CULTURAL QA 03-2023-04 Q1 Can a live wire fall off the top of atelephone or utility pole and still be dangerous?
A1 Gopala Krishnan, Former AssistantGeneral Manager 1996-2004 at Department of Telecom (1966–2004)Just now Yes is my answer.In Chennai, India 99% of overhead wires are replaced with cable now. In veryfew places rarely one can see overhead wires. But this was not the case in 1960’sto 2005. Where theelectric service wires were fried, PVC pipes were provided on open wires. The telephone field staff were provided with phase testerand gloves while working on telecom line standing on bamboo ladder which alsoserved as good insulator. Still electrocution was notrare, though not fatal. This is from my experience in working Indian telecomdepartment for 37 years till 2004 end. Q2 Why didn't Europeans sail westwardacross the Atlantic before Columbus supposedly first did in 1492? Were shipsnot capable before then? Why? A2 Mats Andersson, Visited 24 Europeancountries Sun The ships weren’t actually capable in 1492.Notfor the anticipated length of the journey. The distance from Spain to Chinagoing west was known with some accuracy, and Columbus had an absolutely insane stroke of luck whenthere was a continent in the way where he could resupply. Forcrossing the Atlantic, though, absolutely – they manifestly did. It’s a lot easier if you go up north, like the Vikingsdid 500 years before Columbus. The distanceacross the Atlantic is much shorter, and there are islands at more reasonableintervals. More to thepoint, in Columbus’ age they had something they hadn’t had before: compasseshad reached Europe by circa 1300, and by the timeof Columbus they had perfected the art of going far beyond the sight of landand returning safely. Q3 How can you troubleshoot airconditioner problems? A3 Gopala Krishnan, Former AssistantGeneral Manager 1996-2004 at Department of Telecom (1966–2004)Just now Small problems and solutions can be done referring totrouble shoot told in the company booklet. Other than these must be attended to by company engineer/technician only.It is dangerous others handling it, irrespective of they may be civil,electrical or mechanical engineers. Especially by retired engineers. Q4 What improvements would you like tosee in Indian Railways? A4 Dev, Government Servant at CentralGovernment Fri Being a frequenttraveler on trains, I think I'm eligible to some extent to answer thisquestion. Here are a couple of things Indian railways can work on. Improve the condition of washrooms- yes! Exactly,I see more often than not, the washroom clogged to the hilt and the washroomfloor is no less like a mini pool even in trains like Rajdhani and Duranto. Unwanted passengers- just a few weeks back I wastraveling in Telangana express AC-3 tier. At Nagpur railway station, a few tensof people hopped in outrightly choking the entrance and exit of the coaches. They were irresistible eventhough some people complained to the authorities about them. Catering facilities- with pantry cars being obsolete,and civil vendors taking over the food supply chains across train fleets,somewhere the quality is being compromised. It can get better. Ticket booking system- I can't get my head aroundthe ticket booking systems in vogue nowadays. We've to be in everlasting fearof not getting a confirmed ticket even if we book it three weeks earlier. A facility oralgorithm should be devised so that couples don't get their seats in differentcoaches. PS:Gallery I always have toswitch my lower birth for some middle one in a different coach because a couplehas to be together. My note- It is a fact not having adequate seats inunreserved compartments, passengers with/without tickets getting in to reservedcompartment. While Ticket checking staff arrive, if some bodycomplains, he asks them to move out, they move a little near toilets, once the TTE goes, again they willcrow towards reserved seats. In North India, condition is reported worse. Q5 What was the garum that the rich werecrazy about in ancient Rome? A5 Matt Riggsby, MA ArchaeologicalStudies, Boston University23h It wasn’t just the rich. It was everybody, though “crazyabout” is something of an exaggeration. Everybody used itbecause it was the standard condiment, like ketchup or salsa might be regardedtoday. Are we crazyabout ketchup, or do we just use it habitually? Anyway, it’s what we call fish sauce today.It went out of fashion in the west with the collapse of the Roman empire, butit’s alive and well in East Asian cuisine. Indeed, it’s probably about as central to thecuisine of Southeast Asia today as it was in the ancient Mediterranean. You canfind it in well-stocked grocery stores, possibly under an Asian name like nampla. While their early histories are far from clear, chemical analysis suggeststhat modern Asian fish sauces probably tasted a lot like ancient Roman fishsauces. That said, producing fish sauce is something mostwesterners would find appalling, because it’s an extractmade from fermented fish. You get a bunch of seafood (often anchovies, butother fish can be used), clean and gut them, pack them in salt, and let thecontainers sit in the sun and ferment for a while, then filter out the liquidthat produces. But whatever its origins, the salty, pungent substance, full ofglutemates, provides a huge amount of flavor. Q6 Apart from humans, are there otheranimals that can be considered vengeful? A6 Pamela Lonergan, Marketing Executive(2017–present) Updated 2y This guy. He may look like a cow, made in your worst nightmare He isn't called theWidowmaker for nothing. Hekills an average of 200 people per year, much more than lions. The Cape buffalo (and his other buffalo relatives) are regarded asextremely dangerous. Therehave been several cases of hunters wounding a buffalo and the buffalo willstalk and kill the hunters. The heavy horn on their head is made up ofthick keratin, effectively making it bulletproof. A wounded, but still mobile buffalo, will head into thickbush and woe betide that naive hunter who will follow him into that bush. Thebuffalo will ambush the hunter inside the thick bush and show him he isn'tcalled a widowmaker for nothing. The last faceyou'll ever see Aside humans, the only animal likely to attack a buffaloare lions and crocodiles, usually with the lions eatingthe dust in such encounters. Smart lions and crocs go for weak buffalo andcalves. Unlike most preyanimals, buffalo will attack sleeping lions as a group and attempt to tramplethem to death. They will also come to the aid of threatened(or caught) family member and often succeed in driving the predators away. Let me add a fewmore facts about the African Buffalo African buffalo can run at speeds of up to 57kilometers (35 miles) per hour. The world's fastest man runs at a miserly 27miles per hour. Good luck running away from a buffalo on a revenge mission.Unless you're The Flash, and you're not being chased by a herd ofsuper-buffalo. After resting, herds of buffalo seem to have a uniquesystem of choosing in which direction to move. They vote. The animals stand upand facethe direction where they want to move and the dominant female leads them in thedirection where most of the animals are facing. So you've pissed off a herd ofdemocratic animals. Q7 What are Hydrogen trains announced byIndian Railways? A7 Trainman,A train ticket booking app8h Recently, RailwaysMinister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that India will have its first indigenouslydesigned and manufactured hydrogentrain by December 2023 on the Kalka-Shimla historic circuit. Althoughhydrogen-powered train technology is still in its early stages, with only a fewcountries using it on a limited basis, India's early adoption is regarded as asignificant step towards green initiatives. The upcoming hydrogen-powered trains are a part of theVande Metro project. It will initially run on historic,narrow-gauge routes including the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the NilgiriMountain Railway, the Kalka Shimla Railway, the Matheran Hill Railway, theKangra Valley, the Bilimora Waghai, and the Marwar-Devgarh Madriya, which willmake travel more environmentally friendly. What are hydrogen trains? Hydrogen trains are those that use hydrogen fuel cellsrather than traditional diesel engines. In thistechnology, hydrogen acts as the fuel in the cell with the addition of oxygen,generating electrical energy with water being the only by-product. Replacing onediesel train with a hydrogen train can reduce the CO2 emission by 4,400 tonnesevery year. With projects likeVande Bharat, Vande Metro, the Rapid Rail Transit System, and the Bullet Train,it is clear that the Indian Railways is heading in the right and brightdirection. You can enjoy thisrevolutionary change while travelling on existing Vande Bharat trains withTrainman. Use the code "VB200" while signing up with Trainman, andget ₹200in your wallet, which can be used for booking train tickets at the best prices. "Trainmanwishes you and your family success, happiness, and prosperity this Holi andalways! Have a colourfuland joyous Holi!" Q8 Could a chimpanzee ever be consideredhuman from an evolutionary standpoint? A8 Claire Jordan,Degree in biology andfolklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper Fri There are some biologists who believe that chimps andbonobos should be classed as members of genus Homo, yes. Personally I thinkthat’s pushing it. Althoughwe are closely related to them we can’t interbreed, and the musculo-skeletalchanges which make humans efficient upright bipeds are surely great enough toqualify us as a separate genus….. But the changes to our spine, pelvis and lower limbswhich enable us to sprint while upright, where other apes can only toddle ontwo legs, are pretty significant.] Q9 What happens to our consciousnessafter we die? Does it simply cease to exist, or does it continue on in someform? A9 Mats Andersson, B. Sc, M. Sc fromUppsala University Sun >From a strictlyscientific viewpoint, we don’t know. There is certainly >noverifiable, repeatable evidence that the consciousness continues to exist. >Noris there any particular scientific reason to believe it does. Then again, >science does not consider an absence of evidence to beevidence of absence.Nor >is it something that there’s a simple experiment to prove ordisprove; there’s >not one ethics committee in the world that would approve ofan experiment on >dying people, or of an experiment that intentionally almostkilled people. This being said, there is one experiment going on thatmight shed light on it: some surgery wards have placedbig signs on equipment that are only visible from above, to see whether anyonehaving a “near-death” experience on the operating table reports seeing themafter waking up –people are occasionally reporting “floating” above the surgery taking place,and accurately reporting some events, but that only proves that their brainswere still registering sensory impressions. The key is that thesigns could only be seen if the consciousness actually left the body. So far,no results; near-death experiences are not all that common on the operatingtable (and when they do happen, you’d assume that the consciousness would berather more interested in what happens to the body it just left). However, there is a huge amount of what science termsanecdotal evidence – reports of observations in non-controlled settingsthat cannot (or sometimes should not) be repeated. The problem with this isthat if you, e.g., think of a deceased relative, your brain might trick youinto believing you see them. Ask any hunter; they are likely to have seen, veryclearly, animals that turned out to be the play of shadow on leaves, becausethey expected to see the animal. Near-death experiences might be triggered bystrictly biological processes. And so on; there is no anecdotal evidence thatcan’t be explained in some other way, which is precisely the problem withanecdotal evidence. (And sometimes, once you look into it, the simplest or evenobvious explanation is “you made that up”, which is the biggest reason whyanecdotal evidence has a bad reputation in science. No one enjoys performing athorough investigation only to find someone had made it all up for theattention or for the money.) But “all evidence is anecdotal” does not necessarily meanthat it isn’t true. “Just because you’re paranoid itdoesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Scully.” You can make up your own mind about this. You can chooseto believe that all the anecdotal evidence is actually based on something real.Youcan choose to believe it is only based on delusions, tricks of the light,confirmation bias and outright wishful thinking. Only one thingis certain: if our consciousness continues to exist after we die, we’ll all getto know, eventually. My note- Just posted on academic interest- Q10 Is Amtrak the longest train you canget? A10 Nicholas Stone, Life long interest intrains.15h Currently, the world longest single continuous trainjourney with no changes is the daily service from Moscow Yaroslavsky toVladivostok. The train journey is 167 hours long, covering adistance of 9,289 km and crosses 8 time zones. During the journey, there arefrequents stop at stations for passengers to board and alight - as well as forcrew changes, waste removal and to take on new supplies. The train is hauled byelectric locomotives throughout, so there is no refuelling. I’ve taken this train service. Along the way, I visitedUlan Ude, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg. In each case, I stayed for 2 or 3 nightsbefore boarding a later train. Until service suspension in February 2020, the direct trainfrom Moscow to Pyongyang was even longer - at 10,263 km. All the above QA are from Quora website on 07-06-2023 Quora answers need not be100% correct answers . Compiled and posted by R. Gopala Krishnan,79, former ITS on 08-03-2023 -- 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 thatha_patty+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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