Why people blog?

Nowadays the blogs seem to be replacing the Fifth estate. Indian paparazzi are more using blogs to get into the limelight rather than call a press conference and make the announcements. I am totally baffled as to why people blog. I asked one great researcher why he blogs. He 'defined' blog as a personal diary which can be accessed as long as you have access to internet(though his definition of 'definition' is pretty vague and hazy). But then, if you are really interested in penning your thoughts and ideologies, then why go online, in the days of hacking, cracking and 'phishing'?

When your credit card can be accessed and hacked using a computer, why write your thoughts, which are more valuable than mere 6 sq. inch cards?

Being a statistician, my feeling is that a personal diary is very less probable to be stolen than a blog being intruded. So why blogging?

Some Photos.

Lake Michigan Surfers.




















(left)Sad and lonely. :(













Human face.

Hiking/Chicago Trip.

Today, we planned to go to Starved Rock State Park which is in Illinois(IL). We four started driving from seven in the morning as it was 3.5 hours drive from St. Louis. We reached there by 10:30, it was good light hazy weather for hiking. We had our brunch in a restaurant, it was buffet and was good, I enjoyed it. Then we left for hiking with a map, which showed 4-5 small canyons along the side of Illinois river. The river was not huge, as what I would say but it was surrounded by good mountains/hilly areas. We headed with the map and got few pictures(whose link will be posted soon(hopefully) in my album). We were lucky to get some good ones in our cameras. Then we finally walked alongside the river to the parking lot. The surprising moment came when we decided to have some good food after all that excitement in the hiking, not to mention that the hiking was really tiring as we walked for some 10 miles on those mountains and along the river. Anyways, we decided to go to Gareeb Nawaz/Usmania(in Chicago) for Biryani!!! And we left for it. We reached Usmania at 1630 hrs. got our biryanis but not before we saw the lake Michigan as we drove through the Lake Drive and near Sears Tower. Lake looked astonishing, it was beautiful and filled with surfers. As it was already 6 and given that it will take 5 hours to drive back we left Chicago(Chicago is 313 miles from St. Louis). But that was not the end of surprise, we were caught by the hail storm that was there waiting for us in the dark night, 150 miles before our destination. And we were racing @80 mph, which was both exciting and crazy. We drove past people who were mere 40 and were reluctant to speed up. Over all it was a total surprise trip which was made in few second's initiation and executed with the most excitement(if not perfection).