Category: Did you know?

Humans vs mosquitos

Diseases spread by bats, rats and rodents are far more easier to control and contain compared to those spread by mosquitos. Unlike bats and rats, mosquitos are too small to kill 1 by 1. The are tiny, have huge breeding rate and they suck blood surreptitiously. Most times we tend to notice a mosquito bite long after the event.

Mosquitos spread deadly diseases like malaria, dengue, Chikungunya, yellow fever and many more. Malaria being the most lethal disease that kills more than a million people every year. Most of them being children and affects close to 300 – 600 million people every year. This number is more than 2 times the population of entire middle east (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen).

Precious water

Recently Cape town came in to limelight for being the first city close to run out of water. The government put regulations in place in the month of February to force 50 liters supply per person in order to salvage the situation. However, with the current crisis and severe drought since last couple of years, situation will only become worse henceforth.

The church of scientology

Founded by L. Ron Hubbard (LRH), Scientology is a new age religion based on the principle of self discovery and attaining zenith of your spirituality.

The core idea is to create a a world without wars, criminals and insanity and where people have freedom to rise to greater heights.

Hubbard was a pulp fiction writer who had published thousands of science fiction stories and tales while writing for leading publications. Scientology was some how conceived in the realm of his fictional stories.

Restaurants – the art of deception

Restaurants like any other business want to increase their sales. In my previous article, i had outlined the same about Supermarkets.

The ultimate objective for restaurants is to do sales of the items which are priced high and in general make customers eat more hence, make more money.

The first step is lightning and the decor of the restaurants. Nice dim lightning makes body comfortable, brain relaxed and hunger levels up.

The tallest slum

Most of us know that “Tower of David” is located in Jerusalem and that citadel was constructed about 2000 years back. It derived its name through the early Christians who believed it was palace of King David.

Lets now navigate to Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuela is 1 of the worst performing economies of the world. With unemployment reaching to a staggering 10.5% and around 8% people living in abject poverty, There is no surprise that the ambitions of citizens have been curtailed and massive resentment across.

A life not lived

Kowloon walled city was demolished in 1993 after a lengthy eviction process. The settlement was insanely populated due to large scale migration of Chinese during world war 2 and occupation of Hong kong by British.

Most of the settlement was built haphazardly by the settlers themselves. As it was not governed by any authority, crime flourished along with illegal trading. The population was an incredible 3.25 million people per square mile!!

Idea of teleportation

Most of us have watched “The Centurions” that used to be telecasted on cartoon network in 90’s. The 3 main protagonist Max Ray, Jake Rockwell & Ace Mccloud used to be teleported from the their space station “Sky Vault” along with weapons by 2 magic words “power extreme!”

Teleportation has always been an imperative theme in many Sci-Fi novels and TV shows.

The anonymous billionaire

In october 2008, a person / group with pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” published a tectonic shifting paper on a digital currency system which was named as “Bitcoin”.

It was first of its kind peer to peer currency system with no central authority or supervision. To put it simply, it is like “torrent” of currency where every participant has a journal of transactions of everyone so no single entity can exert their control over it. The underlining technology “blockchain” is now implemented to solve various complex problems of governance.

Cant resist chocolates & ice creams?

There are certain food items that are irresistible in many ways. Most of us would pursue to buy an ice cream or a chocolate when we see one in store.

It is like having a kind of consciousness within us that urge you to grab it. That part of your consciousness will drive your behaviour by self assuring excuses.

cold weather & common cold

2 of my colleagues are sick and off from work with same symptoms today. Coughing, running nose, sore throat, headache & exhaustion. Coincidentally, they are not alone. There is a big spike in such cases during the summer to winter transition.

The problem is referred to as common cold or viral flu in general. The influenza virus which is responsible for this, is conducive to cold and dry weather. It is able to survive for longer and thus spreads quickly. Moreover, it can multiply / replicate faster as well.

Origins of Gold

In my previous article “How it all started…”, I expressed on how a star fuse elements of our periodic table in its core.

Also, how star cannot fuse iron and it leads to a big supernova explosion.

The question arises, If this is true how do we find elements in periodic table which are higher then Iron are produced? For e.g. Gold, Lead, Plutonium, etc.

Antimatter, What and How much can I buy for?

Some time during the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years back after the big bang, matter overpowered antimatter. During the early stage after big bang the universe was unstable. Matter and antimatter reacted and obliterated each other in big release of energy repeatedly.

Some how at that time matter won against antimatter and it survived. Since then, whatever we see on planet and around our solar system and space is all matter.

We are all Equal.(period)

All human beings have almost identical genes. My genes would have around 99.9% match to genes of my friend who helps me with cleaning my car or Elon Musk for that matter. No matter you are of different color, creed, belong to different religion, have a different orientation or any other difference that you can spot with your eyes does not translate in difference of your core building blocks (DNA).

Where exactly are we!

Our planet earth has about 510.1 million square kilometres in surface area. We are part of the solar system with sun in the centre. Our sun is whopping 109 times diameter then the earth.

Our solar system is roughly 122 AU in diameter where each AU (Astronomical Unit) correspond to 150 million kilometres!

The curious case of starlings

Starlings are small to medium size birds. They appear to be black from distance but are dark blue glossy coloured.

Shakespeare has described starlings vividly while writing Henry IV. They mimic and imitate sounds. They usually travel in big flocks.