A record for the longest spaceflight.

1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov of the Soyuz programme returned from the Mir space station after 437 days in space, setting a record for the longest spaceflight.

The wisdom of Birbal

The wisdom of Birbal was unparalleled during the reign of Mughal Emperor
Akbar in India.
But Akbar's brother in law was extremely jealous of him. He asked the Emperor
Akbar to dispense with Birbal's services and appoint him in his place. He gave ample assurance that he would prove to be more efficient and capable than Birbal.
Before Emperor Akbar could take a decision on this matter, this news reached Birbal. Birbal resigned and left. Emperor Akbar's brother in law was made the minister in place of Birbal.
Emperor Akbar decided to test the new minister. He gave three hundred gold coins to him and said, "Spend these gold coins such that, I get a hundred gold coins here in this life; a hundred gold coins in the other world and another hundred gold coins neither here nor there."
The minister found the entire situation to be a maze of confusion and hopelessness.He spent sleepless nights worrying over how he would get himself out of this mess. Thinking in circles was making him go crazy. Eventually, on the advice of his wife he sought Birbal's help. Birbal said, "Just give me the gold coins. I shall handle the rest."
Birbal walked the streets of the city holding the bag of gold coins in his hand.
He noticed a rich merchant celebrating his son's wedding. Birbal gave a hundred gold coins to him and bowed courteously saying, "The Emperor Akbar sends you his good wishes and blessings for the wedding of your son. Please accept the gift he has sent."
The merchant felt honored that the Emperor had sent a special messenger with such a precious gift. He honored Birbal and gave him a large number of expensive gifts and a bag of gold coins as a return gift for the Emperor.
Next, Birbal went to the area of the city were the poor people lived. There he bought food and clothing in exchange for a hundred gold coins and distributed them in the name of the Emperor Akbar.
When he came back to town he organized a concert of music and dance. He spent a hundred gold coins on it.The next day Birbal entered Emperor Akbar's court and announced that he had done all that the Emperor had asked his brother-in-law to do. The Emperor Akbar waited to know how he had done it.
Birbal repeated the sequences of all the events and then said, "The money I gave to the merchant for the wedding of his son - you have got back while you are on this earth. The money I spent on buying food and clothing for the poor - you will get it in the other world. The money I spent on the musical concert - you will get neither here nor there."
Moral:
This is true even today. The money you spend on friends is returned or reciprocated in some form or the other.Money spent on charity gets converted into blessings from The Almighty which becomes your eternal property.Money spent on pleasures is just frittered away and in return you will be held responsible for wasting in the hereafter!

Significance of Holi

Significance of Holi

In spite of being such a colourful and gay festival, there are various aspects of Holi which makes it so significant for our lives. Though they might not be so apparent but a closer look and a little thought will reveal the significance of Holi in more ways than meets the eyes. Ranging from socio-cultural, religious to biological there is every reason why we must heartily enjoy the festival and cherish the reasons for its celebrations.


So when, its time for Holi, please don't hold yourself back and enjoy the festival to the hilt by participating with full enthusiasm in every small tradition related to the festival.

Mythological Significance


Holi gets us close to our religion and our mythology as it is essentially the celebration of various legends associated with the festival.


Foremost is the legend of Prahlad and Hiranyakshyap. The legend says there once lived a devil and powerful king, Hiranyakshyap who considered himself a god and wanted everybody to worship him. To his great ire, his son, Prahlad began to worship, Lord Vishnu. To get rid of his son, Hiranyakshyap asked his sister, Holika to enter a blazing fire with Prahlad in her lap, as she had a boon to enter fire unscathed. Legend has it that Prahlad was saved for his extreme devotion for the lord while Holika paid a price for her sinister desire. The tradition of burning Holika or the 'Holika dahan' comes mainly from this legend.

Holi also celebrates the legend of Radha and Krishna which describes the extreme delight, Krishna took in applying colour on Radha and other gopis. This prank of Krishna later, became a trend and a part of the Holi festivities.


Mythology also states that Holi is the celebration of death of Ogress Pootana who tried to kill infant, Krishna by feeding poisonous milk to it.


Another legend of Holi which is extremely popular in Southern India is that of Lord Shiva and Kaamadeva. According to the legend, people in south celebrate the sacrifice of Lord of Passion Kaamadeva who risked his life to revoke Lord Shiva from meditation and save the world.






Also, popular is the legend of Ogress Dhundhi who used to trouble children in the kingdom of Raghu and was ultimately chased away by the pranks of the children on the day of Holi. Showing their belief in the legend, children till date play pranks and hurl abuses at the time of Holika Dahan.

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors. Being a "good sport" involves being a "good winner" as well as being a "good loser".

Sportsmanship typically is regarded as a component of morality in sport, composed of three related and perhaps overlapping concepts: fair play, sportsmanship and character. Fair play refers to all participants having an equitable chance to pursue victory and acting toward others in an honest, straightforward, and a firm and dignified manner even when others do not play fairly. It includes respect for others including team members, opponents, and officials. Character refers to dispositions, values and habits that determine the way that person normally responds to desires, fears, challenges, opportunities, failures and successes and is typically seen in polite behaviors toward others such as helping an opponent up or shaking hands after a match. An individual is believed to have a “good character” when those dispositions and habits reflect core ethical values. An example of poor sportsmanship is exemplified in a team's calling timeouts to run up the score on an opponent when the former team already has a sizeable lead.

Sportsmanship can be conceptualized as an enduring and relatively stable characteristic or disposition such that individuals differ in the way they are generally expected to behave in sport situations. In general, sportsmanship refers to virtues such as fairness, self-control, courage and persistence and has been associated with interpersonal concepts of treating others and being treated fairly, maintaining self-control in dealing with others, and respect for both authority and opponents.

A competitor who exhibits poor sportsmanship after losing a game or contest is often called a "sore loser" (those who show poor sportsmanship after winning are typically called "bad winners"). Behavior includes blaming others, not taking responsibility for personal actions, reacting immaturely or improperly, making excuses for their loss, referring to unfavorable conditions or other petty issues. A bad winner is when the victor of a game acts in a shallow fashion such as gloating about their win or rubbing it in the face of the one who lost.

In pictures: Japan earthquake and tsunami

In pictures: Japan earthquake and tsunamiFrom Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Friday, March 18, 2011
A week ago today, at 2:46 pm JST, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of the Tōhoku region in Japan. The earthquake created an extremely destructive tsunami that spawned 10 metre (33 ft) high waves just moments later. The tsunami travelled 10 km (6 mi) inland causing massive destruction in the country's northeast, including crippling a nuclear plant.
The earthquake and resulting tsunami have left 5,692 dead and over 9,506 missing, with nearly 450,000 homeless. The death toll is expected to rise.
In this special photoessay, Wikinews looks at the earthquake and tsunami, the destruction that resulted and efforts to bring aid to the Japanese people.



An Australian Pelican

An Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) in flight. This species of pelican can be found on the inland and coastal waters of Australia and New Guinea, also in Fiji, parts of Indonesia and as a vagrant to New Zealand. At about 1.7 m (5.6 ft) in length and with a wingspan of about 2.4 m (7.9 ft), it is medium-sized by pelican standards, but has the largest beak of any bird; the largest one on record was 49 cm (19 in) long. Widespread throughout its large range, the Australian Pelican is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Nuclear Reactions.

What is nuclear radiation?
Radiation can damage cells and the DNA inside them through its ionizing effect. This effect happens when a high-energy carrying particle or photon removes an electron within an atom’s nucleus from its orbit, thereby changing the properties of the atom. If enough ionization occurs DNA, cell and tissue damage result.

A common example is sunburn, caused by its ultraviolet light. Mutations can result, such as melanoma and other cancers. Of course ionizing effects from nuclear radiation from radioactive materials can do the same thing.

X-rays, gamma rays and far ultraviolet light are always ionizing. Near ultraviolet light and visible light are only ionizing to some molecules. Radio waves and microwaves do not have any ionizing effect.

Beneficial effects of nuclear radiation

•Medicinal, such as radio therapy for cancers and X-rays


•Dating purposes (no, this not where you nuke a ‘toxic’ date)


•Level indicators and thickness gauges


•In smoke detectors and


•In tracing locations of gas or liquid leaks or


•Tracing locations of malfunctioning in the body such as a blocked kidney


•Sterilisation of medical instruments or bacteria or moulds in foods

These, and other such applications,involve low levels of radioactive compounds. However repeated exposure to X-rays is hazardous to your health because of the ionising effects of nuclear radiation.

How long does nuclear radiation last?


All radioactive substances decay over time. Some take fractions of seconds, others many thousands of years.

In theory all radio active substances stay slightly radio active and are never completely inert. That’s why it is more appropriate to use the ‘half-life’ of a radio active substance to indicate its level of radio activity. Its half life is the time it takes for its radio activity to fall by half.

For example, if the radioactivity of a radioactive substance fell by half every two years, its half life would be two years. You notice that it takes much longer for its radio activity to fall to very low levels and that after six years it would have dropped to one-eight of its radio activity.


At every step of its decay the radio active substance transforms into another substance as the composition of the nuclei in its atoms changes.


The half-life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. That means that within that time half of the remaining uranium 238 will have decayed.


Are there any remedies for nuclear radiation effects?

In nuclear bomb explosions or nuclear reactor accidents radio active iodine can be dispersed over wide geographic areas. In the case of the Chernobyl accident it was, as far as 500 km. We do not know what the extent of radiation in the Japanese nuclear disaster may be yet but effects may also be global. Thyroid cancer is one result of such radiation.

There is a way to avoid this toxicity but it has to be done before exposure to the radioactive nuclear radiation product iodine. Taking potassium iodide (KI) or potassium iodate (KIO3) will saturate the thyroid gland with the safe and stable iodine, contained in these chemicals. This leaves no room for the radioactive iodine to be taken up in the thyroid. Therefore any ingested or inhaled iodine is rapidly eliminated via the kidneys.

Of course KI or KIO3 tablets offer no protection against other radio active elements nor from external radiation..

Nuclear radiation - a risk?

Given that there are some 440 nuclear reactors worldwide you’d expect the risk of radiation to be high. However, the only major nuclear accident that saw radiation escape over large areas has to date been Chernobyl.
We hope the 2011 Japanese nuclear situation will not be added.

A limited number of people died in the Chernobyl event and there are various estimates of how many people will be affected over the long term. It should be pointed out that the Chernobyl plant lacked a protective housing, unlike almost all other nuclear reactors and that the shut-down procedures followed were contra-indicated.


Then the Japanese reactors did have such housing but it was not enough to shield the plants from them blowing up, as a result of multiple factors going wrong, notably the tsunami that killed off energy supply to cooling the reactor core.

Distinguished scientist James Lovelock, author of The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity and other books, holds that every person on Earth has radioactive elements in their bodies from past nuclear bomb tests.

However he also holds that cancer rates have not demonstrably risen as a result. According to him the risks of nuclear energy are minimal and outweigh the risks posed by global warming by the use of fossil fuels.

Of course others vehemently disagree. Obviously one serious accident is too many, like the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and its effects on nuclear reactors there show. As well, each nuclear bomb and depleted uranium-tipped missile is one too many.

GOD IS GETTING BETTER.

A little girl was sitting on her grandfather’s lap as he read her a
bedtime story.
From time to time she would take her eyes off the book and reach up to
touch his wrinkled cheek. She was alternately stroking her own cheek,
then his again. Finally she spoke up, “Grandpa, did God make you?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he answered, “God made me a long time ago.”
“Oh, she paused, “Grandpa, did God make me too?”
“Yes indeed, honey,” he said, “God made you just a little while ago.”
Feeling their respective faces again, she observed, “God’s getting better at it, isn’t He?”

A Few Interesting facts about the English language

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ReplyReply AllMove...EMedicine casesEnglish WordsHotmail_MailMasonarypersonalPersonal Flag this messageFw: Thought you knew everything?Tuesday, 15 March, 2011 4:54 PMFrom: This sender is DomainKeys verified"m.p.krishna das" View contact detailsTo: "rama layam" , "Rajan kozhipurath" , "Sreedhar Menon" , "sreevalsan valsan" , "gopal Krishnan" , "jai nambiar" , "durga mp prabhakar" , "ambika subash" , "padmini narayanan" ... more



--- On Sat, 12/3/11, p balakrishnan wrote:





From: p balakrishnan

Subject: Fw: Thought you knew everything?

To: "m.p.krishna das"

Date: Saturday, 12 March, 2011, 6:57 AM













----- Forwarded Message ----

From: ramadas elayedath

To: pkmohankumar@gmail.com; leela1932@yahoo.com; anandm64@hotmail.com; srija sethunath ; sudhanm2007@gmail.com; sudhir babu ; balpkrishnan@yahoo.com; menon_mumbai@yahoo.com; menoneg@gmail.com; ambika_menon711@hotmail.com; akssree@gmail.com; nandini_menon@oxy.com

Sent: Fri, 11 March, 2011 7:05:30 PM

Subject: Thought you knew everything?



Thought you knew everything?
1)Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
2)And 'lollipop' is the longest word typed with your right hand.

3)No word in the English language rhymes with  month, orange, silver, or purple.

4)' Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
5)Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
6) The sentence: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'

uses every letter of the alphabet.
7) The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
8) There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
9)There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: 'abstemious' and 'facetious.'
10)TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
11)A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
12)A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
13)A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
14)A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
15)A snail can sleep for three years.
16)Almonds are a member of the peach family.
17)An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
18)Babies are born without kneecaps.They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

19)February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
20)In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
21)If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

22)Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors
23)Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
24)Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
25)he average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
26)The cruise liner, QE 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

27)The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
28)The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid .
29)There are more chickens than people in the world than men.




























































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Who Invented the Computer Mouse?

Who Invented the Computer Mouse?

Have you ever wondered who invented the computer mouse? Here we talk about the history of the computer mouse. The first computer mouse was invented in 1963-64 by a man named Douglas Engelbartas. At the time, Douglas was experimenting with better ways to point and click on a display screen.

The first mouse was bulky, carved out of wood, and only had one button. It worked with two metal wheels which made contact with the working surface. He named it a computer mouse because the cord came out from behind it, resembling a mouse.

Then in 1972 the ball-mouse was invented by a man named Bill English. The ball-mouse was better than the older computer mouse that was invented before, because it contained a single ball instead of the two metal wheels. This ball could rotate in any direction.

Hopefully you have learned something about the history of the computer mouse.