Monday, November 30, 2009

Daily Dose (Miscellaneous)

  1. James Bowthorpe ventured out on his 18,000-mile bike ride through 20 countries, the cabinet-maker from south London is set to become the fastest man to cycle round the globe.
  2. The Right to Information act is a law enacted by the Parliament of India giving citizens of India access to records of the Central Government and State Governments. The Act applies to all States and Union Territories of India, except the State of Jammu and Kashmir - which is covered under a State-level law.This law was passed by Parliament on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 13 October 2005 . Information disclosure in India was hitherto restricted by the Official Secrets Act 1923 and various other special laws, which the new RTI Act now relaxes.
  3. The Parliament of India (or Sansad) is the federal and supreme legislative body of India. It consists of the office of President of India and two houses, the lower house, known as the Lok Sabha and the upper house, known as the Rajya Sabha.. It is located in New Delhi at Sansad Bhavan on Sansad Marg.
  4. A federal government is the common government of a federation.
  5. federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central (federal) government. In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of the central government.
  6. A sovereign state, commonly simply referred to as a state, is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. 
  7. Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. 
  8. The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centred upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority.
  9. Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies.
  10. During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called the West, was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. It included some Central European countries (like The German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland) which had a Western type culture.The Third World consisted of countries unaligned with either, and important members included India and Yugoslavia; some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed,as the People's Republic of China was communist, had friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics.