CULTURAL QA 04-2024-13 DEAR FRIENDS,
I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY VISHU/TAMILNEW YEAR ON 14-04-2024 GOPALAKRISHNAN 13-4-2024 Allthe BELOW QA are from Quora digest to me on 13-04-2024. Quora answers need not be 100% correct answers .Compiled and posted by R. Gopalakrishnan, on 13-04-2024 Q1 Whydoes the Elephants have the longest gestation period of all mammals? A1 Silk Road, AI Expert Apr 5 Elephantsaren't built for quick turnarounds. Everythingabout them is measured: massive size, deliberate movements, decades-longlifespans. Theirpregnancies operate on the same schedule. Roughly 18-22 months of gestation– that's nearly two years with a calf in the belly, the longest of any mammal. Don't thinkof it as wasted time though.Those hulking bodies don't grow overnight. And what'sbetween those big ears isn't just gray matter. Elephantbrains are wired for complex problem-solving, deep memory, and complex socialdynamics. Calves hitthe ground running – literally. They walkwith the herd, understand intricate communication, even use those dexteroustrunks within hours. That sort ofintelligence needs time to bake in. Then there'sthe herd. Elephant society Tight units,experienced leaders, a whole code of conduct those calves need to understandfor their own survival. Some of thatlearning happens in the world, but the foundation is laid in the womb. A longergestation isn't just nature's convenience; it's a tactical investment. Sure,carrying a future giant around for that long is a risk. Takes a toll on themother. Butelephants play the long game. This strategy ensures their calves aren't justborn big, they're born ready. Q2 Whichreligion has caused the most damage to mankind? A2 Melinda Gwin, Studied multiplereligions since childhood.18h We don’tknow. We’ll likely never know. Yesterday, Iread about the grave of three women, at least one buried alive, with theirthroats tied to their ankles. Archaeologists think they may have been ritualsacrifices, but they’re not sure. They could’ve been murder victims without anydivine justification. All we know for sure is that they were killed withincredible brutality, and that lines up with much of the brutality we see inreligion, especially ancient religion. Humanityevolved with religion as surely as we evolved with agriculture and controlledfire. It stretches deep into prehistory, as this grave may attest. Many believereligion is a necessary ingredient in creating a species that bands together tosupport and help each other. Specifically, it helps us identify with and createlarger groups than we would form without religion; larger groups impute powerto the members, particularly the leaders. Civilization and its fruits,including the nice ones like education and science and leisure, are the resultof this capacity of humans to band together based on shared belief intranscendent truths. But it’salso led to a lot of bloodshed. Most cultures sacrificed animals, some continuethis practice. Quite a few sacrificed people as well, some cultures did thatroutinely and in stunning quantities. Wars have also begun and been sustainedon this basis. Anything that binds people together divides them from others,and those divisions create strife. In religion’s case, we saw and see groups ofvarious sizes with equally varied power differentials. Tragedy repeatedlyresults. Rocroi, elúltimo tercio by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau. Public domain. It’s thistendency to band together and the willingness to destroy everything else thatcauses the carnage. The grave of those three women demonstrate just how longwe’ve been willing to harm outsiders and misfits. Often, the evidence ofbrutality lasts longer than the religions and mindsets and opinions andfeelings that justify violence as it occurs. All that’sleft are broken bodies buried in the silent earth. We don’t know why most ofthem died, but we can be reasonably confident no good came of their deaths.Most of religion is lost in prehistory. As writing did not exist, we’ll neverknow definitively what anyone in those times believed. Without that, we’llnever know how much harm those beliefs caused. Maybe theorigin of most of our misery goes further back than we’d ever assume, dating tothe first time any human imagined a god and spread that conviction to others.Maybe it can all be laid at their feet, whoever they were, rather than any ofthe people who riffed off of those basic beats in later centuries. Or maybeideologies would have bound and damned us if gods had never been created. We’ll never know. Q3 WhenIndia was an island, what kind of unique animals did it have? Was there a largeamount of endemism similar to today's Australia and Madagascar?Q3 A3 Gary Meaney, passionate fan of allthings animal Mar 22 Some 55 million years ago, the Indian subcontinentcollided with Eurasia, pushing up the Himalayas in the process.Up until this point, it was indeed an island, adrift in the subtropical sea.This ancient landmass is known as Insular India. For the longest time, India was actually attachedto Madagascar. Around 88 million years ago,the two landmasses started to separate. This is when the isolation of thesubcontinent began. It may in fact have been in India that the first evergrassland ecosystems appeared. Grass, which now seems so omnipresent, is (on anevolutionary scale) a surprisingly recent addition to the Earth’s flora! Itappears that Cretaceous India was home to one of the earliest grass-dominatedhabitats. Theseancient savannahs were roamed by spectacular dinosaurs. The largest of all werethe aptly named titanosaurs. One species - Isisaurus - weighed an estimated15,000 kg! Its contemporary Jainosaurus was likely similar in size. With theirgreat long necks, such Indian giants would have no trouble feeding on even thetallest of trees. In thefossil record, wherever there are massive herbivores, you can be sure to findmassive carnivores that hunted them. In the case of India in the Cretaceous,that role was fulfilled by the abelisaurs. Abelisaurs were among the mostadvanced predatory dinosaurs ever, perfectly adapted for the catching anddispatching of prey. That said, with their long bodies, stocky legs, and teenyweeny arms (smaller than those of T. rex!) they did look a bit silly! The most iconicabelisaur of India was Rajasaurus. It measured nearly seven metres in length,and had an imposing horn on its head. This may have been used in territorialdisplays, or even head-butting matches against rivals! Itsadaptations show it was an ambush predator, much like the big cats of today. Inthis sweeping prehistoric savannah, one could think of the titanosaurs as the“elephants” perhaps, with Rajasaurus and its kin being the “lions”. Thelighter, more agile meat-eaters - the “jackals”, if you will - were called thenoasaurs. This one,Laevisuchus, was just a couple metres long. As it turnsout, India’s island in the sea served not just as a crucible for unique newspecies, but also as a lifeboat for creatures of old. Lineages that had longsince died out in the rest of the world managed to persist here, living asremnants of a bygone age. I’m sureyou’ve heard the common fun fact that T. rex is closer in time to us than it isto Stegosaurus. The stegosaurs are a very ancient family of dinosaurs - for thelongest time, it was thought that the last of them went extinct over a hundredmillion years ago. However, a couple of fossils seem to suggest that theremight have been stegosaurs still roaming India as recently as 66 million yearsago! An even moreincredible relic was a little critter called Avashishta. Believe it or not,this furry creature was not a mammal. It belonged to a group formerly referredto as the “mammal-like reptiles”. It is now considered more accurate to dubthem “stem mammals” or “paramammals”. In any case, these stem mammals onceruled the world - yes, 300 million years ago, long before the reptiles tookover, our cousins were the dominant form of life on land. It took themost devastating event in the history of the Earth - the end-Permianextinction, which killed 90% of all life - to shake the stem mammals from thethrone. By the final chapters of the age of dinosaurs, the creatures had allbut disappeared. Avashista’s fossil tooth from India represents the latestknown evidence of a stem mammal. This pint-sized scurrier may have been thelast breath of a dynasty that once included animals as large as elephants. India todayhas some of the most fascinating and spectacular assemblages of wildlife onEarth. Clearly, the same was true of India in Cretaceous times. It saw both thedebuts of unique species (and even whole ecosystems, like the grasslands) andthe last stands of dying dynasties. Alas, some 66 million years ago, the planetwas infamously struck by an asteroid as big as a mountain, and all the speciesin this answer met their demise. I hope youguys enjoyed this answer! Thank you all very much for reading. I apologise thatI haven’t been writing as much of late - times are busy, but I’m not goinganywhere! Have a great day, everyone. Q3 Whatdo you know that most people don’t? A3 Amit Singh,21h Have youheard about HSRP (High Security Registration Plate) ? Do you think any numberplate with ‘IND’ written on it is a HSRP plate? If you think so, then you don’thave complete knowledge about it. I will tellyou some points that will help you distinguish between a RTO authorized genuineHSRP and a fake HSRP: The letterson the genuine HSRPs are 10 mm wide. 2. “INDIA”is written on each embossed letter (black) in white color with an inclinationof 45 degrees. 3. Thecorner of the plates are round, so that it doesn’t hurt or injure anyone. 4. “IND” iswritten on the leftmost center, and it should be in blue color only. 5. There isa hot stamped chromium based hologram on the leftmost top corner of the plate,which cannot be removed just by scratching it. 6. There isa unique code on the leftmost bottom corner of the plate, which contains allthe details of the vehicle like the owner of the vehicle, registered RTO,registered state and information of the dealer too. 7. Theplates are fixed on the vehicles with snap locks, which cannot be removed oncefixed. They can only be broken. I hope Iprovided you with some valuable information. NOTE: Thosewho already knew all the above information, please don’t thrash me in thecomment section. Edit 1: Manypeople are asking me about the benefits of HSRP and the place where they canget it from. So, thebenefits of HSRP as claimed by the government are: It reduces the risk of theft as the number platecannot be replaced, so it becomes easier for the police to trace your vehicle. Even if someone steals your vehicle and removesyour HSRP, then he will get caught by the police for not having HSRP. The registration number can be seen from a largedistance unlike the fancy number plates. It will be helpful in hit and runcases. It reflectsin dark which increases the visibility of your vehicle at night and reduces thethe chances of accident. Anyone can get a HSRP by registering his/hervehicle with the nearest authorized RTO (Regional Transport Office). Q4 Whendid American English begin to use different spellings from British English,such as "color" instead of "colour" and "tire"instead of "tyre"? A4 Haddock, TESL course graduate23h AmericanEnglish started to depart from British English pretty much as soon as thePilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Back in the early 17th century, despite theintroduction of the printing press in the 15th century, a good proportion ofthe population was illiterate and although spelling was becoming more regular,there was still quite a variation in English use, even in the British Isles. By the timeof American Independence, spelling in the thirteen colonies was all over theplace. Benjamin Franklin deliberately misspelled “Pennsylvania” onrevolutionary period banknotes in an attempt to fool counterfeiters (it justconfused everyone). This was oneof of the most popular books in the world in 1739, but note the use of“Almanack” instead of “Almanac”, “Rabbies” instead of “Rabbis”, AfterAmerican independence, things just got worse and regional spelling variationswere often quite pronounced. One of the purposes behind Noah Webster’sdictionary was to do away with these regional differences, but instead of beingdescriptive like Samuel Johnson’s English Dictionary, Webster engaged inspelling reforms such as “color” and “realize” which he thought would beeasier. As American primary education and literacy became more widespread,Webster’s spellings became the standard. Profilephoto for Jay Bhutekar Q5 Doeshumanity exist now? A5 Jay Bhutekar, Lives in Aurangabad,Maharashtra, India (2021–present)Apr 8 So, one dayI was traveling to college on a bus, and it was packed with people. Thegovernment of Maharashtra had recently made the bus travel 50% off for womenand free for the elderly, so there were no seats left. I wasstanding with earphones plugged into my phone, listening to music. As the nextstop came, more people got on the bus, and one old lady stepped in. Suddenly, ayoung guy stood up and offered his seat to the granny. He is the hero of ourstory!! and I even clicked his picture without him noticing. (I attached hispicture to our post.) I observedhim carefully, he is from a middle-class Marathi background as he stood for twohours until the bus reached its final destination. Everyone rushed to get outof the bus, but he waited patiently for others to leave before him. As the busemptied, a new crowd of people began to board the bus, pushing us backinside(somehow I managed to get out of the bus, and immediately my eyes startedsearching for our hero & I found him). However, the hero stayed behind tohelp another young woman get off the bus. He took her heavy bag from her andpushed the crowd back, shouting at them to make way for the lady. He protectedher like a brother would, even though she was a stranger. After she got off thebus, she thanked him, and he went on his way with a joyful smile. I wanted tomeet him and take a selfie, but I didn't have the confidence. Nevertheless, Iwrote this article to save his memory forever. He is the perfect example ofhumanity, and if everyone acted like him, the world would be a beautiful place:) -- 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/393402677.402365.1713020200198%40mail.yahoo.com.
