Yagam that smacks evil

Gayatri Aswamedha Yagam to be held in Sambalpur district on December 25 smacks of evil intent Christian leaders in Orissa told the Chief Minister of Orissa.

A delegation of Christian leaders led by Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Raphael Cheenath met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik urging him to provide security to Christians in other areas besides violence-prone Kandhamal district.

"Christians in other dioceses are also afraid. Security should also be provided to Balasore, Berhampur, Rourkela and Sambalpur dioceses", Cheenath told reporters after meeting the chief minister.

Claiming that a number of "strange" people from outside Kandhamal had entered the district despite extensive frisking exercise on roads, the Archbishop alleged criminals were freely moving in Kotagarh area.

"We apprehend that influx of non-state players into Kandhamal is aimed at creating communal violence", he said adding Christians were leaving relief camps because of fear. read it all

Geneology of Pencil: Fifty year old article on Pencil by Leonard E Read

..........

 not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

RP.6

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

RP.7

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

RP.8

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

RP.9

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

RP.10

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!

RP.11

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

RP.12

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

RP.13

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

RP.14

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

RP.15

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

RP.16

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

RP.17

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

RP.18

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.  

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Marriage soleminsed at Orissa police station

Orissa policemen play cupid
Subhashish Mohanty
Monday, December 15, 2008 01:22 IST


BHUBANESWAR: Marriages are made in heaven. But this one in Orissa was solemnised at a police station.
Sabir Ahmed, 25, an Indian Air Force man, on Friday married girlfriend Reshmi Roshan Nigar, 22, at Kendrapara police station, about 100 km from here, under the watchful eyes of superintendent of police Diptesh Patnaik.

Sources said Ahmed, who is now posted in Chandigarh, met Nigar in Bhadrak in 2005. They stayed in touch over the phone and soon fell in love. Nigar’s parents told Ahmed’s family about the relationship. But Ahmed’s parents did not approve of the relationship.

Ahmed snapped all ties with Nigar. Shattered, the Nigars sought the help of Ashiyana, a Bhadrak-based NGO working for the welfare of minority communities.

Ashiyana secretary Sophia Seikh stepped in to settle the discord. She first went to Chandigarh to settle the issue amicably. “As we did not get any help from the Air Force, we came back and lodged a police complaint,” she said.

When Sabir came to his hometown, Kendrapara, for Bakri-Eid last week, cops took him to the police station. The girl’s family members were summoned to the police station. Ahmed then agreed to marry Nigar. The marriage was soleminsed at the police station. Before the nikaah, a pre-nuptial agreement was signed between the two families. “The agreement states that if Nigar dies under unnatural circumstances, Ahmed’s family will be held responsible. Ahmed cannot divorce his wife,” Sophia said, adding that her NGO has settled about 18 such disputes. But for the first time, a marriage had been solemnised at a police station, she added.

Woman, 70, in 'oldest new mum' claim

A 70-year-old woman from India claims she has become the world's oldest new mother.

Rajo Devi and her husband Bala Ram had wanted a child in all their 50 years together.

She claims to have given birth to a baby girl at the end of November after having IVF treatment. Her husband is 72. more BBC

Bush gets Foot in Mouth award for his abuse of English language!

Wed, Dec 10 12:35 PM

New York, Dec 10 (ANI): United States President George Bush's long, rambling sentences and grammatically incorrect speeches have finally been acknowledged by a British language watchdog group.

Bush's famous gaffes have won him this year's not-so-coveted Foot in Mouth Lifetime Achievement Award, reports the New York Daily News.

The Plain English Campaign (PEC) gave the award to mark the departure of Bush from the White House.

While handing out the title, PEC praised Bush for "capturing the spirit of every true gobbledegooker" by using his unique way with words to address a wide range of subjects.

"I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?'" was just one of the Bushisms singled out for special praise, along with a comment he made on a visit to Rome in 2001.

Bush said: "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right."

Bush has joined the list of celebrities and politicians who have also received the title, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and supermodel Naomi Campbell. (ANI)  courtesy

Martha "Sunny" von Bulow dies after 30 years in coma

Sun, Dec 7 05:05 PM

New York, Dec 7 (ANI): After spending 30 years in coma, Manhattan socialite Martha "Sunny" von Bulow died in a New York nursing home. She was 76.

She spent the last decade at an upper East Side nursing home, surrounded by pictures of grandchildren she never got to meet.

Sunny was found unconscious in the marble-tiled bathroom of Newport, R.I., estate in December 1980.

Her second husband, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying to kill her with an insulin overdose - then acquitted after an appeal got him a retrial.

The events were turned into a 1990 Hollywood film, 'Reversal of Fortune'.  more