General.
Damn lies and White lies.
News and Gossip.
What is gossip? Aimless chit chat of the idlers, used to kill the time? A fair definition I suppose. But let us delve into this further. A nonclassical definition for news could be, “What the TV and Radio announces at the newshour”. News paper headlines could also be added. Generally all main media attempts to be within perfect accuracy as they may lose credibility and even get sued if they falsify them.  Fig. Segmentation of news. All news can be cast into two segments as Global and local. Important events that will affect a greater part of the wide world are global news. For example if WHO reports on the Covid 19 pandemic it will spread all over the world whereas the results of the cannabis referendum in New Zealand would be a local issue. The segmentation may continue as Provincial news, City news or regional news. Anything smaller would become gossip? Are you shocked or surprised? So news about people around you, your relations, friends , colleagues and other acquaintances could be gossip. Let us look at it from another angle; for example if your boss Mr. Simpleton has taken his private secretary Daisy for a Dinner dance, Commenting, chatting or reporting this will be gossip. Next week they get married. You may wish to organise a reception for the couple. For which category would you put announcing this event ? Talking about this will still be gossip, but it is not bad unless you neglect your duties while doing so. Spreading personal news among friends, relatives and others, close to you is essential. Interactions between the members of a community or a tribe by human speech is a unique achievement of human beings. Seeking knowledge is crusial for gaining experience and maturity.. Reading books on facts and fiction , watching movies and drama are all extensions of this urge. While gossip is a tool that can radically change the respect or popularity of an individual, party or an ideology they also have a beneficial effect on society. In earlier times, in Sri Lanka if somebody acts contrary to the ideals of the society an anonymous poem (Kavi kola) gets pasted on trees. In Nigeria a masquerade act takes place to punish the culprit. The mode of gossip also matters. It is generally face to face loose talk or chat. In this case the body language of the narrator reveals a lot of unspoken words. If you are getting the message by a phone extrapolation of the fact is possible only through the tone. Moreover lengthy phone calls can even become a nuisance. if you have no interest in the matter. But on the other hand direct messages through a phone are more reliable, provided the caller can be identified, than the rumours that come across the grape wine. Nowadays there are more modern ways of spreading gossip, that's through social media such as Facebook and YOUtube. According to a survey by the ‘Pew Research Centre’ only about 28% of adults consider social media to be very important for helping them keep up with news. This of course varies widely from country to country. A society I know, In their get togethers prior to the proper programme, they give a few minutes for the members to engage in gossip. One may say, “You know, my grandson stood up even before his first birthday”. or another will announce, “My daughter Nelia has at last found a boy. They may get married next year”. Nobody can object to this kind of gossip but remember there is a limit. |
Lesser known facts.
 Can the Earth be squeezed? Yes! It happens all the time. We all know that the ocean water gets attracted due to the attraction of the moon causing high tide and low tide. It has been noticed that when ever the sea level rises the ground water level goes down. This remained unexplained for a long time. Now it has been explained. During the high tide when the moon attracts the water in the oceans, it also squeezes the earth. The earth behaving like a sponge gets squeezed pushing the ground water level up. The large hadron collider in the Swiss, Paris border, uses a circular tunnel which is over 27 km circumference. Here protons are accelerated to a speed almost as high as that of light. So the path has to be correctly adjust . How ever careful they are t has been found that it has be to be corrected twice , everyday. It has been measured that the circumference of the circular tunnel changes by 1 millimeter during the tides. ……………… Source:-Infinity in the palm of your hand by Marcus Chown. Chapter 12. Most Misbehaving Molecule.  It comes not from a rare chemical but one of the most common compound . It has been estimated by a US geological survey that the the earth has over 300 million cubic miles of it. It is none other than a simple oxide of Hydrogen that we refer to as water. There cannot be any life without this and these molecules fill up about 50% of our body mass. Yet it is a molecule that the scientist find it difficult to understand.
 Mpemba effect. In 1953 a 13 yr, old student in Tanzania discovered that hot milk freezes before cold milk. His teacher did not believe that. As the boy entered high school he came in touch with Professor Denis Osborne from Dare Salam University, who encouraged him to do more experiments. In i969 they produced a scientific paper in a prestigious journal. Yet the this effect has not been properly explained.
Density effect. It is a well known fact that all matter irrespective of state or phase, contract in cooling. This effect of contracting increases the density. In the case of water this is true only up to 4° C. and there after further cooling causes an expansion. This is why ice at 0 C floats in water at 30 °C. Some physical properties. We may compare some of the properties of water with a few simpler compounds.
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Birth and Death
Birth and Death Irrespective of nationality, race or creed, it is an inborn belief of the majority, that life starts with birth and ends in death. Of course some sects believe in previous lives and a sort of transmigration (An existence after death). There is no known valid experiment to verify any existence after death, or prior to birth but science can peep into the intricacies of the two vital events, birth and death. The dictionaries generally give the definition of birth as, “The emergence and separation of off spring from the body of the mother.”. This is true for mammals and some other higher animals but not for the oviparous. What about a chick coming out of an egg ? 1. Chick coming out of its shell. Which is birth in this situation; Is it the laying of an egg or hatching out? Extending this further to other living organisms we may consider the seed bearing plants. of a sprouting bean.Figure shows three stages · Stage1:- Seed coat has ruptured and the radicle that forms the root and the lower part of the stem, that forms the arch above the ground (hypocotyl) has developed. · Stage 2:- The hypocotyl pulls the cotyledons above the ground. · Stage 3:- The cotyledons turn green and the true leaves have developed. Fig. 1 Birth of a bean plant. Which could be best considered as the birth of a new plant? Emerging of the radicle, pulling the cotyledons up or the development of true leaves ? (If a baby coming out of the amnions sac and the bird coming out of an egg are taken as birth, a seedling coming out has also to be considered as ‘birth’ although the botanists favour the term ‘germination’).
In the same tone mammalian reproduction may also be queried. · Stage 1:-The ovary produces an egg cell with 23 chromosomes . ( A living unit with a complete record of the mother’s heredity , which can fill several DVDs ) · Stage 2:- The testes produce spermatozoa with a nucleus also with 23 chromosomes bearing the father’s heredity. These cells are mobile due to the presence of a flagellum. · Stage 3:-Only one sperm enters the egg and the chromosome number doubles. After fertilization the cell is called a zygote. · Stage 4:- The zygote gets attached to the womb . The embryo develops inside a sac. · Stage 5:- After the gestation period the amnion sac bursts and the off spring is pushed out. · Stage 6:- The off spring starts to breathe. In a normal sense the stages 5 and 6 are jointly considered as birth. Considering this sequence of events that leads to the birth of a new individual, in which stage does the new arrival starts life? For life to propagate there should have been a beginning. There’s no way, birth can be considered as the beginning of a living thing, To begin with God may have created man and other living organisms. Or may be life started by a gradual process over a very long period in a spontaneous manner or may be life has come from far away space. Spontaneous origin of Life The theory of ‘Spontaneous generation of life’ was initiated by Alexander Oparin, and J. B. S. Haldane in 1920. In 1952 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted a classic experiment at the University of Chicago. to verify this theory. Starting from inorganic matter, he obtained a few organic substances only by subjecting them to primordial conditions for a few days. In 2007 under the sponsorship of NASA eminent biochemists re analysed the sealed vials from Miller’s experiment, using the latest teart codon' in the genetic code, which tells a cell's machinery to begin translating ( making proteins according to genetic cord) the design for a protein," Anachniques. They found many more amino acids and concluded as follows ."The sulfur-containing amino acids we found include significant biological ones like methionine, the product of the 'stlytical Astrobiology Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, DR. Sidney Fox an eminent bio chemist also experimented with abiogenesis and the primordial soup theory. In one of his experiments, he allowed amino acids to dry out as if puddled in a warm, dry spot in prebiotic conditions. He found that, as they dried, the amino acids formed long, often cross-linked, thread-like, sub-microscopic molecules now named "proteinoids". Cosmic origin In the 1980s, Sir Fred Hoyle developed and promoted, along with Chandra Wickramasinghe, the theory of “panspermia”. He calculated the chances of the simplest living cell forming out of some primordial soup as infinitesimally small, and described that theory as “evidently nonsense of a high order”. They have just passed the baby to space without explaining the beginning. Even in outer space life could have been created or began on its own. But a recent study by a few NASA scientists seem to be in agreement with panspermia. NASA findings “ For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space.” Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Here is an another extract from a report from NASA. “Scientists think that the basic ingredients of life, including water and organics, began their journey to Earth on these lonesome ice particles. The ice and organics would have found their way into comets and asteroids, which then fell to Earth, delivering "prebiotic" ingredients that could have jump-started life.” Common Descent Whether the life originated in the plumes of volcanic ash or in the hot wells under the sea or far away in space, the pointer seems to be tilted to spontaneous generation. On studying all forms of life today it has been concluded that they all have had a common origin. “Biologists have evidence that all life developed from a common ancestor that lived just under 4 billion years ago, and the concept is accepted by virtually all scientists working in the field. The structures and functions of all living organisms are encoded in the same basic nucleic molecules, DNA and RNA. Similarities in amino acid sequences between various organisms also suggest a common origin”. There is strong quantitative support for this theory Back to Birth Let us get back to where we started. It is clear life started with just one or two strands of RNA or DNA. Then came the cells and unicellular organisms . They produced young ones by’ a process called ‘binary fission’. A mother cell could divide into two or more cells. Earliest multi cellular plants and animals also had a similar asexual process to reproduce. A hydra, an animal about a cm long, living attached to rocks in water develop branches called buds. These get detached growing into new individuals. “Many hydras reproduce asexually by producing buds in the body wall, which grow to be miniature adults and simply break away when they are mature”. Wikipedia. This is also a case of a new individual being born. Except at the origin of life , a new life comes from detaching a living part of a living thing. The child is only a break away part of the parent. There is no BIRTH ; (in the sense a new life) but only continuation of life. Life and Death Death is considered as the most un avoidable finale of any organism. Now consider the hydra. You can kill it but it may not die due to senility. The body of it can divide and exist as new individuals. The historic Bo tree (Ficus religiosa) at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka is over 2500 years old. It may not die at all as new shoots can spring up from the base. Consider a multicellular animal such as a human being. There are trillions of cells of various sorts ranging from unspecialised stem cells to highly specialised cells performing a multitude of functions. Every cell is a unit of life. Many have their own life cycle. The skin cells have a life span of two or three weeks. As new cells come up to the surface of the skin old cells die and peel off. Red blood cells get specialised from the stem cells in the bone marrow and die after two days of yeomen service. During the life time man f a man Millions of births and funerals take place with little or no knowledge. A multicellular creature is similar to a highly developed city. Unwanted buildings may be demolished and new structures may be built without affecting the city. If the power system fails, it would affect every individual in the metropolis. A constriction in a blood vessel supplying oxygen to a heart muscle may cripple and permanently damage the heart muscles. If timely action is not taken the organism may not recover at all. It is not easy to diagnose death. From the earliest times cessation of breathing was considered an unmistakable sign of death. For the doctors stopping the heart beat and thereby the blood circulation became the legal point of death. If an electric shock or Cardiopulmonary resuscitation can resume the heart beat man could not have died. Loosing consciousness due to brain death could also be taken as a sign of death. Yet a brain dead man can be made to live with life support systems. Even if a person has been declared dead by the doctors, the corpse could contain several living organs at least for for a few hours. If so how can you say the man was dead? In most cases birth and death cannot be considered as single events but events that take some time. So we are forced to have doubts with regard to previous lives and transmigration. seedling coming out has also to be considered as ‘birth’ although the botanists favour the term ‘germination’).
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100 Days in Samoa.
One Hundred days in Samoa By Andy Southall. Taking the contents of One hundred days, superficially one may think the primary target of this book is to discourage the tourists from visiting Samoa. Repetitive touching on loud noises, the barking and chasing dogs, gaudy shades in buses, and lava lavas screaming all around and the official bunglings support this view. But what the subconscious mind gets on reading this is an urge to visit the island. He is criticising the place in order to have the opposite effect on the readers. As he starts the book he talks about a con man. A man says “ I stamped your passports” On a later day when he was confronted by saying, “Our passports were stamped by a woman” con man’s reply was hilarious, “ Yes. Sometimes I get dressed like a woman” Almost in every country, the tourists meet such people and they generally cause trouble. This man for some reason only came out with an innocent lie. The author and his wife decided to spend a holiday in Samoa having only a few objectives. That was to avoid the harsh N.Z. winter, for a change in their lifestyle and for Kate to render some volunteer service.. This statement proves that ,” Travel is not always rushing somewhere, you can learn as much by studying the grass under your feet” (page 15) Again in the midst of their tour this is what they did “ We lay on beds staring out to sea. Doing nothing. Nothing at all”. (page 188) They were not after attractions like ancient cathedrals and pyramids. They were only looking for lonely beaches for sunbathing and spots for safe snorkeling. The husband was collecting facts for his writings while the wife wanted to render some volunteer work. They definitely got all these, not free but at a cost of few talas for every photo and every entry into a beach.. The author also derived a lot of satisfaction by discovering a lot about his literary hero R L Stephenson. His wife was able to teach mathematics in a Samoan School. He relates a number of interesting incidents and minor mishaps in a manner to please any reader. When they went to see a rugger match they found that the letter of the seat no had been punched out. In their tickets. He seems to be a master at creating humour . “There are many pests that are forbidden…...none of them was attempting to ride my bike” (page 8) “The coffee tasted sublime with a protein supply of ants. Ants were safe to drink but not the water” (page 20) “ Smoans smile as they have the sea, sun and no trains but the Kiwis, have their lips glued together with gloom and their laughter muscles severed with the sharp edges of their season passes”(referring to ‘season tickets’ of train travellers.) (page 56) His witty exaggerations of what happened after climbing a hill- “ Sweating bucket loads of sweat and heart beating like a jackhammer. (Page 92) Somewhere else “ Inhaling like a vacuum cleaner at full power” An innocent punch at an elderly hostess, “ Her eyes sparkled and her face crinkled like over baked pastry…….she laughed so loud her jaws split like the two halves of a coconut” (page 177) There are vivid descriptions of some natural phenomena endemic to such islands. “As the sea rushed through underground lava tubes enormous jets of water exploded into the air.It was like watching ocean fireworks, never quite sure which blow hole would go off next” If there is a little bit of dead weight in the book it is the excessive narratives of Ted and Teresa.Except for this the book is very well written and can be considered as a high class travelogue. It is my sincere warning that nobody is safe to tour Samoa without reading this book. |
My heart attack.
හමටාන්
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Barbecue and Browning.
Normally we cook food by a process called boiling. Boiling rice, vegetables and yams and making of curries are examples. The main feature of this process is that the temperature remains at or around 100℃, the boiling point of water. When we boil plant or animal matter cells rupture and the contents become accessible to enzymes for digestion. The large molecules like polysaccharides break down, starch grains absorb water and food becomes tastier and easier to digest but the food does not get the brown colour and the strong flavours and aromas. Maillard Reactions. The browning of food was studied by the French scientist Louis Camille Maillard (1878-1936), This is not a simple reaction as we have been taught the carbohydrates becoming carbon and water. C12H22O11 → 12C + 11H2O. It is true that this is what finally what happens when the food gets charred. There are a large number of intermediate compounds, which is evident by the colours produced and and the aromas given out. Most of the food chemicals produced by the maillard reactions have tantalising aromas and incredibly unique tastes. For the most of them, their health benefits or adverse effects have not been properly studied yet. But a substance has been found which is supposed to be carcinogenic. It is named ‘furan”. |
Vegetables.
Cucumber CUCUMBER Botanical name--. Cucumis sativus Family-- Cucurbitacea (Gourd family) An E mail sent by Daneiel Muthumala. Phd.
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L O L.
“We should learn to love our enemies” - Mahatma Gandhi Now, whom to follow and which one to choose? |
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