsh environment. Even though deserts are wasteland but unnoticeable it is very lively underneath with vegetation and animals adapted to the environment.

Lets Take a Look at these pictures of deserts which depicts a lonely and deadly beauty.

Why do we fight? Why do we have war?

"Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy!"

— Tony Stark, quoting his late father,Howard Stark, Iron Man

Today the world which seems peaceful with hidden conflicts and battles which is achieved through many wars since the beginning of the human history. All these war denied many their lives. War never brings victory only causalities on both sides and loss of loved ones. But this fear of loss may be is the key which is holding the peace in its broken form.

Why do we have war? According to William James's the war is so prevalent because of its positive psychological effects. It creates a sense of unity in the face of collective threat. It binds people together - not just the army engaged in battle, but the whole community. It brings a sense of cohesion, with communal goals, and inspires individual citizens to behave honourably and unselfishly, in the service of a greater good. It supplies meaning and purpose, transcending the monotony of everyday life. Warfare also enables the expression of higher human qualities that often lie dormant in ordinary life, such as courage and self service.

A scene from Korean War.

I personally believe there is no honour in killing or being killed. The real honour is in how you lived and inspire others when you leave the world with pride and satisfaction. The greatest war that one has to win is within himself the war of morals, the war between right and wrong, the war which must be fought ideologically to understand each other. I guess this war is much beautiful in every sense without causalities. For this war to begin we need a common enemy which we have plenty in number.

But we ignore all that and we do warfare on some trivial things like which land belongs to whom, Who has the right over the holy land, Whose religion is better...I believe someday the world will become truly spherical in shape without borders and differences. If not, We ourself will be the cause for mass extinction of human kind.

James Dean's Cursed car 'The Little Bastard.'

"A curse (also called a jinx, hex or execration) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, "curse" may refer to a wish that harm or hurt will be inflicted by any supernatural powers, such as a spell, a prayer, an imprecation, an execration, magic, witchcraft, God, a natural force, or a spirit. In many belief systems, the curse itself (or accompanying ritual) is considered to have some causative force in the result. To reverse or eliminate a curse is called removal or breaking, and is often believed to require equally elaborate rituals or prayers." - Wikipedia.

James Dean was an American actor who was killed in his expensive Porsche 550 Spyder. His fans were devastated to hear the news about the two-car crash that occurred on September 30, 1955. When his blockbuster hit Rebel Without A Cause opened a month later, theatres across the nation were packed with teary-eyed, heart-broken audiences. Everyone was in shock that someone so young and vital would be snatched away so unexpectedly.

But could there be something more sinister involved in Dean's death? Possibly. Many strange occurrences surround Dean's death, including a jinxed(Cursed) Porsche Spyder, a possible curse, and black magic. On the fateful evening of his death, a malevolent force may have even been in the car with him.

It appears that the car tried to warn him because the day of fatal accident James Dean got more than four warning about his reckless driving but there are some things which are certain and one of them is death. It's not the matter of when its the matter of how? How we all will meet our demise.

He didn't take them seriously and appeared to have no idea that that day would be his last.September 30 was pretty much an ordinary day for Dean. Early that morning, he got dressed as usual, wearing his favourite red jacket from Rebel Without A Cause. Despite his friend's repeated warning

The Spyder had crushed like a tin-can, burying him in sharp, twisted metal, and he sustained massive head injuries. About an hour later, he died in route to the emergency room and was later pronounced dead at the Paso Robles Hospital.

The "bad luck" that seemed to virtually exude from the hunk of twisted metal was still alive and well in March, 1959 when a fire broke out in the Fresno garage where it had been stored. But that was just the beginning of the accidents and disasters that would be associated with the vehicle. A few weeks later, there would be another incident.

In 1959, the Dean mania was still intense, the accident still fresh on everyone's mind. Thus, the California State Highway Patrol had the mangled vehicle transported to local high schools to teach teenagers the importance of safe driving. Since Dean was supposedly driving at between 85-100 MPH at the time of the accident, it seemed that the crushed Porsche would serve as a good example of the dangers of high speed driving.But the California State Highway Patrol would soon regret the decision.

When the Porsche was near Salinas, the vehicle transporting it was involved in a serious accident. The impact was so great that truck driver, George Barhuis, was thrown from the cab. In response, the Porsche rolled off the truck bed, landed on top of him and literally crushed him to death, claiming another victim.

Despite the latest tragedy, the exhibit was, nevertheless, popular. People came in droves to see the James Dean car, and the owner, George Barris (a name that's amazingly similar to that of the car's second victim) decided that the tour would extend to the other states as well. Another accident was waiting to happen. 

On September 30, the anniversary of Dean's death, a fifteen-year-old boy became the car's next victim. He stood about twelve to fifteen feet away from the exhibit, probably staring at it in shock and awe, when three bolts suddenly snapped as if broken by spectral hands. The boy screamed as the car plowed forward and ran over him. Both of the boy's legs were horribly crushed, but he survived.

The next victim would not be so lucky.

A few weeks later the death car was again being transported when it caused yet another mishap. This time, it literally snapped in two, slid from the flatbed of the truck, and met the gray pavement. The wreckage caused another fatal accident before it could be cleared from the roadway.

In 1960, the owner, had finally had enough, and he decided to have the Porsche shipped back home to California for a permanent retirement. The car was loaded into a boxcar in Florida, the door carefully sealed. When the train arrived in LA, the seal on the boxcar door was still intact...yet the Porsche was missing!

Despite the efforts of detectives, the car has never been located. Maybe it returned to the hell from whence it came. Or, could it be in some secret place today...still killing and wounding, and spreading bad luck to all those who encounter it?

How is Chernobyl? 28 years later.

Nuclear technology uses the energy released by splitting the atoms of certain elements. It was first developed in the 1940s, and during the Second World War to 1945 research initially focussed on producing bombs by splitting the atoms of particular isotopes of either uranium or plutonium.

In the 1950s attention turned to the peaceful
purposes of nuclear fission, notably for power generation. Today, the world produces as much electricity from nuclear energy as it did from all sources combined in the early years of nuclear power. Civil nuclear power can now boast over 16,000 reactor years of experience and supplies almost 11.5% of global electricity needs, from reactors in 31 countries. In fact, through regional grids, many more than those countries depend on nuclear-generated power.

Chernobyl Nuclear disaster was the history's worst nuclear disaster ever happened. It is situated in Ivankiv Raion of northern KievOblast, Ukraine near the border with Belarus. This city is now a ghost city after the nuclear disaster 28 years ago.

On April 26, 1986, a test was scheduled at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to test a method of keeping the reactors properly cooled in the event of a power grid failure. If the test had gone as planned, the risk to the plant was very small. When things did go wrong, though, the potential for disaster was miscalculated and the test was continued even as serious problems arose. Meltdown occurred at 1:23 AM, starting a fire that dispersed large quantities of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. The amount of radioactive material released was 400 times more than the amount the atomic bombing of Hiroshima released. The fallout would be detected in almost all parts of Europe.

Chernobyl today

In the aftermath of the disaster, all work on the unfinished reactors 5 and 6 were stopped three years later. The trouble at the Chernobyl plant did not end with the disaster in reactor 4. The damaged reactor was sealed off; concrete was placed between the disaster site and the operational buildings. The Ukrainian government continued to let the three remaining reactors operate due to the need of energy in the country. A fire broke out in the turbine building of reactor 2 in 1991. This reactor was declared damaged beyond repair and had it taken offline. Reactor 1 was decommissioned in November 1996 as part of a deal between the Ukrainian government and international organizations such as the IAEA to end operations at the plant. On 15 December 2000, then-President Leonid Kuchma turned off Reactor 3 in an official ceremony, effectively shutting down the entire plant transforming the Chernobyl plant from energy producer to energy consumer.

The Chernobyl reactor is now enclosed in a large concrete sarcophagus which was built quickly to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. However, the structure is not strong or durable. Some major work on the sarcophagus was carried out in 1998 and 1999. Some 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained.Studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus found, about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer had been diagnosed in exposed children. However, the rapid increase in thyroid cancers detected suggests that some of it at least is an artefact of the screening process. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early A further 210,000 people were resettled into less contaminated areas, and the initial 30 km radius exclusion zone was modified and extended to cover 4300 square kilometres.

In January 2008 the Ukraine government announced a 4-stage decommissioning plan which incorporates the above waste activities and progresses towards a cleared site. A new Safe Confinement structure will be built by the end of 2011, and then will be put into place on rails.

Today about 6000 people work in the exclusion zone and dine at a cafeteria situated less than a mile from reactor No. 4. They have Geiger counters that monitors radiation level that it is safe to eat there. The workers are inspected radiation contamination and if objects are found it is confiscated and if the person himself is contaminated beyond the threshold level he is quarantined.

Ukraine Government is building a 100 Foot Tall Metal cocoon called Chernobyl New safe Confinement which should contain radiation for 100 years.The project is slated to be finished by 2017. 

Right now the abandoned city is overtaken by nature with animals thriving on the nature that grew over the period of 28 years.

How Craig began his list?

Craigslist is a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, items wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.

This Video below by todayIfoundout.com will explain who is craig from craigslist. 

The Theory of Trash

Entropy, according to Boltzmann, is what is probable. Objects with low entropy are tidy and therefore unlikely to exist. High entropy objects are untidy therefore more likely to exist. Entropy always increases because it is much easier for things to be untidy!

You see, untidiness implies some sort of change. Its the law of the universe to make changes. It's how the galaxies, stars, the Sun, solar system, earth and life all evolved after the big bang. Get into a forest, are the trees and plants arranged into prefect rows and columns? Observe the night sky, are the stars arranged in any manner? Gravity tends to bring some order in the system through dictating the distance each object has to keep with relation to its mass. But overall, untidiness still apply.

It is also thought to be behind the property known as the "Arrow of Time", the phenomenon that time never seem to or cannot be driven backwards (you know, time traveling and all). For us to go back in time (say, April 14th, 1912) everything, including quantum level particles like photons, electrons etc, needs to be put back into place, where it belonged, on that date. This seemingly violates Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which, simply put, states that the position or momentum of a particle can never be determined for certain simultaneously. This is the reason we can only theorize "cloud of electrons" and "waves of photons" and such.

Look at a lamp and close your eyelids as near as possible to a narrow slit. You will observe the image of the lamp streaking out! This is because as you are closing your eyelids you are going closer to catching a photon by permitting them inside by lesser and lesser amounts. But as you approach to catching one, Heisy's principle kicks in and those few protons that did enter your eyeball suddenly increase their momentum to disperse even more! This is the streaking that you see. Yes, your eyelashes might interfere with your activity. Check out this wonderful video of the same experiment with a laser.

Applying this perspective to a macroscopic level, no matter how hard you keep your things tidy, they're going to mess up at some point of time. Like the laser experiment above, the more you are trying to take control of things the more overwhelming it becomes. What is material possession after all? They are going to end up in someone else's hands or get destroyed after your lifetime. This is the law of nature. Everything has to keep moving.

By the way, Boltzmann's inspiring theory of entropy wasn't very popular among the physicists at the time because it was hard to understand for them. Hell, they could have taken a hard look at their own houses to get a grasp of it! Boltzmann spend the remainder of his life trying to support his theories and ultimately committed suicide out of severe depression. Now that's a bummer. It is said that those who claim to completely understand quantum physics is either lying or they are crazy. It's just like the claim itself is violating some other quantum theory that is yet to be discovered! 

Hottest temperature in the universe?

The Planck temperature is a fundamental limit on temperature according to our understanding of quantum theory and general relativity. The magnitude of this temperature happens to be 1.4 * 10^32 K and was the temperature of the universe roughly 5.4 * 10^-44 seconds after the Big Bang.

Note that, this limit is not owing to merely relativistic velocity limits on the molecules. The kinetic energy of matter increases with temperature, and this does not necessarily have to always go into 'velocities'. The masses too increase.

Watch this video for more insight.

What's next if our sun disappears suddenly?

What would happen if the sun disappeared this very moment?

This article was inspired from Vsauce Video by Michael Stevens in Youtube. He asks many intriguing questions that we never give a thought. One of his question was what is our sun disappears suddenly.

The sun is about 333,000 times the mass of Earth and produces the same amount of energy as 100 billion hydrogen bombs every second. It is the centre of all processes of life on earth because plants fix carbon through process called photosynthesis which requires sun and heterotrophs live on plants to get their share of carbon. Its giant mass makes the sun the dominant gravitational force in the solar system that locks all eight planets into elliptical orbits.

At the same time, the sun’s enormous energy heats our planet just enough so that Earth’s surface is the right temperature for liquid water — the catalyst for life.

But what would happen if we lost the sun?

What might seem like a silly question on the surface was actually an important thought experiment for Albert Einstein.

Their is a speed for gravity!

Before Einstein attacked this problem, scientists suspected — but hadn't proved — that gravity acted instantaneously. 

If that were true, then the first thing that would happen when the sun disappeared is that Earth, along with all the other planets, would go flying off into space. It would be complete and utter chaos in our solar system.

Light, on the other hand, is not instantaneous: It travels at approximately 1080 million kilometres per hour and takes roughly 8 minutes to reach Earth. Therefore, we would still see the sun in our sky eight minutes after it was gone.

So, if the speed of light is a constant and the speed of gravity is instantaneous, then we would feel the sun’s disappearance before we saw it.

But, as Einstein showed in in his theory of general relativity that he introduced in 1915, the force from gravity is not instantaneous. In fact, it travels the same speed as light.

Therefore, if the sun disappeared, we would remain blissfully unaware for eight minutes that inevitable doom was upon us.

Eternal night when the doom hits.

We wouldn't be left in complete and utter darkness, however.

The stars would still shine, and electricity would continue to work so cities would remain lit for as long as the power lasted. Even the planets would remain visible for a brief time.

For example, when Jupiter is closest to Earth it’s about 33 light minutes away, which means we would continue to see the giant planet for over an hour — the time it would take for residual sunlight to reach Jupiter and reflect back to Earth — after the sun was gone.

But after eight minutes, one thing on Earth would come to a screeching halt, explains Michael Stevens, who founded and stars in the widely popular YouTube channel Vsauce.

Without sunlight, photosynthesis will not happen because plant cannot generate food without light.

Most small plants would die within a matter of days,but the bigger plants will live a year or more depending on their stored food, but that’s not what we should be worried about: Earth’s average surface temperature would drop to 0 degrees Celsius after the first week, and then to minus 100 degrees by the end of the first year, Stevens says.

All the while, Earth’s oceans would grow ever colder, eventually freezing over, transforming Earth into an ice world but liquid underneath because ice is a good insulator, just like deep lakes in winter, only the surface would freeze, leaving a liquid ocean underneath. If any humans survived this extreme transformation, their only refuge, according to Stevens, would be near geothermal vents on the ocean floor.

These vents emit heat that wells up from the centre of the Earth.

Life on Earth would thrive for billions of years but not as we expect!

There is something called geothermal energy that comes from the beneath the earth crust. There are under ocean volcanoes in the deep ocean where complex life forms live without sun because they don't need one. They keep themselves by taking support for superheated water from the volcanoes. These complex life forms are called extremophiles. They generate energy from a process called chemosynthesis. They will never know that sun is no more or never know if it ever existed.

What lies beyond Apocalypse?

This artist’s impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth. Alpha Centauri B is the most brilliant object in the sky and the other dazzling object is Alpha Centauri A. Our own Sun is visible to the upper right.

Right now, Earth is orbiting the sun at a blazing speed of 107,000 kilometers per hour. If the sun vanished, its gravitational pull would be gone, but Earth’s speed would remain the same but ejected in a trajectory tangential to the earth's revolutionary orbit the moment we realise the sun is no more.

To understand why, picture yourself tying a rock to the end of a string and then swinging that string in a circle over your head. Then you let go of the string. The rock goes flying in a straight line away from you, the same way that Earth would go flying in a straight line away from the central point in space where the sun used to sit.

S

As long as Earth didn’t collide with any other planets, asteroids, or comets, it would only take about 377,000 hours (43,000 years) for it to traverse 4.3 light years — the distance to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

And after 1 billion years, Steven calculates, Earth would have travelled 100,000 light years, or the length of the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Who’s to say our tiny planet wouldn't get picked up and pulled into orbit by another star or, perhaps, a black hole? The Milky Way harbours an estimated 100 billion stars and as many as a billion black holes. Whatever the outcome, Earth’s future after no sun would be an exciting adventure across the cosmos.

Man of few Words. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In many ways, Arnold Schwarzenegger has built a career on being a man of very few words. Many fans don’t realize just how few those words are: In the first Terminator movie, the titular killing machine has only 18 lines, which comes to fewer than 100 words.

Financially, though, this worked out for the actor. With his relatively low salary of $750,000 for The Terminator, Arnold was still raking in about $7,500 per word. That salary jumped to $15 million for Terminator 2, and Arnold’s word count jumped up to 700 words. That means, though, that his iconic line from that movie—“hasta la vista, baby”—was worth $85,716 on its own! If that’s not mind-boggling enough, one of his commands to John Connor in the movie—“Go!”—was worth $21,429.

Given the increasing dollar-to-word ratio, it’s easy to see why Arnold had no problem living up to his promise of being back for future movies.

The 1984 film The Terminator wasn’t the blockbuster we think of when we look back at it now, because it takes time and hindsight for a movie to become a classic. But it performed better than expected by the makers made money and it established a franchise that now seems so familiar to us all.

The success of The Terminator sent Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood career into high gear. In the next ten years, he starred in ten action films and several comedies. The biggest of them all was Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which he again played a terminator, but this time he was the good guy. Schwarzenegger played a similar cyborg in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and is set to reprise the role in Terminator: Genisys. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger married NBC journalist Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family, in 1986. They were married for 25 years and had four children together. In 2003, Schwarzenegger entered the special recall election to replace California governor Gray Davis. He defeated over 100 other candidates on the ballot to became the governor of California. He was re-elected in 2006. Schwarzenegger’s stint in politics earned him the title of “The Governator.”

Once Filthiest Palace on Earth.

The palace of Versailles is a national symbol of France filled with beauty & grandeur, considered as the world heritage place by UNESCO. There was a time when it was considered worlds filthiest place by visitors from other nation during the rule of king Louis  XIV and Louis XVI.It was said that it was more smellier and filthier than streets of pairs itself.

Although the Bourbon’s spared no expense in the expansion and upkeep of Versailles, the main problem was that the palace and grounds had little in the way of sewage and bathroom facilities.  As the center of the Kingdom of France, Versailles was often filled with courtiers, VIP’s,  there to petition the king, or ask for favors and handouts.  There were also hundreds of commoners who were spectators and tourists. In addition, another 2,000 people made Versailles their permanent home.  With a lack of bathroom facilities, it was not uncommon for people to use the grand and ornate hallways of Versailles as places to relieve themselves, urinating or defecating behind columns or in Versailles’ many archways to which even dogs and other pets of the people in the palace contributed.

When the English politician Horace Walpole visited Versailles, he noted “Versailles was a vast cesspool, reeking of filth and befouled with ordure…The odor clung to clothes,wigs, even undergarments. Worst of all, beggars, servants, and aristocratic visitors alike used the stairs, the corridors, any out-of-the-way place to relieve themselves. The passages, the court yards, the wings and the corridors were full of urine and faecal matter. The park, the gardens and the château made one retch with their bad smell.”

Versailles beautiful courtyards and gardens were also not immune to the filth, often being used as a corral for animals by visitors, and as a dumping ground for garbage and sewage.  King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had their own rooms and apartments deeper within Versailles, often accessed by a network of secret doors and hallways which connected to the public common area.  However, even the king and queen’s personal quarters were not free of the stench and filth.  One other major problem was that Versailles’ chimneys did not draw out air very well, so much of the inner rooms of Versailles were covered in soot and ash from its many fireplaces.

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI hated living in the filth at Versailles, especially Marie, after having a chamber pot accidentally emptied on her, which was casually thrown from a window out to the courtyard.  To get away from Versailles, Marie Antoinette had a quaint village built a mile away from the palace, which often served as her residence.

Today, Versailles is hardly the cesspit of its early past.  Rather, as a national treasure it is fastidiously kept and preserved.  Proper pluming was installed in the early 19th century, so there is no longer any need for tourists and visitors to leave their human wastes in the hallways.

The Legacy of Sugar: 5 reasons why sugar rules

It was 326 BC. Alexander the Great and his elite troops just managed to reach India. They observed the Indians making a crystalline, salt like sweet substance from “honey bearing reeds” (sugar cane) which they called Sharkara (or Sharkaram) which was greekified to Saccharum. 

Despite being the diamond capital of the world at the time, India then immediately earned the credit for finding another sparkling gem of a thing which was more appealing to the masses, Sugar!

The word “Sharkara” in Sanskrit literally means “gravel”, hence it is thought that sugar made from these early production methods were raw and resembled gravels rather than the finer, clearer variety we get today.

Some of the reasons why sugar rocks the crown are:

1. Introduction to world food: Mothers mix baby food with sugar to make babies to eat their food (somehow) because to them sweetness is the only appealing taste they can put inside their mouths. Honey has a bad reputation for causing constipation hence it is not as popular in baby food as sugar.
2. Cheap: With only 66cents/pound, sugar is still the cheapest sweetener than most artificial ones. It is included as a rationed food commodity for low income groups in India.
3. Taste quality: Sugar, so far, signals the most clear sweet taste to the tongue. All artificial sweeteners have got some unpleasant after-taste, especially when tasted directly. Sugar also makes baked and fried foods crisp and hard which is preferable in some. Sugar is also a chief ingredient in glazing and icing of cakes and making cotton candies (yum!) Caramel has its own books to write too.
4. Not a commodity but an emotion: Since it has been in continuous use in sweets and candies for millennia, sugar is synonymous for joy, happiness and celebration. In the 14th century Europe, sugar was a much priced commodity there. So it was considered a symbol of royalty to have black, rotting and missing teeth! It supposedly showed that they could afford sugar and indulging on it, and rightly so! In the Victorian era, black teeth became a fashion statement and common people, who could not afford sugar, even painted their teeth black!
5. It is tasty: And it is yum! Enough said.

What is a Perfect crime?

According to Wikipedia "Perfect crime is a colloquial term used in law and fiction  principally crime fiction) to characterize crimes that are undetected, unattributed to a perpetrator, or else unsolved as a kind of technical achievement on the part of the perpetrator."

But Is this definition is good enough? Is it really that fictional in terms? If Undetected crime is a perfect crime then I would say we can see it every now and then. Like not paying the tax even if it is small, destroying public property, etc. The whole point is i think the definition of the perfect crime is all wrong to begin with.A stricter definition of the term indicates that for a crime to be truly perfect, the crime should never be detected at all, removing all possibility that a person will ever be caught or tried for a crime. This is not necessarily any one particular crime, but can refer to any sort of criminal act that defies solution. The perfect crime typically reflects upon the criminal, and does not serve to indicate poor performance on the part of those investigating the crime.

In an anime that I watched long ago in which a boy asks his mother ' What is a perfect crime?' then she replies that even in fictions the perfect crime doesn't exists because the fiction is to enjoy that means the crime will get eventually solved, making it just a crime and she adds more by saying that perfect crime won't even become a story. She ask her son a question that what are the bare essentials of a story? and he replies "Introduction, Development, Turn and Conclusion". She then replies nonchalantly that without an introduction story wouldn't even begin. she explains it in real scenario that nothing happens(seems to happen) means no intro, so there will be no crime(Again seems) so there is no need for a detective to solve and without the solution there is no conclusion. So this was her definition of perfect crime.

Simply nothing happened so nothing would start, nothing starts so no development, no development so no turn and at last no conclusion. The perfect crime does not even get noticed at all to put it in simple words it is invisible.