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Dr. S. Sundarrajan

Shubhadeep Roy

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Sibi Rajendran

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Shubhadeep Roy

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Nicholas Carr, a renowned blogger wrote an inspired essay titled “Is Google making us stupid?”. It wasn’t targeted at the renowned search engine, but to the internet and people of the world in general. The advent of smartphones and cheap internet has stopped us from thinking altogether. Whenever we can’t remember an incident, we Google first and ponder over it later. From current affairs to medical symptoms, everything is done online. And this is a dangerous precedent to fall into. A bad case of flu may become swine flu if you read into the internet too much, and soon the hypochondriac in you takes charge as you end up buying hundreds of face masks and sanitisers only to see them lie useless in days to come. The biggest problem arises however, when we let the internet form our opinions for us. A woman had posted a racist tweet while she got on a flight to Africa. By the time she landed, she had not only lost her job but had millions of people posting hate mail and death threats to her. She was trying to be funny with a racist tweet to her 50 followers but did she deserve to be served death threats for the same? And most of these haters were jumping the bandwagon because it was trending right then. And she isn’t the only woman to face the wrath of an uninformed social media. Take the case of the recent BBC documentary, it showed the men of India in horrible light and we, me included, were quick to shame the country. But we forgot who we were dealing with-BBC. It’s a channel that still shows India to be a country of snake charmers and farmers who’re barely surviving. The budget of an economy as important as India wasn’t important enough to be covered but the opinions of a few twisted men deserved to be broadcast the world over. Our love for the nation should not be so weak, so as to be moved by a few words by someone who would never know our situation. The internet enables you to look up anything you want and get it slightly wrong most of the time. It’s like a trashy never-ending tabloid that sucks away all time, space and logic. We are the species with the genius to create something as wondrous as the internet in the first place. Surely we have enough self-control to stay away from Facebook and Twitter.

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ORIGINS OF

Innovation has always been at the forefront of warfare. This issue, we look at something esoteric, the origins of weapons immortalized in history and popular culture.

ORIGINS OF

Molotov Cocktail A term GTA fans will be quite familiar with, Molotov Cocktails are essentially glass bottles filled with flammable liquid such as petrol or napalm. Usually, an alcohol soaked rag, serves the stopper. The weapon was thought to have been invented during the Spanish Civil War, in a battle where nationalist troops ran out of anti-tank weapons, and were forced to use glass jam jars filled with the flammable concoction to deadly effect. The name, however, was coined by Finnish soldiers as an insult directed towards the then Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, who was responsible for the Soviet invasion of Eastern Finland.

Nunchaku

Military Tanks The concept of an armored, self-propelled and armed vehicle was the subject of several works of science-fiction in the pre-20th century era. The concept and base design was even mentioned in the works of the Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci, depicting a man enclosed in an armored shell, surrounded by cannons. However, early designs were limited by the technology of their times. It was only after the invention of the internal combustion Engine in the late 1800s that tanks could actually be built and tested. During World War I, Great Britain was the first country to use tanks or ‘landships’ as they were called, due to the fact that the Royal Navy developed them, in battle. The name ‘tank’ was born after infantry soldiers often commented that the landships resembled water tanks.

Torpedo The word torpedo comes from the name of the genus of electric rays. The genus name stems from the Latin torpere, meaning stiff or numb. The American Robert Fulton introduced the name to refer to a towed gunpowder charge used by his submarine to demonstrate that it could sink warships. Early spar torpedoes were created by a certain Cornelius Drebbel who was in the service of King James I of England. Drebbel attached explosives to the end of a beam affixed to one of his own submarines. They were used during the English expeditions to La Rochelle in 1626.

A weapon synonymous with Bruce Lee, popular belief is that nunchaku was originally a short South-east Asian flail used to thresh rice or soybeans. Theories claim that the nunchaku was originally adapted from a wooden clapper called hyoshiki carried by the village night watch, made of two blocks of wood joined by a cord. The night watch would hit the blocks of wood together to attract people's attention, then warn them about fires and other dangers. This eventually turned into the weapon of Oriental yore.

Biological Warfare Infectious diseases were recognized for their potential impact on people and armies as early as 600 B.C. The crude use of filth and cadavers, animal carcasses, and contagion had devastating effects and weakened the enemy. Polluting wells and other sources of water of the opposing army was a common strategy that continued to be used through the many European wars and into the 20th century. The most infamous instance of Biological warfare was reportedly during the siege of Caffa, a well-fortified Genoese seaport. In 1346, the besieging force were faced with an epidemic. The invaders converted their misfortune into an opportunity by hurling the cadavers of their deceased into the city, thus initiating a plague epidemic in the city. The outbreak followed, forcing a retreat of the Genoese forces. The plague pandemic, also known as the Black Death, swept through Europe, the Near East, and North Africa in the 14th century and was probably the most devastating public health disaster in recorded history.

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