CULTURAL QA 12-2023-31A Dear friends,
I wish you all a happy and prosperousnew year 2024 All the below QA arefrom Quora DIGEST to me on 31-12-2023. Selected quora answers generallyinteresting are included .Still they need not be 100%correct answers. Compiled and posted by R.Gopala Krishnan, 80, on 31-12-2023. Q1 Wheredoes the force that changes the tilt of the Earth come from? What makes theEarth change its tilt? A1 GaneshSubramaniam, Amateur Radio Operator, Amateur Astronomer4h The angle of tilt of Earth’s axis of rotation isknown as obliquity.Over the last million years,it has varied between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees with respect to Earth’s orbitalplane. As the Earth orbits the Sun, it is pulled by thegravitational forces of the Sun, Moon, and the large planets in the solarsystem. Over long periodsof time, this slowly changes Earth's spin, tilt, and orbit. During a cycle of about 40,000 years, the tilt of theEarth’s axis varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees. Earth’s axis is currently tilted 23.4 degrees, and thisangle is very slowly decreasing. It was last at its maximum tilt about10,000 years ago and will reach its minimum tilt about 10,000 years from now. Believe it or not, scientists have discovered thatone of the reasons why Earth's tilt has changed is because of the amount ofground water pumped by humans. The water circulated across the planet determines howmass is distributed. Earth's tilt has changed by about 80 cm between 1993 and2010 because of the amount of groundwater that humans have pumped out from theplanet's interior. (In the above period, we have removed 2,150 gigatons ofwater from natural reservoirs in the planet's crust, and displacing such anenormous amount of water has had an effect on the axis around which the planetspins). Ref: Groundwater extraction has tilted Earth’s spin;how likely is it to fuel climate change? Q2 What arethe most important warnings in life? A2 You get up in the morning, drag yourself toyour work. You come back home mentally and physically exhausted. You fume andcomplain. But you eat, go to sleep, get up next morning and again drag yourselfto work. Day after day.Week after week. Month after month….. There is nothing wrong with the worldaround you. Either you have to change or your work needs to be changed. You buy a treadmill and work on it for two hours a dayfor a week. And then you stop. A month passes. You look at the treadmill every dayafter you return from work. Youpity yourself that you are too tired and promise to start the next day.The next day never comes….. You need to get your motivation back before a scalpel or pills become theonly option. You get up inthe morning and have a look at your mobile phone beforeyou brush your teeth. You are browsing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…. in your bed at night.You are on them when your mother is calling you to have dinner. You do not wantto visit your friend in the neighbourhood because you want to see what your onethousand virtual friends are commenting about your last post…. You need to return to the realworld. You keep on saying, ‘When I was your age, I didthis,’ ‘When I was young, I could do that,’ ‘I did this’ and ‘I did that’…..You need to shift your focus to your goals in future. You keep saying to yourself, ‘When I am thirty five,all my financial issues will have been resolved,’ ‘I will change my eatinghabits when I am thirty.’ ‘I will start losing weight when the new yearbegins’….. That day will never come. If you need to begin something, you have to begin it today. Q3 Who isthe most creative person in history, and why? A3 Jean-MarieValheur, lover of history15h In 1973, an elderly janitor died in a hospice. Hisname was Henry Darger. A kindly old man, he mostly kept to himself. No one knew him as anythingelse than just, the janitor. The landlord of Darger had to clean out theold man’s room, when hepassed. It was only then, upon cleaning the room out, that they discovered paintings. Drawings.Etchings. Writings, endless pages and papers… Darger literally createdthousands of pieces of art. A novel spanning nearly 15,000 pages. He hadbeen incredibly productive, for well over sixty years. And most remarkable of all? He had never told asoul. He lived and died in Chicago, Illinois, and forhis entire life, he kept his art a secret to the world. Henry Dargerlived for 81 years. Each day after he clocked out at work, he went home to create art atnight. Hours upon hours of writing, revising, drawing, etching. He left no family and the landlord became a multi-millionaire sellingthe works. Dargeris now one of the world’s most famous “outsider artists”. And died neverknowing it. Q4 What isthe single most effective piece of financial advice you've ever received? A4 HenryWang, Worked at Google (company)5y Buy assets, notliabilities. Buy things that make money for you: stocks, realestate. Don’t buy things that don’t make money: clothing, fancy cars, etc. Don’t buyassets you don’t understand. When your friends at the bank try to sell you acomplicated financial instrument that you don’t understand, chances are it’s abad apple. Make moremoney, not save more money. No one increases their net worth by saving. Theyincrease by making more money. People who look rich are poor.People who look poor are rich. People who drive fancy cars and flaunt their supposedwealth are probably not that wealthy. My note- This point I cannot agree. When money is required, only ownmoney can meet it. SoSaving money is a must. “I never invest in anything that I don’t understand” - Warren Buffett Q5 Whyshould I want to live beyond 60? A5 VijayaLakshmi, Retired Finance manager at Coal India Limited (A Maharatna Company)5y There was this man in our office at Bhubaneswar. Justa wooden partition separated his seat from mine. He was 6 to 7 years younger tome. He had one strange opinion about life. I often heardhim saying to others “why should people strive to live after they stop earning? One should not liveafter he retires from work” “But they earntheir pension” “I don'tconsider earning pension as earning. Either they should work after retirementor don't live” was his argument. He used to make such comments whenever any retiredperson visited the office for either settling their post retirement claims orsome arrear payments. This pained many people in the office. People stoppedarguing with him. After my retirement in 2010, though we visited BBSRmany times, we never met this person. Yesterday wecame to BBSR on some work in the bank. There we saw this man. He was fit and healthy as before. He did not noticeus. “ He mighthave retired last year. If my guess is correct, he must be working somewhereafter retirement” I said. When I was speaking with my husband he turned around,saw us and said “hi” “Hi, you stilllook young and fit after retirement. So where are you working afterretirement?” husband asked him. “No sir, I am not working anywhere.I am enjoying my life with my pension. I have purchased tickets to watch'Hockey Matches' going on here. How could I afford so much time if I work?” hesaid smiling. Both husband and I looked at each other. Husband was about to ask abouthis argument some years back. I stopped him with my eyes. “Why did youstop me? I wanted to see his expression after I ask the question” husband said. *** “ See he used to argue foolishly in those days.But now when he is enjoying his life, why should we kill that happiness?” Isaid. My note- There is amember in our group, who makes foolish arguments and offending statements. Even today he has offended me by foolish attack. He will stop foolish and offending arguments in a similar day when he realise it. Let me hope for the day. So why should youlive beyond 60? To enjoy the things which you could not enjoy whenyou were working. To share your knowledge with others. To learn new things which you could not learn whenyou were in service because you could not afford that much time. The second innings give you many opportunities. Youare the person who should grab those opportunities. Q6 Can youtell some Random Facts? World Random Facts,Former Manager at Buildup iQ(2010–2023)Wed Albert Einsteinnever learned to drive. He thought it too complicated and in any case, he preferred walking.What he did not know—indeed,what no one knew until now—is that most cars would not work without theintervention of one of his most famous discoveries, the special theory ofrelativity. Special relativitydeals with physical extremes. It governs the behavior of subatomic particles zippingaround powerful accelerators at close to the speed of light and its equationsforesaw the conversion of mass into energy in nuclear bombs. A paper inPhysical Review Letters, however, reports a more prosaic application. Accordingto the calculations of Pekka Pyykko of the University of Helsinki and his colleagues,the familiar lead-acidbattery that sits under a car's bonnet and provides the oomph to get the engineturning owes its ability to do so to special relativity. The lead-acid battery is one of the triumphs of19th-century technology. It was invented in 1860 and is still going strong.Superficially, its mechanism is well understood. Indeed, it is the stuff ofhigh-school chemistry books. But Dr. Pyykko realized that there was a problem. In his view, when you dug deepenough into the battery's physical chemistry, that chemistry did not explainhow it worked. A lead-acid battery is a collection of cells, each ofwhich contains two electrodes immersed in a strong solution of sulphuric acid.One of the electrodes is composed of metallic lead, the other of porous leaddioxide. In the parlance of chemists, metallic lead is electropositive. Thismeans that when it reacts with the acid, it tends to lose some of itselectrons. Lead dioxide, on the other hand, is highly electronegative,preferring to absorb electrons in chemical reactions. If a conductive wire isrun between the two, electrons released by the lead will run through it towardsthe lead dioxide, generating an electrical current as they do so. The biggerthe difference in the electropositivity and electronegativity of the materialsthat make up a battery's electrodes, the bigger the voltage it can deliver. Inthe case of lead and lead dioxide, this potential difference is just over twovolts per cell. Q7 What isthe brutal truth about people? A7 PrabhaSharma,19 years old3h Yamraj Thakralwas not good in studies; somehow, he passed 12th class. When he came to college, he wasn't into studies, sohe used to stroll here and there, do gossip, and party in clubs. He didn't know what he would do inhis life. His parents used to scold him a lot, but he never took themseriously. One day, while he were eating in a restaurant, hisfriend told him about some vloggers who were making millions from vlogging or just recording videos. His friend'snotion stuck in his mind, and that day he decided to pursue his career onYouTube. He started vlogging. Before joining YouTube, Yamrajwas a fun-loving boy who didn't take any kind of tension. Whenever his videos got some views, he became happyfor some time, but when he compared his videos with big YouTubers, he gotdepressed. Day and night, hejust thought about vlogging. He purchased many unnecessary products to make good thumbnails like,"Today we purchased an iPhone," "Today we purchased this andthat," and soon. His happinessdepends on views, likes, subscribes, and comments. Now, he always staysstressed and gets frustrated over trivial things. It's not a onlyyamraj story; there are millions of people whose happiness now depends on like, share,follower, subscribes, and views. Because of the heavy influence of socialmedia, we are lurking behind the digital world to find happiness. Instead offinding happiness, we are draining our minds in stress, anxiety, and depression. This is the brutal truth ofour generation. P:S"It's a fictional story.” My note-Justbecause good thoughts of a student of 19years old I felt it can be included. -- 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/408543176.3215270.1704030443528%40mail.yahoo.com.
