CULTURAL QA 01-2023-23 BEING A COMPILATION THERE MAY BE ERRORS
Q1 How was life in Saudi Arabia before oilwas found? A1 Areej Musaed, Administrative Analystat Air and Missile Defense (2020–present)9mo Before the discovery of oil, SaudiArabia was not a wealthy nation. In fact, it had afewer population and a modest annual budget. Saudis were mostly working on family-run date farms, tradein coastal towns and handicrafts. People lived in mud houses with theirextended families. However, when oil was discovered in 1938, Saudi Arabia sawa drastic increase in wealth and living standards.Saudi Arabia is now ranked the 21st happiest nation in theworld and is a member of the G20 countries, the group of the 20 strongesteconomies in the world. Side note: oilalone cannot make a country rich. Major oil-exporting countries have becomeeither failed states or with struggling economies such as Iraq, Iran, andVenezuela. Oil needsexcellent governance, excellent education and social unity, all of which SaudiArabia has successfully managed to achieve. My note- My son works in Soudi Arabia as Plantmanager in a Plastic products company in Jeddha(Soudi Arabia). Plastic is ofquality and exported to other countries. Q2 What was life like in New York City inthe early 1900s? A2 Baba Vickram Aditya Bedi, Top Writer2018 Badge, Published in Yugmarg & Punjab Times. Dec 5 New York City wasnothing like the image painted by Hollywood in the early 1900s.It was city which did notprovide over 66% of its population proper housing, safety or hygienicconditions. In many cases the city was far worse than what the immigrants hadleft behind in Europe, with the exception of being able to work. Life for the average New York City resident was absolutelyterrible. New York City had a wave of immigrants comefrom 1880 until 1924, when the U.S. restricted immigration for all but WesternEuropeans and a campaign began to reform the tenement houses. For most immigrants, theirinitial experience in New York was arriving in the U.S. and facing hostilityfrom Americans who had a bias against new immigrants. By the timethey found residency, which was usually a tenement building, they faced severeovercrowding, inadequate access to water and hygiene and the frequent outbreaksof diseases such as Cholera, Typhus, and other communicable diseases. Familiesof 10–15 people would be crammed into two small rooms, one serving as a kitchenand the other as a bedroom. By 1900, over 66% of the population was living in thisway. There were 80,000 tenement buildings, with hardly any regulation orcontrol. Organized crime also was rampant, yet at the same time New York Cityboasted of having iconic buildings being constructed and Macy’s DepartmentStore came into being at the same time. In 1890, Jacob Riis would publish hiswork “How the Other Half Lives”, and it would gain the attention of New YorkCity Police Commissioner, Theodore Rosevelt. The need for improving the livesof immigrants became a slow call to be heard though. Issues such as childlabor, forced prostitution and economic exploitation would continue withoutabatement for decades. Living conditionswere similar to what many immigrants had experienced on ships coming fromEurope to the U.S. Q3 When did Hindus start building largetemples as we know them today? A3 Devala Rees, Hindu practitioner andscholar of Pagan religions Jan 8 For the most part,Hindus started building large temples as we know them today around the 500s C.E. Hindus builttemples for at least a millennium before that, quite possibly muchlonger, but they were smaller and more perishable structures, intended only toserve spiritual functions; noone much cared how visually impressive or long-lasting they were. It was aroundthe 500s C.E. that Hindu kings really began to build large, spectacularlyimpressive temples as a display of vast wealth andpower in addition to for spiritual reasons. Once some of them started, thetrend caught on and widely swept Hindu lands as many kings adopted it. My note- Perhaps food feeding in temples started to get more people god fearing andworship. Q4 Why do different countries havedifferent railway systems? A4 Nicholas Stone,Life long interest intrains.Sun Different countries have different railways for avariety of political, historic or technical reasons. The UK has two national rail gauges with the 1,435mm system used in Great Britain (England, Wales & Scotland) and 1,600 mmused in Northern Ireland. Thewider Northern Ireland gauge is the same used in neighbouring Ireland,reflecting the common system prior to the UK government’s 1922 partition ofIreland. The Irish 1,600 mm gauge was itself a Board of Trade compromise,following the uncoordinated construction of three different and separaterailways lines. In the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, trainscirculate on right. In the rest of France, they circulate on left. Thisregional anomaly was because of rail construction during the German annexationof Alsace-Lorraine between 1871 and 1914. Conversion would be costly andinclude re-signalling, station reconfiguration and trackwork. Dual track gauge used in Spain. In the 1980s, theSpanish government took the decision to build their high speed lines with the1,435 mm track gauge used in much of western Europe. The classic Spanishnetwork was constructed with the 1,668 mm track gauge. Picture credit RailJournal. Australia has three track gauges withcorrespondingly different signalling systems. Most rail construction was undertaken by the colonies prior to 1901 federation. Each colony employing their ownengineers with their own ideas. Switzerland has a bewildering variety of railwaysystems. There are numerous track gauges - the most common being the federalrailways 1,435 mm gauge and metre gauge use by several cantonal railways. Rackand pinion is employed on some mountain routes. There are many electricalvoltages. Much railway construction took place between 1830 and1900.There was no agreed international standards, communication was by post ortelegraph and there was little thought to co-ordinating networks. My note- The practical difficulty of track changing cannot be told. It was a herculean task forIndian railways to change the track from meter gauge to Broad gauge on the existingrailway bridge towards Rameswaram. Q5 Which wild animal can’t swim? A5 Serge Elia,Animal lover7mo Here are three examples of wild animals that cannotswim: – Hippopotamuses (aka hippos). It goes withoutsaying that hippos are aquatic mammals that spend the vast majority of theirlives wallowing in Africa’s rivers and various waterways – as a matter of fact,despite their ressemblance with pigs, their closest relatives are actuallywhales and dolphins! –; and yet, they can’t really swim, because the densestructure of their bones and the weight of their humongous bodies often makesthem sink. As such, whenever hippos are in deep water (as inliterally), they have to push themselves off the bottom in order to rise up tothe surface and take a breath, before sinking back down all of a sudden.So instead of swimming, they actually walk or gallop on the bottom when underwater – given that their limb muscles are made for powerful propulsion throughthe water, but not for swimming[1]–, all while holding their breath for up toan hour or more. – Many species of crabs. Although crabs arealso aquatic creatures, nevertheless out of all 4,500 known species, only a handful possessthe ability to swim. In fact, a lot of them, like the hermit crab(see above), cannot swim because they can’t breathe underwater, and so theyrisk drowning if they are immersed[2]for more than 30 minutes, primarily due totheir gills that are adapted to breathing oxygen from the air near the shore;whereas others can survive underwater for extended periods of time by using thesame breathing system as fish[3]– and to be precise, by drawing small oxygen molecules from thewater and into the bloodstream through the surface of their gills. As such, since themajority of crabs are ill-adapted to swim, they instead resort to walking onthe sea floor (see above and below). And if need be, they are often capable ofwalking sideways and by flexing the second joint of each leg[4], as they’remuch faster when moving this way. – Great apes. This femalegorilla here has been spotted using a stick so as to test the depth of theswamp ahead of her, something she did for a reason: all of the great apes (apart from humans)aren’t the most adeptof swimmers – as it turns out, they have rather developed a natural H2Oaversion, except in times when they must cool off to escape the heator they wish to play by splattering in shallow waters –, mainly because theylack the instinctual ability to propel themselves through the water[5]; andplus, their bulky bones[6]and stocky bodies prevent them from swimmingefficiently, which can condemn them to death by drowning. As a matter of fact, this lack of swimming ability couldexplain why chimpanzees (on the left in the picture above) and bonobos (on theright) never meet in the wild, as they’re geographically separated by themighty Congo River[7], which they cannot and do not cross– and this confirms that reports of great apes swimming in the wild are virtually nonexistent. But there are ofcourse exceptions to this rule, as some individual chimps (see above) and orangutans (seebelow) have apparently learned how to perfectly swim and dive[8]afterwatching humans doing the same thing, without actually displaying anydiscomfort nor their species’ habitual aquaphobia – this unprecedented behavior was baffling to thescientists who witnessed it, but it goes to show how these animalsare remarkably intelligent and never stop acquiring new abilities. All the above QA are from Quora website on 23-01- 2023. Quora answers need not be 100% correct answers . Compiled and posted by R. Gopala krishnan former ITS on 23-01-2023 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/596080226.420197.1674458233419%40mail.yahoo.com.
