CULTURALQA 11-2023-13A All the BELOW QA are from Quora DIGEST to me on 13-11-2023.
QUORA ANSWERS NEEDNOT BE 100% CORRECT ANSWERS. Compiled and posted byR. Gopala Krishnan, 80, on 13-11-2023. Q1 Duringa Hindu ritual, will the Tamil people chant in Tamil or Sanskrit? Whichlanguage has a higher priority and why? Please provide the theological basis inthe scriptures. A1 Dr.Balaji Viswanathan, Native speaker of தமிழ்.18h Hindu rituals are made of 3 layers and the language useddepends on the layer. Yajna: The grandfire ceremonies, direct descendants of Vedic tradition, form the core of ancient scripture andpractice. They are elaborate affairs, the domain of learned high priests versed in the sacred utterances ofVedic Sanskrit. Puja: Theseintimate worship rituals treat deities as honored guests gracing the earthly abodes of temples.A daily practice, pujas are a universal thread in the Hindu world, weaving Sanskrit mantras with thevibrant hues of regional dialects, all performed by dedicated temple priests. Bhajan: Theheartfelt hymns of devotion, where the divine is serenaded in the common tongue. Bhajans, requiring no priestly intermediary,are the soulful expressions of the everyday devotee, often echoingthrough the air during festive or reflective weekend gatherings. At the Yajna level across India there is the commonlayer and doesn’t vary a lot. Atthe Puja level, a lot of regional elements get in while still maintaining acommon structure. At the Bhajan level it is completely a commoner thingwith substantial level of regional elements. This allows Hinduism to maintainthe unity in diversity. Imagine the stone-carved corridors of Tamil Nadu'smajestic temples, a symphony of devotion unfolds: the resonant chants of aYajna emanate from the Yagasala, led by venerated priests; concurrently, thesanctum's heart beats to the rhythm of pujas, with priests orchestrating adivine welcome. And, enveloping it all, the melodic strains of bhajans rise, as devoteessing verses from cherished Tamil scriptures like Thevaram and Thiruvasagam. Herein lies Hinduism's essence, a harmonious blend of thesublime and the simple, resonating through every corner of India. Q2 Wehaven't even reached the bottom of the ocean yet, but how the hell we find outthat the earth has a core? A2 JohnTurner, Aug 14 Sir Isaac Newton is the first scientist known to haverationally deduced the existence of a core. The same year that he published his PrincipiaMathematica, he wrote in a letter to colleagues that he’d calculated the massof Earth from its radius and its surface gravity, and then noticed that theaverage density (5.5 grams per cubic centimeter) of Earth was much higher thanthat of the average stone (3.0–3.5 g/cc). Reasoning that the simplest explanation was that Earth’ssurface floats above a denser material like the slag on a crucible of molten metal, Newton then suggested Earth musthave a center of molten iron. Not everyone likedthis idea, but by the late 19th century most geologists believed Earth had“three layers” consisting of a metal core, a stony crust and a stony mantle inbetween them.They just couldn’t agree on the dimensions and they lacked much in the way ofproof. Along came RichardOldham. Oldham was abureaucrat geologist, a member of the Royal Survey of India. He excelled at seismology,and India obliged him with a number of major quakes to study during his career.He worked with immensetables of numbers and often studied hundreds of paper recordings made byseismometers when analyzing a particular earthquake. He was the first geologist to provethat earthquakes are caused by crustal movement along faults. By 1897 Oldhamhad noticed from his studies that earthquakes make two kinds of vibrational energy, which he dubbed ‘P’ Primary waves and‘S’ Secondary waves, terminology still used today. In 1906 he published a paper with this diagram: When teaching himself to read the “first phase” Pwave and “second phase” S wave signals on paper seismometer charts, Oldham hadnoticed they could lag or lead one another in ways that varied with how fararound the Earth the seismometer was from the earthquake (measured in degreesof arc). In 1906 hedelivered a logically impeccable paper explaining that Earth had to have adense liquid core approximately 40% its own diameter in order to explain apattern he was seeing in seismometer charts. The dimensions and masses calculated from thisclosely matched Newton’s prediction for a molten iron core, so the best explanation wasthat Earth indeed had a center made of molten iron. It had now been “seen” bymankind. It would be awoman however, who would spot the oddest detail. In 1936 a Danish-born actuarial turned geophysicist namedInge Lehmann published a paper analyzing seismometer data from the 1929 Murchesonearthquake, in which she revealed that what Oldham had interpreted as P wavesrefracting inside an all liquid core were actually refracting off a solidobject centered within that core — an inner core: It took anotherthree decades to prove that core iron could even form a solid when surroundedby molten iron.Chemists first had to devise laser-heated presses inside which tiny samples ofmetal could be crushed between flawless gem diamonds to recreate the conditionsdeep within Earth. But Lehmann stuck by her numbers, refining andrepublishing them several times as new earthquakes provided data. And by thetime the solidification of core material was experimentally confirmed it wasseen as a foregone conclusion more than a radical discovery. We can “see”quite a bit of detail inside Earth now, thanks to computer analysis of the same numbers thatOldham and Lehmann crunched by hand: But it was humanminds alone, working with slide rules and fountain pens, who first peeredinto the data to perceive what no human eye has yet seen. Q3 Whatare some places inaccessible to humans on our planet? A3 DavideFiore,10mo Tepuyes ofCanaima National Park (Venezuela). These are rockyplateaus with walls up to 1,000 meters high. This characteristic makes them virtuallyinaccessible; it is estimatedthat 90 percent of them have not been trampled by humans. Because of this, the flora and fauna in the highlands are pristine andmost likely full of unknown species. Q4 Whatis something most people don't know about Africa? A4 InnocentMasengo, Lecturer Language and Communication at Makerere University(2008–present)Updated 3y That most Africans are poor, not because they reallyare poor, but because someone decides to describe them as such. My grandfather is ‘poor’. He certainly lives on “lessthan a dollar a day”. He is now 95 years old. In his nine and a half decades on earth, he has neverlacked, and he has never begged. He only attended one year at a missionschool in the 1930s and learnt how to read and write. This is how he pulls itoff: When he wantsfood, he goes to the banana plantation, looks at tens of bunches of matooke (banana) and decideswhich to harvest for the day’s dinner. Adjacent to the plantation is a sweet potatogarden, cassava garden, yams and finger millet. To the south of the bananaplantation are beans, cow peas or peanuts gardens. Down the valley is grazingland with tens of Frisian and cross-breed cattle. They provide him with milk daily, 365 days a year. He also hasabout 20 goats. In Uganda, goat milk was generally not considered palatable, possibly due tothe abundance of cow milk, so we never milked goats. He would sell a couple of them to supplementincome from other produce to send his children to school. He also reareda couple of chickens, more as a hobby. The farm producesmore than he can consume. He sells thesurplus to afford such essential services as kerosene (recently upgraded tosolar), soap, sugar (at his age he no longer takes sugar, he uses honey —doctor’s orders). Scattered acrossthe farm are sugarcane (for eating, not for making sugar) and fruit trees (guava,mango, pawpaw, avocado, orange, passion fruit, pineapple). He drinks fresh juice from mangoesand passion fruit. As is evident, everything here is on asubsistence basis, but very organic. He has done this for the past 75 years. He had eleven children, my mother being his firstborn. He sent all of them to school, saw eight of them through college.He sold at least two cows, some goats and some produce each school term to sendhis children to school. I went to live at grandfather’s place when I was 5 yearsold. I left when I was 14 (my family lived in an urban area). I learnt how to farm, milk cows,tether goats, harvest fruits (by climbing the fruit tree) and harvesting honey(at night using smoke). Why the longstory? My grandfather, just like millions of other Africans that livelike him, is considered poor. He rarely holds money, and he rarelyneeds it. Heproduces most of what he needs. But using the standard World Bank/IMFdescription of ‘poor’, my grandfather is poor. I live in the city and earn about USD 12,000 a year after tax, which inUganda is a decent salary. But I can hardly match my grandfather in terms of providing for myfamily with fresh milk, fresh food and fresh fruits. Thisis one thing most people that watch International media do not know aboutAfrica: not all Africans arepoor, many simply live differently than you. Ugandan farmer riding bananas from his farm to themarket. Most people from other backgrounds would pity him, and consider him‘poor’. Edit 1: Thank youJohn Kim for the edit suggestions. Much appreciated. Edit 2: I haveadded a picture I took with my grandfather and grandmother on 2/6/2020. I visited themas soon as the Covid-19 lockdown was eased in my country. They live 350km fromthe city where I live. I enjoyed tons of stories and experiences from as farback as the late 1930s. They are such a loving and jolly couple. Mynote- I have posted this QA as refreshing. I have posted this QA earlier. Q5 Whatinvention or discovery most advanced humanity? A5 JakeMawson, Constantly extended in Maths and Problem-Solving1y Think about whatseparates us from people thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, in the1500s. What havewe achieved? Surprisingly,nobody has mentioned the invention which we probably rely on near to the mostthese days. Think about this, what inventions were necessary foryou to be reading this right now? Now,did anybody consider the battery? These odd devices power our phones, our laptops…. and noneof this technology would even be possible if it weren’t for the battery. Let’s go back a couple of hundred years to the pre-1800s, when thebattery had not yet been invented. Since we didn’t have a way to storeelectricity, we could not analyse its behaviours - and, therefore, we could notexplain electrical properties - which would lead to the invention of newelectrical/electronic devices. We wouldn’t have electric inter-communication,wireless well- anything, this would be a much older time to live. Inthe year 1799, Alessandro Volta invented what he called the “Voltaic Pile”: This led to agreater widespread interest in harnessing the power electrons, which wouldinevitably lead to the first invention of a device to harness this newly foundpower. In 1821, MichaelFarraday set on a journey to understand the works of Ørsted and Ampère, and throughthe process, he invented the world’s first electric motor. The motor used a bath of mercury with a ballsuspended on the surface. The metal ball was connected via wire to anelectrical energy source (a battery) and it started to rotate in a circle overthe mercury. This was due to the movement of electrical charge creatingmagnetic fields, which together interact to apply an unbalanced force on thesphere. The firstelectromagnet was soon after invented by William Sturgeon in 1825, where he then proceeded toimprove Farraday’s motor design: This motordesign was then improved upon until it was discovered that the process wasreversible. Rather thansending in electrical charge to get movement, movement could generate theelectrical charge, leading to Farraday’s (and the first) electromagneticgenerator, the Faraday disk, being invented in 1831. To keep thisanswer concise, I will quickly summarise the remaining major inventions: In 1833,Farraday invented the thermistor and the laws of electrolysis. Moritz vonJacobi created the first ‘real’ rotating electric motor in May 1834, providing substantial outputpower. 1836 - NicholasCallan invented the electric transformer. 1837 - Edward Davyinvented the electric relay 1844 - The first electrical generator used inindustrial processes 1845 - Kirchoffdeveloped -non-other-than- Kirchoff’s laws 1855- First utilisation of AC 1873- Zenobe Gramme discovered that his DC generator could be used as a DC motor (developing thefirst modern DC motor) 1877 - ThomasAlva Edison invented the phonograph (an electric communication device) 1877 - Wernervon Siemens invented the loudspeaker 1879 - ThomasEdison patented his first electric lightbulb Most modernelectrical inventions, such as semi-conductor usage and components were developed in the 1900s. And that is abrief summary of what the invention of a battery led to. Mynote- Nostalgic memories goes to the study of voltaic cells, lechlanche cellsand dry cells studied in middle school in 1958-1959. -- 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/414563228.1683360.1699882489704%40mail.yahoo.com.
