CULTURAL QA 02-2022-02 BEING A COMPILATION THERE MAY BE ERRORS
Q1 What do you love themost about your spouse? A1 GopalkrishnaVishwanath Never dated any one and yet happily married.3h Where do I start? And can I everend this list? She has spent just half as many years as I have in acquiring a collegedegree. She is a Bachelor of Science. I am a Master’s degree holder inEngineering. But she has twice as much common sense as I do. She has a flair for languages. She speaks fluently in English, Hindi,Tamil, Kannada and can understand Telugu, Bengali, and Malayalam. She has moved around the country, imbibed the cultures of various states,and feels at home anywhere like me. Before marrying me and settling inBengaluru, she has lived in Chennai, Sindri( Jharkand), Delhi, Rourkela,Kolkata, and Visakhapatnam spent time in Kerala and Mumbai too. Unlike many Indian wives, shegot along fine with my mother and spared me the usual problemsIndian hubbies often face after their marriage. She has been a dutiful daughterto her parents. She isone of four daughters and no son. She took the place of a son and helped herparents like any dutiful son would have done and took on onerous familyresponsibilities to ease the burden on her parents. The details are too personaland I will skip them. She gave birth to two outstanding, talented, and capable children andbrought them up competently. The details are personal and to protect theprivacy of my children, I will skip them. She managed a full-time jobalso the responsibilities of running a home competently. I helped her of course but that does not detractfrom her capabilities and her efficiency. She is better at financialmanagement. Having worked in a Bank for 19 years, I have left all money matters to her and don’teven know how much money there is in my bank and how much our expenses andsavings are. She handles everything leaving me free to indulge in my hobbiesand interests. She is an excellent cook and can prepare a variety of dishes, both Northand South Indian. She is much more sociable and gregarious than I am. She has more friendsand acquaintances than I have. I am well known on Quora but not in real life.She is much better known in my neighborhood than I. I am recognized only as ‘her husband’ by the peoplein our immediate neighborhood. She loves “managing” and loses no opportunity to do it. She manages myhome entirely. I have no say. In the gated community where I lived beforemoving into my retirement home, she was an active committee member in our resident’swelfare association. She took the lead in several community projects andinitiated many new and environment-friendly initiatives in our apartmentcomplex, chief of which was garbage segregation. She personally went aroundfrom door to door persuading other residents to segregate their garbage. I used to jokingly refer to heras the GM of our association. GM incidentally was not General Manager butGarbage Manager. Today, in the retirement home we are now living in,she is a committee member of our resident’s association and its Treasurer andtakes part in many community activities. She is well known to all the residentshere. And finally, she used to be a stunning beauty during her younger days.She was a traffic stopper during those days when she zoomed around BengaluruCity, riding on the pillion of my Yezdi and later Bullet motorcycle. My note- G Viswanath is known forhis satirical writings. Q2 Why have the greatestgeniuses in the history of mankind been mostly men, i.e. Da Vinci, Tesla,Einstein, Newton, Goethe, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Galilei,Descartes, Michelangelo, Spinoza, Maxwell, Copernicus, Mozart, Hawking, etc? A2 Claire Jordan Degreein biology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper14h There were always some female geniuses as well -Sappho, Karni Mata, Hildegard of Bingen, Aphra Behn, Julian of Norwich, MadamCurie etc. But up until theinvention of reliable contraception, most women spent most of their adult lifepregnant or suckling babies or both, so you had to be either sterile, acelibate nun or rich enough to hire a wet nurse to even have time to doanything academic or artistic, and most women didn’t get much education becausethey were expected to spend their lives pregnant. Q3 How does exerciseprotect your brain from degeneration? A3 Ken Saladin Formerprofessor of histology (microscopic anatomy)Updated Jan 23 I don’t think it can totally stop it, but it will slow it down and reduceits effect. This is true notonly of physical but also mental exercise; staying both physically active and intellectually engagedthroughout life is the best strategy for minimizing functional loss to brainsenescence. At the level of individual neurons, these have about thesame effect, but in different regions of the brain. Frequent use of neural pathways involved in mental and physical exercisestimulate the formation of new synapses and strengthening or facilitation ofexisting ones. In the cerebral cortex, neurons have knobby processes calleddendritic spines, seen below. These are points of synaptic contact where theneuron receives input from other neurons. Learning—whether it is of an intellectual sort orlearning a motor skill—stimulates development of increased numbers of dendriticspines, more contact and communication with other neurons, and astrengthening of brain mental and motor functions. With disuse, these spinesdeteriorate, become less capable of signal reception, or entirely disappear andbecome less numerous. Physical exercise can reverse the loss of dendriticspines and improve brain function, even in patients with Parkinson disease. It even improves memory. Alzheimer disease and mental retardation are also associated withimpaired dendritic spine function. Q4 Do viruses neednutrition? A4 Claire Jordan Degreein biology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper Jan 25 No, they’re not organisms in the normal sense, juststray bits of code in a shell. But that code causes an infected cell to usesome of its own nutrients to make more virus, including the virus’sprotective shell. If you wanted to, you could think of the virus on its own as a spore, andthe infected cell as a composite organism made up of the original cell plusvirus, and that compositeorganism does need nutrients, at least to keep it alive long enough to makemore spore. Q5 Which was the"Golden Era" in Indian history? A5 Titus D'silva Lives inBengaluru, Karnataka, India Sat Let me illustrate how the country is doing the best right now(or at leastthe best yet) economically, politically and socially, all in one picture. This is an Indira Gandhi canteenestablished by the local government to feed the poor. In other eras rulers ruled through terrorism and brutality. The peoplefeared the rulers. Now the rulers fear the people and go all out to appease themasses. Everything fromvaccinating the public to feeding them and building them toilets. A common Indian governs himself. A common Indian gets a chance toparticipate in a knowledge-based economy where he/she can create wealthliterally from thin air using only their knowledge. A common Indian can speaktheir own language without suppression. A common Indian can practice his/herreligion without needing to pay any tax. An Indian woman born into amiddle-class family can rise up the corporate ladder and attain a leading role.The achievements of thisera(vis-a-vis eras before now) are endless. Q6 Why do they say you need toreplace a car battery after 3-5 years? Mine usually last 7 years. A6 Loring Chien Engineer,been taking care of cars for 46 years Fri For auto batteries the conditions of use make a difference. 3–5 years isan average. I’ve had batteries last 18 months to 6 years. Heat and cold extremes reduce thelife. A car in a temperateclimate that is not driven a lot of miles will last much longer than a batteryin Houston TX where I live where summer days are regularly 100+ °F and roadtemperatures and sun beating on the cars and the engines underhood temperaturesfor long periods of use of 150°F in a well used car are common. This really ishard on batteries. Threeyears is probably more common here. Q7 Are the bridges inEurope in as bad shape as the ones in the USA? A7 Rhea Goikoetxea PolyglotColombian-American girl. Sat Depends on the country. Europeis not a single political homogeneous entity. There are European countries likethe Netherlands where the bridges are so modern you’ll go HOLY CRAP LOOK ATTHAT BRIDGE!! And there are other countries in Europe likeBulgaria or Serbia or Albania where you go… Oh I am NOT crossing that bridge,it looks like it is going to collapse!! Q8 Are the forests thatexist in Israel the result of reforestation? If so, how did botanists knowwhich species should be planted if most Israelis lived in Europe or anothercontinent? A8 Ben Allen Lived inIsrael Jan 4 Yes. The forests you see dottedaround Israel, are by and large composed of over 260 million[1] hand plantedtrees and now their second generation offspring. Whether travelers, most notably Mark Twain accurately reported the HolyLand as being “desolate” or not, it is clear that most of the forest cover fromancient times had disappeared to the needs firewood, military fortificationsand the ravages of goat herding over the many centuries. If so, how did botanists know which species should be planted if mostIsraelis lived in Europe or another continent? In the late 19th century when the Jews started returning yet again totheir ancestral land in numbers (including many from all over the Middles Eastit should be noted), the trees they planted were not exactly the product ofbotanical studies. At least back then, tree planting was more a matter of plantit and see what happen. Over the decades, many hardlessons were learned through trial and error as to what will survive in theIsraeli landscapes. The first forests to be replanted by the returning Jewish pioneers were eucalyptus treesdonated from Australia. These trees were instrumental in draining the large,malarial infested swamps which had taken over parts of the region. The 1960’ssaw massive mono-culture tree planting especially of pines. More recentlyplanted forests tend to be of a variety of original species that grew in theeastern Mediterranean including native pines, acacia, carob, terebinth andcypress. The goal is tocreate forests that will better propagate without the need for humans. Q9 What are thedifferences between the chimpanzee, and the bonobo? Are they clearly visible,or more behavioural? Do they interact? A9 Claire Jordan Degreein biology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper Jan 25 Bonobos are slightly smaller and with a muchlighter, more slender build,leading to their alternative name of “pygmy chimpanzee”, and they all have very darkskin, whereas most common chimps have pinkish-fawn skin, under their fur. If Iremember correctly the two groups are separated by a wide river. Q10 What’s an unbreakablegood habit your country has? A10 Harish. MJR TamilIndian Jan 27 India -Eating with hands It is a traditional practice in India to use our fingertips while eating.The practice of eating with the hands originated within Ayurvedic teachings. Eating with hands are believedto improve our consciousness of the taste of the food we eat.This is known as mindful eating, is said to be healthier than eating withspoons.We never know how hygienic the spoons and forks used in the restaurantare. So its better to eat with our hands.Wash the hands properly, before eating Q11 Is Elon musk correct whenhe says tht the human race must colonise another planet or face totalextinction? A11 Andrew McGregor PerformanceMeasurement Lead at Fastly (company) (2019–present) Jan 27 Yes, he’s correct. The humanspecies will go extincteventually anyway, but at least that way we can be more confident that we will have successors who areour descendents, rather than something else. To those who say Musk likes to talk big: yes, he does. But unlike manybig talkers, he actually does have what are probably viable plans to achievewhat he has in mind, and will modify those to experience, and has managed todeliver before. Something like colonising Mars is an insurance policy; you hope you won’tneed it, as if you do things are still going to suck. But they’d suck worse ifyou didn’t have it and did need it. Also, on the way to Mars, he’sdoing other things that are probably useful to the survival of the species. At a level where few others can claim parity, too. Q12 Is there any remnants ofthe black people who migrated through Egypt to the rest of the world who aresaid to nver have lived in Egypt? A12 Claire Jordan Degree inbiology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper Jan 18 According to the latest researchas covered in a BBC documentary, the main wavesof humans to leave Africa didn’t go via Egypt and Sinai, but via the Horn ofAfrica, across the Red Sea (which is narrow enough at that pointthat you can easily see the other side), along the coast of Yemen and then up through what are nowthe Gulf States. It makes sense because while *we* know you can cross the Sinai desert in3 or 4 days, somebody looking at it from the Egyptian side who had not yetcrossed it wouldn’t know where it ended or whether it ever did, whereas fromthe Horn you can see there are trees just across the water. All the above QA are from Quora website on 01-02- 2022. Compiled and posted by R. Gopala krishnan on 02-02-2022 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. 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