Source….www.the better india.com
Natarajan
Education
Message for the Day…” God’s grace is like the shower of rain or sunlight. You must do some spiritual practice (sadhana) to receive it, the sadhana of keeping a pot upright to receive the rain, or opening the door of your heart so that the Sun may illumine it.”
God’s grace is like the shower of rain or sunlight. You must do some spiritual practice (sadhana) to receive it, the sadhana of keeping a pot upright to receive the rain, or opening the door of your heart so that the Sun may illumine it. Like the music that is broadcast over the radio, it is all around you; but you must switch on your receiver and tune to the wavelength so that you can enjoy it. Do at least little sadhana and pray for grace. Grace will set everything right. Grace will grant you self-realisation (Atma Sakshatkara) and other incidental benefits too like a happy contented life and a cool courageous temper established in unruffled peace. The plantain tree has bunches of fruits as its main gift. But its leaves, soft core of the trunk and flower bud are subsidiary items that can be profitably used. This is the nature of grace. It fulfils a variety of wants.
Source….http://media.radiosai.org
Natarajan
The village that gave India its new ISRO chief…..DR.Sivan
A humble son of a farmer who studied in local government run schools, in Tamil medium, is the new head of India’s premier space agency.
Dr K Sivan was born in Sarakkalvilai in Kanyakumari district in 1957. His father was a farmer, and Dr Sivan is the first graduate in the family.
By all accounts, his is an unusual story.
A young Sivan studied in government schools in his native village till the 5th standard, and completed his schooling in neighbouring Valankumaravilai, all in Tamil medium. Later, he graduated from the S T Hindu College in Nagercoil.
He then graduated from the Madras Institute of Technology in aeronautical engineering in 1980 and completed his master’s in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1982.
That year he joined ISRO on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle project, towards which he contributed in mission planning, design, integration and analysis. He has held various responsibilities during his stint in ISRO, finally going on to head India’s space agency.
At ISRO, he completed his PhD in aerospace engineering from IIT-Bombay, in 2006.
Dr Sivan, who takes over from Dr A S Kiran Kumar on Monday, January 15, for a three-year term, is only the second rocket scientist after G Madhavan Nair to head ISRO.
MAGE: Dr Sivan’s family home in Sarakkalvilai village. He comes here regularly to attend family functions and for the Bhadrakali Amman puja. Photograph: A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com
Sarakkalvilai falls on the outskirts of Nagercoil, which is the headquarters of Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu. All of a sudden this small village has become the centre of attraction for people near and far, thanks to its famous son.
“Take the next right and it is at the end of the road,” says a villager, and as you reach the house you realise it is as unpretentious as the man who grew up there.
Dr Sivan’s sister-in-law Saraswathi lives in the family house with her daughter. “My eldest daughter got married five months ago and Sivan had come for the function,” she says, her eyes glowing with happiness.
Since the announcement about his appointment, people have been coming in droves to congratulate her, and her face beams with pride.
“I was married 30 years ago into this family and at that time he was already working for ISRO in Thiruvananthapuram. He used to live in a lodge then. He comes home for festivals and family functions,” says Saraswathi.
The conversation is interrupted when former Tamil Nadu Congress president Kumari Ananthan lands up with a dozen supporters to congratulate her.
One of the men who comes along with Ananthan hands her a book with the message, “Please give it to him when he comes next.” Another hands her a monthly magazine.
“He comes here every year for the Badrakali Amman puja which takes place in April-May,” adds his sister-in-law.
“He comes with his family, offers prayers and leaves the same day. He always comes for all family functions. When he is with the family he is always smiling and joking. He never calls, but his wife calls regularly and keeps in touch with us,” Sarawathi says.
“He was a class topper from school to college,” says Dr Sivan’s uncle who lives in the house opposite.
“He was a brilliant student and never went for tuitions or private classes. His father used to pluck mangoes and young Sivan used to go to the market to sell it. He was a helpful child,” the uncle adds.
The school Dr Sivan studied at is also opposite the family house. The retired PT master there recalls him clearly. “He was five years my junior in school, I remember him as a very quiet boy.”
“I too was five years his junior,” another villager pipes in. “You know the final exams used to come during harvest time. His father used to be in the field while Sivan sat on the lower branch of a tree with his books, studying, keeping one eye on the harvest, and run if his father called. He was always studying.”
“When Sivan and I were in school we had a very good headmaster,” the villager adds. “That headmaster planted many trees in the school compound and made every class in charge of a few trees. In the morning, when we came to school, the first thing we did was to water the trees and only after that did we attend school.”
“Kanyakumari is basically an agricultural district,” an elderly villager points out. “Apart from coir, there was no industry here. We all survived on farming. It’s rich fertile soil and there is plenty of water. Paddy, bananas, coconuts, mangoes, rubber is grown here.”
“Sivan was exceptional,” the elderly gent adds, “while he helped his father in the field he continued studying every free moment.”
“As there was only a primary school here we went to nearby Valankumaravilai for our SSC (Class 10). Those days there was no 12th standard. As there was no bus facility we walked.”
A colleague from ISRO, who retired a decade ago and did not want to be named for this feature, recalls, “He (Sivan) would go home only to sleep. He is extremely hard-working and totally focused on his work. He was not only the first graduate from his family, he was also the first graduate from his village.”
“He is a disciplined taskmaster,” says D Karthikesan, former director of the ISRO Propulsion Complex in Mahindragiri, Tamil Nadu.
“He likes to keep everything on schedule and works with a deadline,” adds Karthikesan. “If he thinks there is a problem somewhere he will go and talk to the people actually working on the project, and never limit himself to seniors in the organisation.”
“Though he is a hard taskmaster,” the former ISRO scientist points out, “he is also extremely generous and always looks after the welfare of the people working under him. So people work hard for him.”
“He is a bold decision-maker,” says Karthikesan. “Where others may hesitate wondering if it would work or not, he will say it will work and will do it.”
“Though he followed the schedule strictly,” adds Karthikesan, “he also made sure that all parameters are met at every stage. Whether it is quality or safety, he made sure every parameter was up to the mark before proceeding, and yet kept a tight schedule.”
Dr Sivan has two sons. The elder one has finished his BTech, the younger son is in college.
The school Dr Sivan studied in was built over 60 years ago. “We need to pull it down and build another,” says a villager. A government-run school, the land was given free by Dr Sivan’s uncle.
The village still does not have a bus service, a fact the villagers highlighted to Kumari Ananthan, the Congress politician. Nor does it have a middle, high or higher secondary school.
K Sivan’s ascent bears an uncanny resemblance to another ISRO scientist who was born in a fishing village in Ramanathapuram, also in Tamil Nadu.
That scientist, of course, went on to become the most beloved President this Republic has had.
Source….A.Ganesh Nadar in http://www.rediff.com
Natarajan
WHAT IS A KUDO, AS IN “KUDOS TO YOU”…?
First, it should be noted that “kudos” is not the plural form of “kudo”, so a “kudo” was once technically nothing. However, because so many people in the last century, mainly in the United States, have thought kudos was plural, in some dictionaries today “kudo” is considered a valid word meaning the same thing as kudos (yet another word created via back-formation).
To answer your question, kudos in English means:
1) Praise / Accolades
2) Credit for one’s achievements
The word “kudos” comes from the Greek κῦδος (kudos), meaning “glory” or “fame”. The “-os” ending in Greek typically indicates a singular noun and is supposed to be pronounced like “-ose”, rather than “-oze”, as many Americans usually pronounce it, “koo-doze”, or as a lot of British people tend to pronounce it “-oss”, “cue-doss”.
The word made its way into English around the late 18th century / early 19th century, meaning pretty much the same thing as it means today. The first documented instance of the “singular” word “kudo” didn’t pop up until 1926.
Source….www. today i foundout.com
Natarajan
தலையாட்டி பொம்மையும், தஞ்சை பெரிய கோவிலும்!
தஞ்சாவூரில் தயாரிக்கப்படும் தலையாட்டி பொம்மைக்கும், தஞ்சை பெரிய கோவிலுக்கும் என்ன சம்பந்தம் இருக்க முடியும் என்று தானே நினைக்கிறீர்கள்…
இந்த சாதாரண தலையாட்டி பொம்மைக்குள் தான், மிகப் பெரிய தத்துவத்தையே ஒளித்து வைத்துள்ளனர், நம் முன்னோர்.
கொட்டாங்கச்சி எனப்படும் தேங்காய் சிரட்டையில் பாதியை எடுத்து, அதில், களி மண்ணை அடைத்து, தலையாட்டி பொம்மைகள் செய்யப்படுகிறது. அந்தப் பொம்மையை தரையில் வைத்து, எந்த பக்கம் சாய்த்தாலும், அது, ஆடி ஆடி கடைசியாக நேராக நின்று விடும்.
சமீபத்தில், தஞ்சை பெரிய கோவில் வளாகத்தில், தண்ணீர் பற்றாக்குறை காரணமாக, ‘போர்’ போடுவதற்காக, ஆழ்துளை கிணறு தோண்டியுள்ளனர். அப்போது, களிமண்ணோ, செம்மண்ணோ வரவில்லை; வேறு ஒரு வகை மணல் வெளிப்பட்டிருக்கிறது.
அது, காட்டாறுகளில் காணப்படக் கூடிய மணல். சாதாரண ஆற்று மணலுக்கும், காட்டாறு மணலுக்கும் வித்தியாசம் உண்டு. சாதாரண ஆற்று மணலை விட, காட்டாறுகளில் காணப்படும் மணலில், பாறைத் துகள்கள் அதிகம் காணப்படும். மேலும், சாதாரண மணலை காட்டிலும் கடினமானது. கோவிலை கட்டுவதற்கு முன், அந்த மணலை அடியில் நிரப்பியுள்ளனர்.
இத்தகவலை அறிந்த, தஞ்சை பெரிய கோவில் மீட்புக் குழுவினரின் முயற்சியால், போர் போடும் வேலை உடனடியாக தடுத்து நிறுத்தப்பட்டது.
ஏனென்றால், ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளாக இந்த பூமியில் ஏற்படும் அழுத்தங்களையும், நிலநடுக்கங்களையும் தாங்கி, நான்குபுறமும் அகழிகளால் சூழப்பட்டு, கம்பீரமாக காட்சியளிக்கும் இந்த உலக அதிசயத்தின் அஸ்திவாரமே அந்த மணல் தான்!
இவ்ளோ பெரிய கோவிலுக்கு, மணலை கொண்டு அஸ்திவாரம் அமைக்க, சோழ தேச பொறியாளர்கள் என்ன முட்டாள்களா!
கோவிலின் அதி அற்புத தத்துவமும், சோழர்களின் அறிவின் உச்சமும் அங்குதான் வெளிப்படுகிறது.
அகழிகளால் சூழப்பட்டுள்ள தீவு போன்ற அமைப்பில், காட்டாற்று மணலால் கோவிலுக்கு அஸ்திவாரம் அமைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. தலையாட்டி பொம்மையை சாய்த்தால், எப்படி கீழே உள்ள கனமான அடிப்பரப்பில் ஆடி ஆடி நேராக நின்று விடுகிறதோ, அதேபோல், பெரிய கோவிலும் எத்தகைய பூகம்பம் வந்து அசைய நேரிட்டாலும், அசைந்து, தானாகவே சம நிலைக்கு வந்து விடும்.
சோழ தேச பொறியாளர்களின் அறிவிற்கு, உலகில் வேறு எவரும் ஈடாகார் என்பதற்கு இது ஒன்றே சான்று!
Source….Pushpa in http://www.dinamalar.com dated 7th Jan 2018
Natarajan
Akademgorodok: Siberia’s Silicon Valley….
Tucked away in a remote forest of birch and pine in the heart of Siberia, 3,000 km away from Moscow, at a place where winters are six months long with temperatures dropping to minus 40 degree Celsius and summers are swaddled with mosquitos, is a city built for scientists and researchers. This frozen wasteland is more suited for polar bears than scientific endeavors, but Nikita Khrushchev felt the distance from Moscow was necessary so that the country’s sharpest scientific minds could work together on fundamental research away from the prying eyes of bureaucracy. This is Akademgorodok, or “Academic Town”—the Soviet Union’s answer to America’s Silicon Valley. 
The Academpark Technopark at Akademgorodok. Photo credit: gelio.livejournal.com
Akademgorodok is situated in the middle of a forest 30 km south of Novosibirsk city. It is one of several Akademgorodoks built between the late 1950s and mid-1970s in Siberia; the Akademgorodok outside Novosibirsk is the most successful one. Located within Akademgorodok is Novosibirsk State University, 35 research institutes, a medical academy, apartment buildings and houses, and a variety of community amenities including stores, hotels, hospitals, restaurants and cafes, cinemas, clubs and libraries. Less than two kilometer away is an artificial beach created by dumping hundreds of tons of sand along the edge of the Ob reservoir.
At its peak, Akademgorodok was home to 65,000 scientists and their families. It was a privilege to live there, and many scholars in the 60s escaped to the frozen hinterland as a sort of voluntary exile in order to be far from the totalitarian rule of the Soviet capital, and lured by the promise of new housing and professional advancement.
Residents enjoyed great levels of freedom and indulged in activities unheard of in any other corner of the Soviet empire. They discussed the foundations of Marxist theory and about economic reforms, read books, listen to poets and singers not approved by the regime. Scientific research in areas dismissed as dangerous pseudoscience in Moscow, such as cybernetics and genetics, flourished.
Living standards in Akademgorodok were also higher than in the rest of the country. Shops were stocked with subsidized foodstuffs not easily obtainable elsewhere, and apartments were well-furnished. Those who obtained a doctorate were given a special food delivery service, which provided them a wider selection of groceries than the general population could avail. Members of the Academy of Sciences had access to even higher level of services and were allotted single-family residences rather than apartments.
But the utopian vision of no bureaucratic interference proved impossible in the Soviet Union. Freedoms got severely curtailed in the 1970s during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. Then when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, many of the former communist nation’s best minds fled to the west. But economic reforms brought about by the end of communism saw the beginning of private investment and venture funding in Akademgorodok. From USD 10 million in 1997, this rose to USD 1 billion by 2015. There are some 300 companies operating at Akademgorodok today dabbling on everything from nano-ceramics to motion graphics for the American entertainment industry. Its current population stands at over 100,000.
While the figures pale in comparison to that of other countries and even elsewhere in Russia—Skolkovo, an emerging tech hub on the outskirts of Moscow, for example, has over 1,100 startups generating over USD 1 billion in revenue alone at the end of 2014—Akademgorodok will remain as Russia’s original Silicon Valley.
Photo credit: gelio.livejournal.com
Source….Kaushik in http://www.amusingplanet.com
Natarajan
8 Supposed Facts That Aren’t Really True….!!!
The passage of time can make even the most steadfast of facts to no longer be true. For instance, it was once believed that doctors didn’t need to wash their hands before surgery, but it’s now known that doing so is imperative in order to prevent infection. Take a look at 8 supposed facts that aren’t really true:
1. THEN: America won its independence on July 4, 1776.
NOW: America didn’t officially gain independence until 1783.
July 4th marks Independence Day in the United States, and it’s a celebration replete with parades, barbecues and fireworks. Although the Declaration of Independence was adopted by 12 colonies on July 4th, 1776 and signed by 13 colonies the following August, America was still under British rule. The American Revolution raged on until September 3rd, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed and America truly became free.
2. THEN: George Washington’s teeth were made of wood.
NOW: His teeth were actually human teeth from his slaves. Some were made from ivory.
A set of dentures worn by George Washington are kept at the Mount Vernon plantation house museum. They’re fashioned out of ivory and human teeth, with the human teeth being purchased from slaves that sold them to dentists to make some money in the 18th Century. Apparently Washington paid just one-third of the going rate for the teeth. It’s likely that Washington had his dentures implanted into his jaw.
3. THEN: Pluto is a planet.
NOW: Pluto isn’t a planet.
Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh back in 1930. He submitted his finding to the Harvard College Observatory, which allowed an 11-year-old English girl to give the newly discovered planet its name. In 2003, an astronomer found that there was an even larger object beyond Pluto, and he named it Eris. This sparked a debate regarding the criteria for what makes a planet a planet. Following the debate’s conclusion, astronomers decided that neither Pluto nor Eris made the cut, so Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status.
4. THEN: Diamond is the hardest substance.
NOW: Ultra-hard nano-twinned cubic boron nitride is the hardest substance.
It’s been known that there are two substances that are harder than diamond since 2009. These substances, known as wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite, are 18% and 58% better at resisting indentation than diamond respectively. The only problem is that they’re both quite unstable and rare elements. Yet another substance that’s even harder than the aforementioned two was discovered by researchers in 2013. Called ultra-hard nano-twinned cubic boron nitride, it essentially consists of boron nitride particles that have been reorganized into the shape of a layered onion
5. THEN: Witches in Salem were burned at the stake.
NOW: They were actually hanged.
The notorious Salem Witch Trials are widely believed to have involved suspected witches being burned at the stake, but it never actually happened – they were hanged instead. When the Trials were taking place, the US state of New England still followed English law, which dictated that witchcraft was punishable by hanging as opposed to burning at the stake. The confusion arises from the European church calling witchcraft heresy, an offense which was punishable by burning at the stake.
6. THEN: Israelite slaves built the pyramids.
NOW: Egyptian workers built the pyramids themselves.
The myth that the Israelites built the pyramids reportedly stems from comments made by former Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, during a visit to Egypt in 1977. Jewish people actually didn’t exist during the period when the pyramids were constructed. Archeologists recently found proof that the Ancient Egyptians actually built the pyramids themselves. Workers came from poor families in the north and south of the country, but they were highly respected, with some even being given crypts located close to the pyramids they built.
7. THEN: Folding a piece of paper more than seven times is mathematically impossible.
NOW: The record stands at 13 folds.
The myth that paper can only be folded seven times was dispelled by a Californian high school student called Britney Gallivan. Together with some volunteers, she bought a giant $85 roll of toilet paper and amazed everyone by managing to fold it no less than 11 times. She even developed an equation based on the thickness and width of the specific paper. In 2013, students at St. Mark’s School in Southborough, Massachusetts managed to fold paper 13 times.
8. THEN: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.
NOW: Many man-made places are actually visible from space.
This so-called “fact” gets regurgitated to third-graders the world over, but there’s actually nothing factual about it at all. In 2003, a Chinese astronaut shattered the myth by confirming that the Great Wall of China wasn’t actually visible from space. In contrast, the lights of large cities, major roadways, bridges, and airports can be seen from space.
Source….www.ba-bamail.com
Natarajan
வரலாறு பேசும் அரிய புகைப்படத்தை விட்டு சென்ற விண்வெளி வீரர்!
மந்தாரமான கறுப்பு நிற திரை… கீழே பிரகாசமாக படர்ந்திருக்கும் நீல நிறம். குட்டியாகத் தெரியும் பொம்மை போன்ற உருவம்.. ஏதோ கிராபிக்ஸ் காட்சி போன்று தோன்றலாம். ஆனால் இது விண்வெளியில் பதிவான உண்மை காட்சி. கீழே படர்ந்திருக்கும் நீல நிறம்தான் நாம் வாழும் பூமி. கறுப்பு திரை விண்வெளி. குட்டி பொம்மை போன்று மிதந்து கொண்டிருப்பவர் விண்வெளி வீரர் புரூஸ் மெக்கண்டில்ஸ் (Bruce McCandless). 
இந்த புகைப்படம் 1984ம் ஆண்டு பதிவானது. எந்த பிடிமானமும் இல்லாமல் சுதந்திரமாக (untethered with nothing) விண்வெளியில் வலம் வந்த முதல் வீரர் என்னும் பெருமைப்பெற்றவர் புரூஸ் மெக்கண்டில்ஸ். இவர் தனது 80 வயதில் கடந்த 21ம் தேதி காலமானார். அவரை பெருமைப்படுத்தும் விதமான அவரின் சாதனை நிமிடங்களை நாசா வெளியிட்டு வருகிறது. அவரின் இந்த புகைப்படம் விண்வெளி வரலாற்று பக்கங்களில் சிறந்த பக்கமாக விளங்கும் என்று புகழாரம் சூட்டியுள்ளது நாசா!
We’re saddened by the loss of retired astronaut Bruce McCandless II. Most known for being the 1st human to free-float on a shuttle spacewalk, he also served as the Apollo 11 moonwalkers’ link to mission control and helped launch @NASAHubble: https://www.nasa.gov/astronautprofiles/mccandless …
Source….www.vikatan.com
Natarajan
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE….
The Bermuda Triangle is a large area of ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Over the last few centuries, it’s thought that dozens of ships and planes have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the area, earning it the nickname “The Devil’s Triangle.” People have even gone so far as to speculate that it’s an area of extra-terrestrial activity or that there is some bizarre natural scientific cause for the region to be hazardous; but most likely, it’s simply an area in which people have experienced a lot of bad luck—the idea of it being a “vortex of doom” is no more real than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster (see The Origin of the Bigfoot Legend and The Origin of the Loch Ness Monster).
The Bermuda Triangle’s bad reputation started with Christopher Columbus. According to his log, on October 8, 1492, Columbus looked down at his compass and noticed that it was giving weird readings. He didn’t alert his crew at first, because having a compass that didn’t point to magnetic north may have sent the already on edge crew into a panic. This was probably a good decision considering three days later when Columbus simply spotted a strange light, the crew threatened to return to Spain.
This and other reported compass issues in the region gave rise to the myth that compasses will all be off in the Triangle, which isn’t correct, or at least is an exaggeration of what is actually happening as you’ll see. Despite this, in 1970 the U.S. Coast Guard, attempting to explain the reasons for disappearances in the Triangle, stated:
First, the “Devil’s Triangle” is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north. Normally it points toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 20 degrees as one circumnavigates the earth. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, a navigator could find himself far off course and in deep trouble.
Of course, despite this now being repeated as an explanation for disappearances in the Triangle on numerous documentaries and articles since then, it turns out magnetic variation is something ship captains (and other explorers) have known about and had to deal with pretty much as long as there have been ships and compasses. Dealing with magnetic declination is really just “Navigation by Compass” 101 and nothing to be concerned about, nor anything that would seriously throw off any experienced navigator.
n 2005, the Coast Guard revisited the issue after a TV producer in London inquired about it for a program he was working on. In this case, they correctly changed their tune about the magnetic field bit stating,
Many explanations have cited unusual magnetic properties within the boundaries of the Triangle. Although the world’s magnetic fields are in constant flux, the “Bermuda Triangle” has remained relatively undisturbed. It is true that some exceptional magnetic values have been reported within the Triangle, but none to make the Triangle more unusual than any other place on Earth.
The modern Bermuda Triangle legend didn’t get started until 1950 when an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones was published by the Associated Press. Jones reported several incidences of disappearing ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle, including five US Navy torpedo bombers that vanished on December 5, 1945, and the commercial airliners “Star Tiger” and “Star Ariel” which disappeared on January 30, 1948 and January 17, 1949 respectively. All told, about 135 individuals were unaccounted for, and they all went missing around the Bermuda Triangle. As Jones said, “they were swallowed without a trace.”
It was a 1955 book, The Case for the UFO, by M. K. Jessup that started pointing fingers at alien life forms. After all, no bodies or wreckage had yet been discovered. By 1964, Vincent H. Gaddis—who coined the term “Bermuda Triangle”—wrote an article saying over 1000 lives had been claimed by the area. He also agreed that it was a “pattern of strange events.” The Bermuda Triangle obsession hit its peak in the early 1970s with the publication of several paperback books about the topic, including the bestseller by Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle.
However, critic Larry Kusche, who published The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved in 1975, argued that other authors had exaggerated their numbers and hadn’t done any proper research. They presented some disappearance cases as “mysteries” when they weren’t mysteries at all, and some reported cases hadn’t even happened within the Bermuda Triangle.
After extensively researching the issue, Kusche concluded that the number of disappearances that occurred within the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t actually greater than in any other similarly trafficked area of the ocean, and that other writers presented misinformation—such as not reporting storms that occurred on the same day as disappearances, and sometimes even making it seem as though the conditions had been calm for the purposes of creating a sensational story. In short: previous Bermuda Triangle authors didn’t do their research and either knowingly or unintentionally “made it up.”
The book did such a thorough job of debunking the myth that it effectively ended most of the Bermuda Triangle hype. When authors like Berlitz and others were unable to refute Kusche’s findings, even the most steadfast of believers had difficulty remaining confident in the sensationalized Bermuda Triangle narrative. Nevertheless, many magazine articles, TV shows, and movies have continued to feature the Bermuda Triangle.
Because the number of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle is no greater than any other similarly trafficked area of the world’s oceans, they don’t really need an explanation. But if you’re still convinced that the Triangle is a ship graveyard, relative to other regions that get around the same number of travelers, here are some natural explanations from the Coast Guard to combat some of the “alien” and other fantastical theories.
The majority of disappearances can be attributed to the area’s unique features. The Gulf Stream, a warm ocean current flowing from the Gulf of Mexico around the Florida Straits northeastward toward Europe, is extremely swift and turbulent. It can quickly erase any evidence of a disaster.
The unpredictable Caribbean-Atlantic storms that give birth to waves of great size as well as waterspouts often spell disaster for pilots and mariners. (Not to mention that the area is in “hurricane alley.”) The topography of the ocean floor varies from extensive shoals to some of the deepest marine trenches in the world. With the interaction of strong currents over reefs, the topography is in a constant state of flux and breeds development of new navigational hazards.
Not to be underestimated is the human factor. A large number of pleasure boats travel the water between Florida’s Gold Coast (the most densely populated area in the world) and the Bahamas. All to often, crossings are attempted with too small a boat, insufficient knowledge of the area’s hazards and lack of good seamanship.
Source…www.today i foundout.com
Natarajan
The Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year is a word nobody actually uses….
LONDON — The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2017 has been revealed, and the winner is … “youthquake.”
Confused? You may not be the only one.
The word is defined as meaning “a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people.” It represents the awakening of millennials striving for change during a turbulent 12 months across the world.
Data collected by editors at Oxford Dictionaries revealed a huge increase in usage of the word in 2017 compared with 2016. The British election called by Prime Minister Theresa May in early June is believed to have caused a spike in usage. Britain saw a huge turnout of young voters hoping to make an impact as they rallied behind Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Guardian and other publications dubbed their collective actions a “youthquake.”
The word “youthquake” may be the winner for 2017, but it is not new. It was coined in 1965 by Vogue Editor Diana Vreeland, who used it to highlight changes young people drove in the fashion and music industries.
Despite having deep political and cultural roots in 2017, the winning word was met with a wave of skepticism on social media.
“I run a charity for young people. This is not a word that I have ever heard used. Anywhere. By Anyone. #Youthquake,” tweeted Ruth Ibegbuna, chief executive of a youth leadership and social change organization in Britain.
“So, ‘Youthquake’ is Oxford English Dictionaries word of the year. Never heard it being said, no idea what it means … must have missed the memo on this one,” wrote another baffled Twitter user.
While some mocked the winning word, others pointed out that “youthquake” was the title of a 1985 album from British pop group Dead or Alive.
So how exactly is the word of the year decided?
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year, selected annually since 2004, is a tradition many look forward to. Winners are picked for their “lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.”
“We try to choose a word that reminds us about where we’ve been,” said Casper Grathwohl, president of the Dictionaries Division. “Sometimes, our choice is serious, other times playful.” Each year, the winning word is expected to reflect the mood or ethos of the past 12 months.
“ ‘Youthquake’ is not an obvious choice,” Grathwohl wrote in a blog post. He added that the word has “yet to land firmly on American soil, but strong evidence in the U.K. … calls it out as a word on the move.” Oxford Dictionaries states that the political word offers a beacon of hope after a “difficult and divisive year.”
Just two years ago, Oxford sparked controversy after selecting “pictograph.” Many were confused that the word of the year was not a word but an emoji — the face with tears of joy, to be precise.
Other words that made this year’s shortlist include: milkshake duck, white fragility, unicorn, kompromat, broflake, newsjacking, gorpcore and antifa.
Past winners include post-truth (2016), vape (2014) and selfie (2013).
Take off with Natarajan 